Laffy Taffy: The Candy That Comes With a Joke

What do you call a cow with no legs? Ground beef.

That joke is on the wrapper of a piece of Laffy Taffy. So is: what did the house wear to the party? A dress. And: what is an owl's favourite subject? Owlgebra. These jokes are terrible. They are supposed to be terrible. The terrible joke is not incidental to Laffy Taffy, it is the product — the stretchy fruit taffy is excellent, but it is also the delivery mechanism for a piece of paper with a pun on it, and generations of American children have argued with some seriousness about which matters more.

It is one of the odder success stories in American confectionery: a product that defined itself not by flavour or texture, though both are distinctive, but by the experience of opening the wrapper. Every piece. Every time.

Paul F. Beich and the Candy That Was Not a Caramel

Laffy Taffy began in the 1970s at the Beich candy business in Bloomington, Illinois, a long-established maker of conventional confectionery. It launched a fruit-flavoured taffy in a thick square piece, individually wrapped, and sold it as Beich's Caramels, named by flavour.

It was not a caramel by any reasonable definition. It was taffy — a sugar and corn syrup confection aerated by pulling and stretching until it turns light, chewy and slightly elastic. The caramel name looks like a category decision from an era when candy needed a more specific label to sit under on a shelf.

Banana was one of the flavours from early on. That matters later.

Why the Jokes Are Deliberately Bad

The jokes became the brand's signature: a mix of puns sent in by fans and ones picked out by the company, printed on every wrapper. The mechanism is smarter than it looks. A groan-inducing pun is more memorable than a mildly amusing one, and a joke bad enough that you have to show it to the person next to you — so they can groan too — does the marketing that a confectionery company would otherwise have to buy.

The name that tied the texture of the sweet to the entertainment on the wrapper was Laffy Taffy, and Beich adopted it before selling the business.

Nestle, Wonka and Thirty-Four Years of Factory Magic

In 1984 Nestlé acquired Beich, and Laffy Taffy entered its longest and most visible chapter as part of the Willy Wonka Candy Company. For how Nestlé came to hold the Wonka name and what became of it, see the Willy Wonka ownership guide. For Laffy Taffy it meant cross-promotion with every film adaptation, golden ticket contests, and a place alongside Nerds, Fun Dip and Gobstoppers in a single candy universe.

The branding suited it. A sweet that arrives with a piece of entertainment attached sits naturally in a brand built on the idea that confectionery should be an experience rather than a transaction. Under Nestlé the format moved from the thick original square to the thinner rectangle that is now standard, and the Rope was introduced — a longer stretched version in single fruit flavours that became one of the brand's best sellers.

In 2003 came Flavor Flippers: a piece with an outer layer of one flavour and a soft centre of another. Pure Wonka logic — candy as a magic trick, a sweet that behaves unexpectedly mid-chew.

The Banana Problem

Banana Laffy Taffy is simultaneously one of America's best-loved candy flavours and one of its most argued-over, because it does not taste like a banana. Not like any banana a British shopper would recognise. It is brighter, more intense, almost synthetic — a concentrated fruit hit with only a passing relationship to the Cavendish on a supermarket shelf.

The most popular explanation is historical, and it is the best story in the whole brand. When artificial banana flavouring was developed and standardised, the dominant commercial banana was the Gros Michel: larger, creamier and far more intensely flavoured than what replaced it. Panama disease, a fungal infection, tore through Gros Michel plantations in the 1950s and effectively ended commercial production by the 1960s. The Cavendish, resistant to that strain, took over. It tastes milder and less fragrant — which is what British consumers now think a banana tastes like.

The flavouring, based on isoamyl acetate, is often said to have been built to capture the Gros Michel — food scientists still debate how much that explains, but the story has stuck. By the time the fruit vanished from shops the flavour was already fixed, and candy companies kept using it because shoppers had learned to associate it with banana sweets regardless of what the actual fruit tasted like. Banana Laffy Taffy does not taste like the banana you buy in Tesco. It tastes like the banana Americans ate before most of them were born, and it is a flavour that now survives only in confectionery.

The Number One Single

In October 2005 an Atlanta hip-hop group called D4L released a single named Laffy Taffy. On 14 January 2006 it reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100, knocking Mariah Carey off the top and holding the position for a week before Grillz replaced it.

How it got there is the interesting part. The record industry was in freefall, CD sales were collapsing, and Laffy Taffy climbed almost entirely on digital downloads — it sold hundreds of thousands of downloads in the week after Christmas alone, a record for a single week at the time. It was one of the first records to demonstrate that the download market could put a song at number one without the machinery that traditionally did it. A track named after a piece of fruit taffy, built on a sample of New Edition's Candy Girl, arrived at exactly the moment the charts stopped working the way they always had.

Ferrara and the Joke Contest

In January 2018 Nestlé sold its US confectionery business — Laffy Taffy, Nerds, Fun Dip, SweeTARTS and the rest of the Wonka portfolio — to Ferrero, the Italian company behind Nutella, for 2.8 billion dollars. Ferrero folded the brands into its Ferrara Candy Company subsidiary.

Under Ferrara the joke tradition has been taken more seriously, not less. In 2022 the brand ran a public joke-writing contest that drew 6,500 submissions, and a curation team selected the best 101 to add to a formal joke library that wrapper jokes are drawn from. Two criteria: family-friendly, and it must produce a groan. Both are requirements.

The Mystery Swirl Rope applies the same logic as the Airheads White Mystery bar — Ferrara does not say what the flavour is. You buy it to find out. You buy it again because you want a different answer.

Laffy Taffy at Sweet and Glory

The Laffy Taffy range covers seven Rope flavours — Cherry, Strawberry, Grape, Sour Apple, Wild Blue Raspberry, Banana and Mystery Swirl — individually wrapped, alongside Mini's tubs in Assorted, Banana, Blue Raspberry and Sour Apple, a Stretchy and Tangy Banana format, and the 2.03kg bag and 12.2kg case for pick and mix. The Assorted Peg Bag and the Valentine's All Reds Heart Box complete the range. Browse the candy range for the full imported selection.

No minimum order. Free first parcel on orders over £150 ex VAT (additional boxes £7.10 each). Free pallet delivery over £650 ex VAT. Dispatched from Manchester. Create a free account to browse and order.
 

Frequently Asked Questions

What is taffy? Taffy is a soft, chewy American sweet made by boiling sugar, corn syrup and butter, then pulling the warm mass — stretching it, folding it back and stretching it again until air is worked through. The pulling is what makes it light and chewy rather than hard. The word appears in the United States around 1817, and the Oxford English Dictionary treats toffee as a southern British variant of it, which is why the two names sound alike for sweets that are nothing like each other. Laffy Taffy takes the same soft, stretchy idea and wraps it in individual pieces.

Is Laffy Taffy salt water taffy? No. Salt water taffy is its own style of pulled taffy, sold in small twist-wrapped pieces on the Atlantic City boardwalk in New Jersey from the 1880s. Despite the name it contains no seawater — just salt and water, like most taffy recipes. The name comes from seaside legend, with stories of a flooded sweet shop or seawater splashed into a batch. Laffy Taffy is a stretchier, fruitier chew with a joke on every wrapper, and it is the one Sweet and Glory stocks: Ropes in seven flavours, Mini's tubs, Stretchy and Tangy Banana and the Assorted Peg Bag.

Why does banana Laffy Taffy taste so artificial? The popular answer is that it was modelled on a different banana. Artificial banana flavour, based on isoamyl acetate, is said to have been matched to the Gros Michel — the variety that dominated shops until Panama disease ended commercial production through the 1950s and 60s. The Cavendish that replaced it, and that you buy today, is milder and less fragrant. Banana Laffy Taffy tastes like the banana Americans ate before most of them were born, a flavour that now survives only in confectionery.

Why are the jokes on Laffy Taffy wrappers so bad? Deliberately. A groan-inducing pun is more memorable than a mildly funny one, and a joke bad enough that you show it to the person next to you does the brand's marketing for it. Jokes are printed on every wrapper, and in 2022 a public contest drew 6,500 submissions, with the best 101 added to an official library that wrapper jokes are drawn from.

What flavour is Laffy Taffy Mystery Swirl? Nobody is officially saying. Ferrara does not confirm it, so the not-knowing is the product — the same idea as the Airheads White Mystery bar. You buy it to find out, then buy it again hoping for a different answer.

Was there really a number one song called Laffy Taffy? Yes. D4L released it in October 2005 and it reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on 14 January 2006, displacing Mariah Carey. It got there almost entirely on digital downloads at a point when CD sales were collapsing, selling hundreds of thousands in the week after Christmas and setting a one-week download record at the time.

Who makes Laffy Taffy? Ferrara Candy Company, owned by Ferrero. It began at Beich in Bloomington, Illinois in the 1970s, spent 1984 to 2018 under Nestlé as part of the Willy Wonka Candy Company, and passed to Ferrero when Nestlé sold its US confectionery business.

Related guides: Who really owns Willy Wonka? · Nerds complete guide · Fun Dip complete guide · Gobstoppers: the complete guide · Most popular American sweets UK · Best sour candy UK · American candy wholesale buyer's guide

Sources

Wikipedia, Laffy Taffy (history, 2022 joke contest, Nestle and Ferrero): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffy_Taffy
Reuters, Nestle sells US confectionery business to Ferrero for 2.8 billion dollars (January 2018): reuters.com
Billboard, Hot 100 chart history - D4L, Laffy Taffy (January 2006): billboard.com
Dan Koeppel, Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World (Gros Michel and Panama disease)
Wikipedia, Taffy (candy) (pulling, 1817 first use, toffee as a variant): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taffy_(candy)
Wikipedia, Salt water taffy (Atlantic City, 1880s, no seawater): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_water_taffy

Written by Sharon Wilson, Sweet and Glory. Sweet and Glory has imported American and world confectionery into the UK from Trafford Park, Manchester, since 2015.