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This should come as no surprise to anyone who's ever satisfied a sugar craving at a movie concession stand: Twizzlers, Raisinets, and Milk Duds are among the most popular candies in American movie theaters. What is a surprise is this: These brands can hardly be found outside of movie theaters. So what makes a particular candy boffo box office?
One factor is simply who makes it. ''Historically, there are companies that for a long time have specialized in supplying theaters,'' says Lisbeth Echeandia, editor and publisher of Confectioner, a candy-industry trade magazine. Also, top-selling candies usually come in easy-to-stack, quiet-to- open boxes rather than noisy wrappers, and are packaged in jumbo sizes not popular elsewhere. This way, theater owners can charge jumbo prices without patrons feeling too ripped-off.
Taste and texture have a lot to do with audience popularity, too. ''You don't want a candy that's extremely sour or extremely hot or extremely anything,'' explains Echeandia, ''because you don't want to be distracted. But candies that turn your mouth blue or make your mouth foam (don't matter). A long-lasting candy is important, so chewy things do well. And you'll notice that most of the top movie candies are in bite-sized pieces-that's good for sharing.''
While this holds true for such stalwarts as Milk Duds and Raisinets, it doesn't completely apply to the No. 1 candy at the nation's top three theater chains. Twizzlers, strands of strawberry-flavored licorice, are by no means bite-size (and witness the specially made 150-foot-long strand Twizzler fan Kathie Lee Gifford received on the air last Halloween from her morning-show cohost Regis Philbin). The best explanation for the twists' popularity? None of the candy experts seems to have any idea, though some speculate that the licorice has a contemporary appeal because it's fat-free.
Even Twizzlers' packaging is an anomaly-it's actually being changed this month to make it more eye-catching. By contrast, other venerable movie candies look much the same way they did when the Fox Theatre in Detroit became the first movie palace to sell them in 1933. Why? ''It's like they say in Fiddler on the Roof,'' declares Philip Heide, whose company, Henry Heide, Inc., makes Jujyfruits. ''Tradition!''
