Pop Rocks

Pop Rocks (UK: Space dust) is a carbonated candy with ingredients including sugar, lactose (milk sugar), corn syrup, and flavoring. The idea of the product was patented by General Foods research chemist William A. Mitchell in 1956. The Pop Rocks candy was first offered to the public in 1975. Around 1983, General Foods stopped selling the candy; some would believe this was because of an urban legend. In 1985, Kraft Foods bought the rights to the candy product and re-marketed it as Action Candy through a company called Carbonated Candy. Since 1979, Zeta Espacial S.A., a company based in the municipality of Rubí in Barcelona, Spain, has manufactured, sold, and exported the product.

Manufacturing

The candy is made by mixing its ingredients and heating them until they melt, then exposing the mixture to pressurized carbon dioxide gas (about 600 pounds per square inch) and allowing it to cool. The process causes tiny high pressure bubbles to be trapped inside the candy.^[1] When placed in the mouth, coming into contact with saliva, the candy breaks and melts, releasing the carbon dioxide from the tiny 60 atm bubbles, resulting in a popping and sizzling sound and leaving a slight tingling sensation. The bubbles in the candy pieces can be viewed when aided by a magnifying glass. In 2006, Dr. Marvin Rudolph, who led the group assigned to bring Pop Rocks out of the laboratory and into the manufacturing plant, wrote the definitive history on Pop Rocks development. The book, titled, "Pop Rocks: The Inside Story of America's Revolutionary Candy, " draws on interviews with food technologists, engineers, marketing managers, and members of Bill Mitchell's family, along with the author's direct experience, to tell the complete story. In recent years, a Pop Rocks brand chewing gum has been introduced.

Popular culture

During the product's heyday, rumors persisted that eating Pop Rocks and drinking cola would cause a person's stomach to explode. The company spent large sums sending out flyers to debunk the rumor. This is, in part, caused by the false assumption that pop rocks contain an acid/base mixture (such as baking soda and vinegar) which produces large volumes of gas when mixed through chewing and saliva.^[2] The most famous of these myths involved a child named Mikey from the Life cereal commercials. Mikey was reported to have died after eating a Pop Rocks and cola mixture. The rumor is false and the former child actor who was in the commercials, John Gilchrist, is alive and well.^[2] The TV series MythBusters examined the rumor by mixing Pop Rocks and cola inside a pig's stomach, and came to the conclusion that an explosion was impossible without eating pounds of the material. ^[3] The UK television programme Brainiac: Science Abuse later performed a similar debunking using a female volunteer. The horror film Urban Legend used the myth in the opening scene when the class clown volunteers to test the myth and fakes a seizure and death, complete with foaming at the mouth. In the Simpsons episode "Homer Badman", Homer steals a special gummy Venus de Milo from a candy convention, and mixes Pop Rocks into a can of soda which he throws into an angry mob like a grenade. The American pop-punk band Green Day wrote a song called "Poprocks & Coke," a previously unreleased track on their International Superhits! greatest hits album.

References

External links

• General Foods Corporation's U.S. Patent 4,289,794  for Pop Rocks
• Images of US patent 4289794 for Pop Rocks from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
• Pop Rocks: The Inside Story of America's Revolutionary Candy, book detailing the story of Pop Rocks development to Pop Rocks today
• Zeta Espacial's website, with list of Pop Rock-related products
• Pop Rocks Candy website
• Rumors about the dangers of Pop Rocks, from the Urban Legends Reference Pages
• How do Pop Rocks candy work?, an article from HowStuffWorks that explains how pop rocks candy is manufactured and also has links to the original patent