History

A look at the history of the NECCO company

NECCO, the New England Confectionery Company, is the oldest continually operating candy company in America.

By Kristin Toussaint @kristindakota

July 16, 2015

1 minute to read

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Massachusetts revels in its history. The pilgrims landed here first. We were the first state to legalize gay marriage. We even had the very first candy machine—you’re welcome, America.

NECCO, the New England Confectionery Company, touts itself as the oldest continually operating candy company in America—they’ve been around since Oliver Chase invented the lozenge cutter in 1847.

They were the king of the candy mountain—In 1947, a Boston Globe article titled “New England Leads Country in Boxed Candy’’ said that “New England is one of the four major candy-producing centres of the nation, leading all others in the manufacture of boxed candies…The New England Confectionary Co., one of the world’s largest, has gained international fame for its products, particularly its intimitable wafers.’’

NECCO wafers are the candy your grandparents probably always had around, but things haven’t always been the same within the factory’s walls. The walls haven’t even been the same: The company relocated from its Cambridge location to Revere, leaving the NECCO-wafer-painted tower behind, in 2003.

NECCO also experimented with changing their original recipe—one that even Union soldiers enjoyed under the moniker “hub wafers’’ during the Civil War—to use all-natural flavoring in 2011. That didn’t last, and now the original eight flavors are back: chocolate, licorice, cinnamon, lemon, lime, orange, wintergreen, and clove.

Though the candy is made in Massachusetts, it’s been enjoyed all over the world—even at both poles. According to NECCO, explorer Donald MacMillan took NECCO Wafers on his Arctic explorations in 1913, “using them for nutrition and as rewards for Eskimo children.’’ In the 1930s, Admiral Byrd took 2.5 tons of wafers to the South Pole, “which amounted to about a pound a week for each of his men during their two-year stay in the Antarctic.’’