From the Akron Candy Company to a factory in Bryan, Ohio.

Dum Dums are small, round lollipops on a stick, sold in a wide mix of flavours and individually wrapped. English Wikipedia describes them as an American brand of spherical lollipops and notes that the name is styled with a dot between the two words, as Dum•Dums. The candy began at another company. Wikipedia says Dum Dums originated with the Akron Candy Company in 1924. Sources differ on where that company was: the Wikipedia article on Dum Dums places it in Akron, Ohio, while the Wikipedia article on Spangler Candy Company and the International Directory of Company Histories entry on Spangler both describe it as the Akron Candy Co. of Bellevue, Ohio.

The name came from inside the company. Wikipedia says I. C. Bahr, the Akron Candy Company’s early sales manager, named the lollipops, thinking “Dum Dums” was a phrase any child could say. Wikipedia, citing a flavour history once published on the brand’s website, says the original line-up had seven flavours, including lemon, lime, cherry and butterscotch, and adds that the lollipops are made on paper sticks; Spangler’s own FAQ, as cited there, says the company once tried plastic sticks and went back to paper.

The company that makes Dum Dums today started out making something else. Wikipedia says the Spangler Candy Company was established on 20 August 1906, when Arthur G. Spangler bought the Gold Leaf Baking Powder Company of Defiance, Ohio, and moved it to Bryan, Ohio. Under the name Spangler Manufacturing Company it produced baking soda, baking powder, corn starch, laundry starch, spices and flavourings. Wikipedia says Ernest Spangler joined in 1908 and suggested adding candy, that the Spangler Cocoanut Ball followed in 1911, and that in 1913 the business moved to its present site on North Portland Street in Bryan. In 1920 the company took the name Spangler Candy Company, and by 1922 it was making hard candy.

Spangler buys Dum Dums, 1953.

Dum Dums joined Spangler in the early 1950s. The International Directory of Company Histories entry says Spangler acquired the brand in March 1953, when it bought the production equipment and the trademark for Dum Dum lollipops from the Akron Candy Company, and Wikipedia says manufacturing moved to Bryan at that point. Wikipedia says Dum Dums are produced in Bryan today. Spangler is a privately owned confectioner headquartered in the town, and Wikipedia lists its brands as including Dum-Dums, Spangler candy canes, Spangler Circus Peanuts and Saf-T-Pops, the last acquired from the Curtiss Candy Company of Chicago in 1978.

Wikipedia lists a succession of Spangler family members in senior roles and says that in July 2011 Kirk Vashaw, a fourth-generation family member, was elected president and chief executive. The company has also bought older American candy brands. Wikipedia says that on 21 September 2018 Spangler acquired Necco Wafers, Sweethearts and Canada Mints after the New England Confectionery Company declared bankruptcy, and Spangler announced in a press release dated 20 November 2020 that it had acquired the Bit-O-Honey brand from Pearson’s Candy Company. Wikipedia says Bit-O-Honey production began in Bryan in January 2023.

The flavour list has never stood still. Wikipedia’s list of current flavours includes cherry, grape and butterscotch, which it dates to the original 1924 line-up, as well as later additions such as root beer, cream soda, watermelon and blue raspberry, the last dated to 1991. It also says a birthday cake flavour was added for the brand’s 100th anniversary. One flavour is defined by the process. Mental Floss reported on 3 June 2012 that the “Mystery Flavor” is what results when the end of one batch mixes with the start of the next, so that the line does not have to stop to be cleaned between flavours.

Design and documentation.

American candy usually reaches people as a wrapper or a box, and the pack is seen before the sweet inside is ever tasted. A sweet that sits on a cinema counter, a petrol-station rack or a supermarket checkout has only a moment to be picked out, so the pack has to carry the name, the flavour and a sense of the brand at a glance. Colour does much of that work, along with lettering that can be read from a distance and a shape that stays the same from one decade to the next.

Many of these names have changed hands over the years, passing between family firms, larger confectionery groups and food conglomerates, and production has sometimes moved far from the town where a candy began. The box or wrapper is often the part that stays recognisable through those changes.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — the founding story, the owners over time, where the candy is made and how its packaging has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A mascot, a wrapper and a water tower.

The brand’s best-documented design asset is a character. Wikipedia’s history of Spangler says that in April 1966 the Dum-Dums Drum Man was born, developed by the Howard Swink Advertising Agency of Marion, Ohio. The International Directory of Company Histories adds that Dum Dums were advertised on television in 1966, and that the test, though brief, led to the adoption of the Drum Man as the mascot of the lollipops. Spangler marked the mascot’s 50th anniversary in 2016 with a community party in Bryan, according to Wikipedia.

Wikipedia says the Save Wraps for Stuff programme returned in 2001, alongside a new website for children at dumdumpops.com, and that a Spangler Fulfillment Center began operating in June 2007 to distribute items for the programme. Wikipedia also says Spangler set up a Dum-Dums Facebook fan page in April 2009 and launched a Flick-A-Pop app the following month.

Bryan itself has become part of the identity. In 2022, Wikipedia says, Spangler worked with the City of Bryan Municipal Utilities Department to paint eight Dum-Dums, each about 65 feet tall, on the water tower on the Spangler campus; the mural was painted by Eric Henn. In December 2023, Spangler Candy World opened in downtown Bryan, combining an interactive museum, a large-screen factory tour and a shop.

For a design guide, Dum Dums shows how a short, chantable name, a cartoon drummer and a rainbow of small, round pops can carry a regional candy for decades without a change of maker or home town. Compare it with Tootsie Roll, another long-running American candy, and PEZ, a candy whose brand rests on a character dispenser. For this guide we use cherry red, blue raspberry, orange and lemon-lime with drum navy and a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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