Candy Apple Patent
With Thanksgiving just around the corner, there's no reason not to indulge in some delectable fall treats! A seasonal favorite is the Caramel Apple; you get the sweetness of the caramel, but the health benefits of an apple. An apple a day keeps the doctor away!
The candy apple got its start in 1908 by William W. Kolb, a veteran Newark candy-maker. In efforts to display his red cinnamon candy for Christmas, he dipped red apples into the mixture, not knowing he would soon be selling thousands.
Dan Walker, a Kraft Foods sales representative, was the first inventor of the Caramel Apple in the 1950s. Caramel was accessible in abundance given the proximity to Halloween. He added apples to melted caramel and created the Caramel Apple.
The first candy apple patent did not come till a few years later. The manual production of now popular candy apples had become tedious and mundane. This first sight of a solution to this problem was introduced by Harry Pikal of Bangor, Michigan who created and patented a machine for embedding sticks in apples in 1956, Machine for embedding sticks in apples (US2733439A). Pikal’s patent automated the process of embedding sticks in the core of an apple. He explains that “Hand insertion of the sticks is expensive and slow and considerable skill and strength is required in the operation because to be effective the sticks must be driven axially through the center of the core of the apple. A stick inserted in the meat portion of the apple soon loosens as the bruised meat around the stick decays.”
In 1972, Vito Raimondi and William V. Raimondi of Chicago, Illinois decided it was time to take it a step further and created and patented the first fully automated caramel apple machine, Coated apple confection making machine (US3660118A). Raimondi’s machine automated inserting the stick as well as coating each apple in caramel. This is more complicated than you would expect, as you can see from their patent diagram below:
Coated apple confection making machine Patent Diagram, USPTO.