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Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Good & Plenty (Fresh from the Factory)
They’re simply a little nibble of licorice covered in a thin sugar shell. Rather like a Jordan Almond, the shell is added in a process called panning, where a sugar syrup is added to the little licorice bites and tumbled and dried and then colored. Good & Plenty come in only two colors, pink and white. (Most other licrorice pastilles come in pastels or bright colors, like the version made by Jelly Belly Confections.) Most licorice pastilles are expensive, but Good & Plenty are surprisingly affordable, probably because they don’t have as much of a candy shell as some others. The flavor of Good & Plenty is more complex, I think, than some of the European pastilles. First, the sugar coating doesn’t completely contain the licorice flavor so when you stick your nose into a movie-sized box of Good & Plenty and you get a woodsy whiff of anise. The sugar shell isn’t very crunchy, in fact, it’s a little grainy, but it works pretty well for Good & Plenty, letting the flavor permeate. The licorice itself has a high sweet overtone and then the molasses hits, dark and slightly burnt and with a light salty bite. After it’s gone there’s a lingering sweetness and clean licorice/anise flavor ... until you pop the next few in your mouth.
For this review I tried both the new Fresh from the Factory Good & Plenty and a rather fresh box from the convenience store near the office. There were a couple of differences. The molasses flavor seemed a little more pronounced in the FFTF&P and the sugar shell seemed a little softer. The still-fresh-in-the-box Good & Plenty had a mellower, more licorice-intense flavor and a slightly stronger shell. (It might have been my imagination, but the FFTF ones also looked a bit plump.) While some of the other Fresh from the Factory offerings seem a bit steep in price, the Good & Plenty version, in a 4 pound tub is a bit better deal for $25 ($6.24 per pound). The window to order has closed at the moment (though I believe they’ll cycle through again). Good & Plenty in bulk on the internet is $3.90 a pound for 5 pounds ... or $3.24 a pound for 10 pounds, so it’s not like there aren’t deals out there. I’ve found the sealed plastic peg bags sold at the grocery or drug stores are the freshest, the boxed Good & Plenty can be tough. But then again, I like mine tough, the candy shell is more crackly and of course it takes longer to eat. While I love Good & Plenty and it’s one of the few candies that I still purchase on a regular basis even with all the other stuff I have to get through, sometimes I prefer the crisper shell of the European varieties (but not the steep price). Good & Plenty is one of America’s oldest continuously produced candy brands, here are a few moments in their corporate history:
Though the company has changed hands a few times and even moved factories (at least three different locations that I know of), the packaging has stayed pretty much the same. A little box with Good & Plenty candies pictured on the the outside and the name inside a circle ... when I was a kid it had a black background, now it’s a purple one. The black, pink & white color combination is often known as “good & plenty” in crafting and decorating circles. Somewhere along the way it dropped the more formal “and” in favor of an ampersand, probably when they became part of Hershey’s. For many years Good & Plenty was also known for their cartoon mascot, Choo Choo Charlie. I found this video on YouTube of an old commercial:
These sorts of ads are probably not going to be around any longer, advertising candy to children is going away. Though candy offers empty calories, it does have some highlights. Candies like Good & Plenty make it easy for kids to share, learn portioning and resealable boxes reward self-restraint. Many boxes were also pretty versatile ... you could shake your box as a percussion instrument when it has candy in it and when empty, you can blow into it like a reed instrument. The current boxes don’t have the tucked tab design that do that ... the day they got rid of those was the day the music died. Good & Plenty is made with wheat flour so is unsuitable for those with wheat allergies or gluten-intolerance. It’s also colored with Carmine derived from insects and therefore not suitable for vegans. Good & Plenty are certified Kosher. Links:
POSTED BY Cybele AT 9:39 am 
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Candy, you know, that stuff made with sugar. These are my candy reviews. Open your mouth, expand your mind.
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VOTE IN OUR POLLDo you stock up on candy?
Total Votes: 158
Yes, when it's on sale. 
18% (29)Yes, it's a regular item on my shopping list, no matter what the price.
15% (23)Kind of, I keep regular items on hand and supplement when I need a different fix.
23% (36)No, just single servings as my cravings dictate.
39% (61)I don't buy candy, I just mooch off of others.
6% (9)voting ends 05/08/2008
 
All content (text and photos unless otherwise credited) is copyright 2005-2008 by Cybele May
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Interesting fact: The pink Good & Plentys get their color from cochineal/carmine, so they’re not vegetarian. And actually renders them kind of gross.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmine
I still miss my Good and Fruity—the center had much more firmness than the more popular (and still manufactured) Mike & Ikes. I like Justborn candies, but Good and Fruity had its own identity. And I like them a bit old and harder, and Good and Fruities always seemed to be more firm, as they apparently didn’t sell all that well.
As long as we’re talking educational benefits, don’t forget color recognition! Well, pink and white. Because, you know, those are hard to distinguish… :^)
oh. my. gosh.
i am ALL OVER this one. yay!
Doesn’t having 4 pounds of something defeat the purpose of it being fresh from the factory? I mean, I can’t imagine it staying fresh for very long.
I just ate some Good & Plenty today while I was shopping. They are one of my favorite “grazing” foods while pushing a cart around a store.
I love black licorice, and I just adore Good & Plenty. I also am partial to the licorice Scotty Dogs from Trader Joe’s, but they are far more expensive.
‘...the day the music died’
so eloquently written. well done. i felt a tear or maybe it was the skittle that went down the wrong pipe when i read that line ^^
I’m not sure what it is, but I’ve always had a serious aversion to all things licorice, even anise. I’ll have to try these again sometime, but I’m wondering if it is genetic, like the folks who think that cilantro tastes like soap.
I’ve always wanted to try those.
i think you’ve put the wrong link in for the FFTF Twizzlers, it keeps going to the organic mints&tarts;review you did.
& wow, i have to try the FFTF stuff now(:
I’ve never liked Good n Plenty - not a licorice fan - but I loooooooooooove that old ad!
Very thorough! You even mentioned the musical properties of both a full and empty box of G&Ps;. Funny to see the old ad again, a classic of late 50s/early 60s animation design - that stylized background and the flat plane. It may just be me, but I think I detect certain inuendos in that ad that as a child I didn’t understand. Just what is Choo Choo Charlie bragging to the young lady about that “really rings the bell?”
I’d like to second the nostalgia for Good and Fruity candies. I used to buy big boxes of them all through high school in the late 80s; sometime around my middle school years, they revised the formula to both flavor the inner chewy bits and make them a bit more tender. Unfortunately, for some reason in the early 1990s they switched the flavorings, making them taste a lot more like jelly beans and adding grape to the lineup. I stopped buying them, and they went off the market a year or two later. I wish they’d bring them back, they were great.
Actually, is there any chance that they are still produced outside the US? Australia or Germany, maybe? I’d pay for shipping…
Well, this is interesting: someone on Flickr is claiming to have found Good and Fruitys in production again. If the photo is to be believed, though, it appears they are the jellybeany flavors…
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ravenzachary/277627361/
My favorite candy is/was Good and Fruity’s but I can’t find them anywhere. Are they still Mfg’d?
Didn’t G&Ps;used to come in two shades of pink, light and dark, as well as the white? I was a color-obsessed child (don’t get me started on the joys of Crayola) and distinctly remember a candy that featured two pinks.
I am in a digital art class right now, and we are doing a candy wrapper project in Adobe Illustrator. The candy I have chosen is Good and Plenty, but for the life of me I can’t find the font they use for the logo! It is driving me nuts. Anyone know what the font is?
Alex,
The old logo uses some old condensed serifed font which would probably be hard to find unless you have access to old typography books and are willing to scan, then cut and paste.
The new logo looks like a font from the 60s or 70s. So, I’m looking in a type book from the md-70s. The logo appears to use something in the Futura family, though none of the ones I see has that distictive diagonal line in the “e”. Cable Heavy has one like that, but is a bit too bold (if there is a Cable Medium, that might be closer) and does not have the rounded corners of the logo font. Horatio Bold has the rounded corners, but not the diagonal on the “e” and other letters are not similar.
It may have been a custom-design font. In fact, the more I look at it, the more I’m convinced of that. The shape of the “y” is very unusual and seems designed to fit within the circle, The rounded ends of all the strokes seem designed to reflect the shape of the candy pieces, too.
Your best bet it is to scan it off a box of G&P;, I think. When you’re done, you can send the box to me - full of course.
Black licorice is one of those things that people either love or hate. I am in the love category. My dad always ate it when I was growing up and I took to it right away.
I remember for a short time in the 70s when they also made Good & Minty and Good & Hot candies. They did not last long.
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