I have always been a candy lover and in the beginning I really never thought of myself as a collector of candy wrappers; just someone who saved them. I started saving candy wrappers in the summer of 1983, with a Whatchamacallit candy bar that my dad had bought me. I wasn’t into eating a lot of candy but I thought the name was cool and the wrapper was neat looking so I saved it. This was also the summer I started saving (collection) Bazooka Joe comics from my favorite gum. By the end of that summer I had flattened less than a dozen wrappers between the pages of a notebook. By habit, I have been savings mainly standard and king-size wrappers on and off ever since. I mainly just ate the candy that I liked and then flattened the wrappers between two pages in a notebook or pad of paper and when they were full I would write the date on top and place it in a box with the rest.

Growing up I collected a lot of things; it was the thrill of the hunt and my love of researching stuff that drove this passion to collect. The first time collecting really paid off for me was when I moved out of my parent house; I sold one of my collections of old toys for $15,000 which was enough to pay off my car and pay cash for all my furniture. I was still left with five other major collections that I would slowly whittle down to two over the next ten years. Being out-and-about looking for cheap pieces for my collections or stuff to resale, allowed me to find candy wrappers my chance and help grow the collection without trying. By 2009 my wrapper collection was by my estimate to be around 5,000 wrappers with duplicates and was in despite need of cleaning and organizing.

It was in 2009 that I decided to go through the collection and catalog it as much as possible. Being a computer programmer I thought that if I had a searchable visual database it would be easier for me to find stuff. My goal quickly turned into putting them on the internet so others would have a chance to share in some good old childhood memories. I wanted to create a website that would be similar to the great style of the Smithsonian, but yet still be as fun as candy is. I finished creating the site in late 2009 and as slow as the updates go for a one man website I keep plugging away at it because it’s fun and I have enough content and wrappers for years to come.