Rainbow Laces

What could be more fun than rainbow laces? The flavors are sweet and tangy, the texture smooth and soft. Even better, rainbow laces are fun to eat – let them slowly drop into your mouth, slurp them like spaghetti, eat them in tiny bites. For the more creative, tie them in bows, braid them, and even weave them into edible bracelets or necklaces. What will they think of next? Who knows…but here’s how it all started.

The story of licorice laces. One of the earliest licorice makers was a company now known as “Twizzlers.” They opened in the mid-1800s. They weren’t the first to open but they were successful in beating out the competition. Then, in 1914, the American Licorice Company was born. To take on the competition, they created a red licorice candy called Raspberry Vines in 1920…later known as Red Vines. Five years later, film star Charlie Chaplin asked them to make a licorice boot for his upcoming movie, The Gold Rush, which included licorice laces. And a licorice star was being born.

Over the years, numerous iterations of licorice took off, adding to the already impressive array of licorice candy from the 1800s – Good n’ Plenty and Licorice Allsorts, to name a few. Eventually, “licorice makers” stopped using licorice altogether, to concoct the fun and fanciful candy we know today. In case you didn’t notice, the word “licorice” has been dropped from the name.