The video is like many YouTube offerings, hard to watch and even harder to click past. It’s a strange subset of the foodie genre, a taste test for those too timid to sample antique food themselves. Our intrepid off-camera host unpacks a 1965 Vietnam C Ration kit and proceeds to open and eat whatever seems to be well-preserved. Peanut butter and crackers—looks good, let’s try that. Plunging his military-issue opener into the can containing the main course (chicken and noodles), he gets a classic botulism alert: “That thing was under pressure. It shot juice into my eye. I’m not gonna eat that.” He moves on to dessert, a chocolate puck intact within its original translucent wrapper. “Hey, look at that—it’s perfectly preserved! Amazing!” The vintage coconut fudge bar, which our guide eats and then proclaims fresh and excellent, was made by the George Ziegler Company of Milwaukee. What a weird introduction to a local institution.
Founded in 1861 by George Ziegler, a Bavarian immigrant, the George Ziegler Company’s first home was in a factory on Water Street. The confectionery moved to a larger facility on Florida Street in 1902, thriving there until 1972. I visited Frank Ziegler (George Ziegler’s great-great-grandson) and Mary Ziegler (owner of Half Nuts in West Allis with her husband, Bill Ziegler, Frank’s brother) to talk about the company’s history, its legacy and the current state of retro candy.
Frank, as the Ziegler family archivist, you’ve preserved the history. What do you remember about the factory?
I spent four summers working at Ziegler, along with my brother, starting when I turned 14 in 1963. The factory was unionized, so we couldn’t do production work, only cleaning and odd jobs. I recall loading boxcars with cases of the C Ration candy bars. These were taken by rail to an assembly center, where the kits were made up and then sent to Vietnam. The bars were designed to be nutritious, to provide energy for our soldiers in the field, who had limited dining options. They were made under contract for the government, who dictated the ingredients to be used. Ziegler provided thousands of cases of the ration bars. Apparently, there was no concern about overheating the candy, which was stable enough to withstand jungle conditions.
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The factory was seven floors. I remember tanker trucks from Ambrosia Chocolate, which at that time was located downtown, pumping liquid chocolate into vats on the fourth floor, where the chocolate would then be tempered.
The candy business is very competitive, and there were major companies—Brach’s in Chicago being one—with a much bigger capital structure than Ziegler Candy. Ours was a family owned, privately held company whose business was primarily regional, although we shipped everywhere. We made a variety of products and survived the Depression, which is remarkable. My dad, who gave up a career as an engineer to run the company, kept the business going until he wound up being forced to sell. The military business fell off by 1970 or ’71 and there wasn’t enough commercial business to replace the lost revenue. He sold the company to an investment firm, which ran the factory for a year and then closed it. If your dad can’t own a toy store, the next best thing is a candy factory! [Frank unveils a 1920 company letter, which lists some of Ziegler’s products: Fine Crystallized Gum Drops; Midget Marshmallows; Hustler, Princess and Champion Chocolates; Cream City and Mastodon Caramels. Reading the ingredients on one of his boxes from the same period, I notice that the chocolates contained Gum Karaya, a thickener commonly used in the early 20th century. It’s known to be a laxative and an aphrodisiac.]
Mary, when did nostalgia candy go big?
I think it’s more popular now, but we’ve been in business for 30 years, and retro candy has always been the one thing people walk in the door and are excited to see. Candy buttons are big; also violet candies; Kids; BB Bats; candy cigarettes (which are now called “candy sticks” and no longer have the lit end); candy necklaces; Mary Janes; filled wax bottles... They stopped making hot dog gum, and people are still mad about it! [laughs] Candy Raisins, which Ziegler invented, are very popular, but mainly in southeast Wisconsin… although we do ship a ton of these to former Wisconsinites. The Candy Raisin recipe was sold to Stark; they discontinued production in 2008, and eventually, Lake Country Candies reintroduced the candy.
The Ziegler Giant Bar, a chocolate confection loaded with peanuts, survives as the company’s legacy. Ziegler distributed Giant Bars in the thousands to Milwaukee schools in the 1950s and 1960s, building a following that has never waned. Half Nuts is the only source for the bars, which Mary and Bill pour by hand, using modern molds derived from the originals.
