Pop Rocks: The Inside Story of America’s Revolutionary Candy

You might've heard that eating Pop Rocks and drinking a soda could could burst open your stomach. You might've heard that Life cereal's Mikey tasted such a concoction, and it killed him.

But what you haven't heard about Pop Rocks-the real story of the man who invented the candy; how it languished on a lab shelf for 20 years at General Food Corporation; its 1976 unveiling and immediate success; and the eventual disaster that rocked the very company the candy had transformed-is even more explosive.

Written by food product developer Marv Rudolph-a research chemist at General Foods during the Pop Rocks heyday-Pop Rocks: The Inside Story of America's Revolutionary Candy delves into this one-of-kind candy's wild history.

You'll peek inside the '50s-era lab of Pop Rocks inventor William A. Mitchell, hardly the mad scientist the world portrayed him to be, but rather, a prolific foodchemist pioneer who amassed 44 patents in 35 years. You'll learn how production of the complicated candy was almost abandoned-until a Mississippi oil and gas man figured out how it could be done on a large scale. You'll watch the candy's meteoric rise and its company's freefall. Pop Rocks: The Inside Story of America's Revolutionary Candy is a tale no foodie, business professional or history buff should miss.

Pop Rocks: The Inside Story of America’s Revolutionary Candy
Specialty Publishers, 2006
112 pages

ISBN 0-9786318-0-3

$12.95 Order now!

You can purchase the book from Amazon Books or obtain a signed edition by ordering it directly from the author by sending a personal check for $12.95, plus $4.00 shipping, (MA residents add 5.00% sales tax, or $0.65 per book) to:

SPECIALTY PUBLISHERS LLC
P.O. BOX 502
SHARON, MA 02067