Candy corn was called Chicken Feed because that was the name the Goelitz Confectionery Company sold it under after taking up the candy in 1898, pitching a kernel-shaped sweet to a country that still thought of corn as something you threw to the hens. The popular version, that the candy wore that name from its invention in the 1880s and was a Halloween treat from the start, mixes up two companies and makes it an October candy decades too early.
The story is usually told in four confident sentences. A Philadelphia candy maker named George Renninger invented it in the 1880s. The Wunderle Candy Company sold it first. Goelitz made it famous as Chicken Feed. Halloween did the rest. Some of those sentences rest on documents and some rest on nothing but repetition.
A short history of candy corn, claim by claim
| Claim | What supports it |
|---|---|
| George Renninger invented candy corn at Wunderle in Philadelphia in the 1880s | Tradition and oral history. No patent, advertisement or dated document is cited by anyone who repeats it |
| Wunderle sold it first, in 1888 | The same tradition. The year appears in some accounts and not in others |
| Goelitz began making it in 1898 | Company history, and the firm's reorganization in Cincinnati that year is documented |
| Goelitz sold it as Chicken Feed with a rooster on the package | Reported by National Geographic and History.com; the packaging described dates from the 1920s |
| It became the Halloween candy in the 1950s | A candy historian's reading of the advertising record |
The table gets firmer as it goes down, which is the reverse of how the story is normally told.
Who invented candy corn? The Renninger tradition
Both men in the origin story were real. The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, in an essay on the city's candy makers by Jack McCarthy, identifies Philip Wunderle (1845-1929) as a German immigrant whose Wunderle Candy Company operated in the Northern Liberties neighborhood, and George Renninger (1856-1944) as a longtime employee there. Philadelphia was a serious candy town. In 1882 the city counted 204 confectioners employing 1,952 people, 391 of them children.
On the invention itself the encyclopedia chooses its words with care. "Tradition has it," McCarthy writes, that the two men invented candy corn in 1888. Other careful sources hedge the same way. The National Confectioners Association, the industry's own trade group, introduces Renninger with "According to legend". Rebecca Rupp, writing for National Geographic in 2015, said the candy is traditionally credited to him and added that nobody knows for sure. History.com attributes the claim to oral histories without naming any.
Nobody can even agree on how to spell the company. The Philadelphia encyclopedia and most other accounts write Wunderle. The National Confectioners Association writes Wunderlee. A name that floats like that has usually been copied from retelling to retelling instead of from a letterhead.
None of this means Renninger did not do it. A man who spent his working life in a Philadelphia candy factory and died in 1944 is a plausible inventor, and none of these sources names a rival claimant. It means the credit rests on a story handed down, not on paper. The 1888 date should be read as "about then".
The Goelitz family and the candy they did not invent
The better documented half of the story belongs to another German immigrant family, part of the wave that built so much of American food. Gustav Goelitz was born in 1845 in Osterode am Harz, in the Kingdom of Hannover, and emigrated in 1866 at the age of 21. He settled in Belleville, Illinois, worked as a salesman for a candy maker named William Theodor, and on July 26, 1869 signed a promissory note to Theodor for $1,700 to go into business for himself. Those details come from the footnoted biography published by the German Historical Institute's Immigrant Entrepreneurship project.
The first family firm did not last. Goelitz Brothers' Candy Company, by then in St. Louis, declared bankruptcy in mid-September 1893 when the Panic of that year cut off credit. Within a year Gustav's sons Adolph and Gustav Jr. had started again in Belleville as the A & G Goelitz Confection Company. In 1898 they moved to Cincinnati and reorganized as the Goelitz Confectionery Company. (Some accounts of the firm put the Cincinnati factory at 1900. The biography is the more detailed, footnoted source, and History.com and National Geographic also give 1898.)
It was in Cincinnati that they took up candy corn. The same biography is blunt about what that meant: the company "did not invent candy corn". It prospered by following a trend, and the trend was buttercream candy, a relatively new style of soft sweet.
Candy makers molded this soft sugar and corn syrup candy, which the trade now calls mellowcreme, into farm shapes. History.com lists pumpkins, chestnuts and turnips. America Comes Alive says Wunderle made pea pods and little turnips alongside its kernels. Candy corn was one shape among many, set apart by its three bands of color, each poured separately.
Gustav Goelitz did not see much of it. He died in Belleville on March 16, 1901.
Why candy corn was called Chicken Feed
The name made sense to buyers in 1898 for a reason that is easy to miss now. Most Americans did not yet think of corn as food for people. Samira Kawash, who wrote Candy: A Century of Panic and Pleasure, put it this way in a 2010 essay for The Atlantic:
"Corn was coarse and cheap and not very tasty: good food for pigs and chickens."
"There were no sweet hybrids in those days," she added. By her account, only the wartime wheat shortages of 1917 got any but the poorest Americans to accept corn flour and cornbread.
So a candy shaped like a dried field-corn kernel made people think of the feed bin. History.com notes that about half of Americans worked on farms when the candy appeared, which gave the name a ready audience.
Goelitz leaned into it. National Geographic describes the candy sold as Chicken Feed in a box with a rooster on the front. History.com dates the surviving examples: packages from the 1920s showing a rooster and the motto "King of the Candy Corn Fields". A Goelitz advertisement reproduced on the history site America Comes Alive carries a rooster and the line "Something worth crowing for".
Two cautions belong here. Some summaries say the candy was called Chicken Feed from the late 1880s. Every account that attaches the name to a company attaches it to Goelitz, which made no candy corn before 1898, and no source describes Wunderle using it. The second caution is that the dated packaging is from the 1920s. The name may well go back to 1898, but that rests on later retellings, not on a box anyone has dated to that year.
What candy corn was originally made of, and who carried the bucket
The original candy started as sugar, corn syrup and other ingredients cooked in large kettles into a slurry, with fondant and marshmallow added for texture. That is the National Confectioners Association's description. Jelly Belly says it still uses the Goelitz recipe of 1898, though the Goelitz biography points out that changes in how corn syrup is made mean the candy has probably drifted.
The labor has. In the early 1900s the warm candy, about 45 pounds of it at a time, went into buckets called runners. Workers called stringers walked backward down long trays of cornstarch stamped with kernel-shaped hollows, pouring as they went. Each kernel needed three passes, one for each color. The finished candy left the factory by wagon in wooden boxes and tubs.
Work that heavy was seasonal. The association says production probably began in late August and ran through the fall. America Comes Alive has it running from March to November. Either way, the kettles were going in autumn, which mattered later.
When candy corn became a Halloween candy
For its first fifty years candy corn belonged to no holiday in particular. History.com calls it a common penny candy, something children ate year-round. It might turn up at a Halloween party, History.com notes, but also at Thanksgiving (a meal with its own tangle of myths) and at Easter.
Halloween itself had to change first. Going door to door for candy only took off in force in the late 1940s, National Geographic notes, once wartime sugar rationing was lifted. Then the advertising followed. "There was a dramatic spike in October advertising of candy corn beginning in the 1950s," Kawash wrote. Other candies were advertised for Halloween too, but they were pushed just as hard the rest of the year. Candy corn, already an autumn product, got October more or less to itself.
What none of these accounts records is the year Goelitz stopped printing Chicken Feed on the package. The rooster is there in the 1920s. After that the trail, at least in the published histories, goes quiet.
In 2015, National Geographic reported, the trade group projected that more than 35 million pounds would be produced that year, about nine billion kernels. The Goelitz family stayed in the business the whole time. The firm moved to North Chicago in 1913, a son named Herman took the family recipes to California after the First World War, and the two branches later recombined into the company now called Jelly Belly. Ferrara Candy Company, which also owns the Brach's brand, bought Jelly Belly in 2023.
Philip Wunderle died in 1929 and George Renninger in 1944. If the tradition is right about them, neither man lived to see his kernel become a Halloween candy.
Questions people ask
Who invented candy corn?
Candy corn is traditionally credited to George Renninger, a worker at the Wunderle Candy Company in Philadelphia, around 1888. That credit rests on tradition, not paper: the Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia says "tradition has it," and no patent or dated advertisement is cited. Goelitz, which began making candy corn in 1898, did not invent it.
Which company sold candy corn as Chicken Feed?
The Goelitz Confectionery Company sold candy corn as Chicken Feed after it reorganized in Cincinnati in 1898. National Geographic describes a box with a rooster on the front, and History.com dates surviving packages showing a rooster to the 1920s. Goelitz later became the company now called Jelly Belly, which Ferrara Candy Company bought in 2023.
When did candy corn become a Halloween candy?
Candy corn became tied to Halloween in the 1950s, when candy historian Samira Kawash found a dramatic spike in October advertising for it. Before that it was a penny candy eaten year-round, at Halloween parties but also at Thanksgiving and Easter. Trick-or-treating itself only took off in the late 1940s, after wartime sugar rationing ended.
What was candy corn originally made of?
Early candy corn was sugar, corn syrup and other ingredients cooked in large kettles into a slurry, with fondant and marshmallow added for texture, according to the National Confectioners Association. Workers poured it into cornstarch trays stamped with kernel-shaped hollows, one pass for each of the three colors. Jelly Belly says it still uses the Goelitz recipe of 1898.
Filed under Origin Stories
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