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Have You Seen This? Vintage candy making was hard work
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Trust me, youll be fascinated as you watch these workers build hard candies with tiny, legible letters. - photo by Martha Ostergar
NOT THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY I dont know about you, but I always get caught up in wonder when I learn how something is made.

In fact, if I turn on the show How Its Made or Unwrapped, Im immediately sucked into a rabbit hole of fascination. I then come to my senses hours later, incredibly disoriented but with a large desire to invent or craft something. (Hyperbole is fun!)

If you have similar feelings, youll certainly find this candy-making video from 1957 a true viewing treat.

Even though industrial machinery was in wide use in most manufacturing at the time, there was still an incredible amount of hand work that was done, and not just with candy. But in this particular video, youll see that the only machines used to make some detailed, round hard candies are for cooking it. There are not fancy extruders here.

From mixing in the food coloring to crafting each letter of the companys name into the candy, everything else is done by hand. Not only that, but the workers have to do the process quickly (in about an hour) so the candy doesnt harden before they can form it properly.

One of the most incredible facts about the system is that to even learn to make the candy at production level, apprentices would train for six years. Let that sink in. You, as a young worker, would have to work for six years to even be considered basically proficient at your manual labor job. Its the mark of true craftsmanship.

But if none of that intrigues you, may I suggest simply watching the video for the then-timely, dry jokes that only the British (and dads) seem to do so well.

Visit British Pathes YouTube channel to see more incredible vintage videos from old baseball spotlights and newsreels to celebrity commercials and science videos.
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