My daughter, OSFO, is insane for Peeps, those bright pink and yellow marshmallow candies only available leading up to Easter. There’s an article in today’s Times about sugar eggs and how difficult to find and expensive they are these days. But Peeps are everywhere, including the Prospect Gardens Pharmacy on Union Street. Here’s an excerpte from a 2004 article from Slate.com about everyone’s favorite cavity causer, which are NOT avalable at the Park Slope Food Coop, you can be sure of that.
This Easter Americans will consume an estimated 700 million Marshmallow Peeps. Some will also be consumed by them—fanatics maintain Web sites featuring everything from Peep erotica, dubbed "Peep Smut," to an inventive online movie called "Lord of the Peeps," and each year at least a few newspapers print odes to the candy. But for all the fascination with Peeps, it’s never been clear why the sugary treats are associated with Easter. The marshmallow rabbits represent the Easter Bunny, but what do marshmallow chicks have to do with the resurrection of Christ?
As it turns out, chicks have little to do with Jesus and a lot to do with spring. In 1917, Sam Born, a Russian immigrant, opened a small candy shop in New York City that sold chocolates and other confections. When the company grew, Born relocated it to Bethlehem, Pa., and named it Just Born, after a slogan he’d coined to advertise the freshness of his wares. Then, in 1953, Just Born bought a local Pennsylvania confectioner called the Rodda Candy Company.
Although Just Born acquired Rodda for its jelly-bean-making capabilities, the Born family was fascinated with the three-dimensional marshmallow Easter chicks, called Peeps, that Rodda was also making at the time. Lauren Easterly, the Peeps brand manager at Just Born, said that a group of women at Rodda made Peeps by hand in the back of the factory. In 1953, it took Rodda 27 hours to make one Peep. Just Born mechanized Peep production and was able to bring the confection to consumers on a mass scale by 1954.
Peep Phot by PP Photos