.....are a hundred years old and still going strong

On New Year's Eve, 50,000 people will fill the streets of Mobile, Alabama. Moments before midnight, the crowds will start to chant: 'MoonPie! MoonPie!' and as the clock strikes 12, a huge 600-pound electric MoonPie will drop to welcome the New Year.

This will be the 10th year of the 'MoonPie over Mobile' celebration in a city that adores the traditional Southern snack. First made in 1917 by the family-run Chattanooga Bakery, MoonPies are made of two graham cracker cookies with marshmallow in the middle and covered with a layer of melted chocolate.

The treat takes on a fluffy, cake-like quality because the marshmallow softens the cookies, giving MoonPies a unique flavor and texture that has been loved for generations. The cookie sandwich has found a place of its own in the heart of Southern culture through songs such as country music singer Big Bill Lister's song Gimme An RC Cola and a MoonPie and traditions that include Mobile's New Year's Eve tradition and the throwing of MoonPies from Mardi Gras floats.

Even 100 years after the MoonPie was invented, the Chattanooga Bakery in Chattanooga, Tennessee, is run by the same family – four generations later. John Campbell is the great, great grandson of the founder of the flour mill, Mountain City Milling Co., which opened the Chattanooga Bakery as a subsidiary company in 1902. His grandfather, Sam Campbell, Jr took over the business in 1930 and today John is the Chief Operating Officer and Vice President while his older brother Sam is the President. John's niece also works there, making it a fifth-generation family company.

'It seems like every time people mention the name [MoonPie], whether they know me or not, it seems like they always have a smile and they have a great memory about something that they did with their grandparent or someone who introduced them to MoonPies. It's almost a generational thing,' John tells DailyMail.com.

'So when we talk about our history and our heritage, we talk about the memories. So, if we said we made a million MoonPies a day, it's really like we made a million memories a day because it's so much fun for people to talk about the things that they remember.'

According to legend, as told by Tory Johnston, the bakery's VP of Sales and Marketing, a Kentucky coal miner inspired the idea for the MoonPie back in 1917. Back then, the Chattanooga Bakery made more than 100 different bakery products – today they focus only on MoonPies – and a traveling salesman had gone up to the Appalachian area of Kentucky to check in with vendors.

After being told by a general store manager that the Chattanooga Bakery's cookies and brownies weren't selling well and that they should come up with something better, the salesman left and found coal miners who had just finished their shifts for the night. He asked for their advice and they told him they wanted something big and filling that would fit into their lunch pails.

'As he was talking about this late in the afternoon or evening, the moon was coming up and the [miner] framed his hands and said, make it about that big – and he framed the moon,' Johnston says.

'So, the guy came back to the bakery and he saw some of our employees dipping round graham cracker cookies into marshmallow and putting them on the windowsill and letting them harden and then they would dip them in chocolate. And he says, wait a minute, here's a product idea. Let's make that cookie big. So he told the story and somebody came up with this whole idea of Moon-Pie and literally, the rest is history.'

At the low price of five cents a cookie, a MoonPie paired with an RC Cola – which was also known for having more volume than other soft drinks and also costing only five cents – became known as the 'working man's lunch for a dime' in the 50s and 60s, according to Johnston.

'They were just cheap and filling and Southern and they just kind of became known as this Southern working-man's snack and country music picked up on it over time and it just kind of became part of the Southern cultural fabric.

Besides being featured in country music songs or being the focus of Mobile, Alabama's New Year's Eve celebration – which also includes an eight-inch-thick, four-foot tall edible MoonPie that can feed 300 people – the snack, along with RC Cola, is commemorated in its own summer festival in Bell Buckle, Tennessee.

MoonPies are even thrown from floats during Mardi Gras – a tradition that has gone on for at least the past 25 years.

Cracker Jacks – another traditional Southern snack – used to be thrown from floats, according to Johnston, but because they were in cardboard boxes they were more painful to be hit with. The fluffier MoonPies, 'this Southern, soft, whimsical snack' became the replacement.

Today there are five main flavors of MoonPies: chocolate, vanilla, banana, salted caramel and strawberry, and three sizes: mini, single-decker and double-decker. The Chattanooga Bakery, which still produces every single MoonPie from its home-base, can produce 1million MoonPies per day.

Even after growing up in the MoonPie business, John Campbell says he still eats MoonPies all the time. He always goes for the single-decker size, but his preferred flavor changes on a regular basis.

'People ask me all the time if I still eat them and I guess, maybe it's a little crazy, but I do. I still have a box sitting in my office,' he says. 'I go through phases where certain flavors appeal more… Lately I've been on a banana kick. I'm not sure why.'

MoonPies also have 'seasonal' flavors that include lemon, coconut and orange (which Johnston says tastes like an orange creamsicle). The bakery tries not to make too many different flavors because it can take a toll on the small company because of the cost required in making the same amount of MoonPies, but in different flavors.

'We are forever resource constrained,' Johnston says. 'We are definitely a smaller niche brand in a gigantic category called cookies and so it's all the more incumbent upon us to be smart. We don't have a lot of room for failure, so we have to be smart with the things that we do.

'We'll never out-spend Oreo. We'll never outspend Little Debbie. We've just got a cool, unique product and we've just got to keep pedaling hard… But at the end of the day, retro and authentic is in.

'You've got to pick spots that resonate with consumers but that are true to the brand,' Johnston adds. 'The first filter is, is this a believable new thing from MoonPie? And being a simple, Southern, sort of old timey brand, there's just some things that are going on out there, real wild flavors and all these things that would not be in keeping with our heritage we'll pass on. But if we find that sort of convergence, then we will do it.'

One change MoonPies did make this year was to go back to its original recipe.

'It's sort of a convergence of two things,' Johnston says. 'One is, consumers want to eat clean… take all your four-syllable words off your ingredient legend, take the preservatives out, put stuff in there that I can understand and that I've got in my cupboard at home. I mean, that's a big industry trend.

'That sort of gave us a platform on our 100th anniversary to go back to truly what is the original recipe, plus or minus an ingredient here or there, but we've taken out stuff that consumers don't want anymore and it really honestly tastes a little better.'

In order to stay strong in a market dominated by huge corporations and brands, the Chattanooga Bakery has done several other things to stay relevant as well. In 19999, the bakery introduced the mini size, which Johnston says is more portable and a better sell for 'portion controllers'.

'People have long since established that they'd rather eat less of something good than all these knock-off, low-calorie, low-fat cruddy things that don't taste any good. So the mini was a big part of that.'

The bakery has also brought in an ad agency to manage their social media, which helps the company cross generational gaps and fills in for their low amount of advertising. The MoonPie Twitter account is snarky and witty, matching the likes of fastfood chain Wendy's which became known for its hilarious Twitter account this year.

'The guy that's doing our Twitter and all of our social media now, he's just a real witty, fun guy and since we don't do any TV advertising or anything like that, this is our way to get the word out,' Campbell says. 'He's really, I think, gotten the attention of a lot of younger folks.'

Johnston says they're also considering a few changes for 2018 or 2019 in the realm of types of cookies.

'Marshmallow is our thing and that's just sort of our space in this world, but there's things we can do – without giving too much away – that will be on-trend nutritionally and unique and different and good.'

Even with the challenges that come with running a 100-year-old family-run business competing with huge snack corporations, MoonPies have remained popular and the Chattanooga Bakery is continuing to do well with the beloved snack that captures people's hearts and memories.

'This year will be our best year ever,' Johnston says. 'We're not just limping into our hundredth anniversary, we're actually thriving and we're very grateful for that.'


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...rates-100-years.html

There’s a Moonpie store in Charleston, SC. Also, horses love them.

-Rob

Moonpies and RC Colas were a staple growing up.
My uncle was a salesman for Nehi, and would always gift us RC's.

And when pulling tobacco, our mid morning snack break was either a Moonpie & RC, or a Honeybun & Double Cola.

Very rare these days to find RC colas, and no more Double Colas.
Happy Anniversary , Moonpie!

Love me a vanilla Moonpie and an RC. Never had anything but vanilla, chocolate, or banana. The other flavors are all foreign to me, would like to try them some time.

A nice read, thanks.

I was always partial to a Moonpie and a Cheerwine out of the can back in the day!

My hometown has been the official home of the RC Moon Pie festival since 1994. The associated 10 mile run goes by my house, and for the first few years I and the local Ham Radio club ran communications for the race, before cell phones were common.

The local Cafe serves a Moon Pie sundae. A pie, in your choice of flavor, is heated to just about the melting point and then topped with ice cream and drizzled with chocolate or caramel syrup (or both if you ask the waitress nicely) Good stuff!

Link shows a photo of downtown and has a little info for the festival. I live just outside the city limits, less than a mile from downtown.

http://bellbucklechamber.com/b...stival-general-info/

My MIL gave me a CASE of double decker Moonpies for Christmas. I enjoy mine with a Sunkist.

Last week we went to a Christmas Lights festival and they were serving deep fried Moonpies!

A hundred years old! I bought that one in a gas station outside Texarkana.

Very familiar with them. The company I work for supplies some of the boxes that they are packed in. The paperboard boxes, not the cardboard boxes that a case is shipped in. We just celebrated 90 years in business this week. We are less than one mile away from their manufacturing plant in Chattanooga.

quote:

Originally posted by Tommydogg:
I was always partial to a Moonpie and a Cheerwine out of the can back in the day!

I dont really care for the banana one, but my fave memory is sharing a coke and moonpie with my wife and kid

quote:

Originally posted by Sunset_Va:


And when pulling tobacco, our mid morning snack break was either a Moonpie & RC, or a Honeybun & Double Cola.

Our snacks were very similar and I never liked moonpies. I have not tried one in 20+ years maybe I should give it a try again.

Needs me a "Moonpie and a big Orange"....it doesn't get much better than that!!

More trivia of a Northern nature. The Whoopie Pie (an variation of the Moon Pie that isn't dipped in chocolate and uses a Butter Cream/Marshmallow filling) is the official State Treat of Maine.

Find it rather interesting that two treats that are so similar in both concept and execution have taken hold in distinctly different localities. BTW, as a Yankee I have to say I believe that the Whoopie Pie is superior.

Not trivial at all for those of us who grew up eating these. My grandfather and I used to stop and get a couple of these and a soda pop on the way back from our weekly trip to mom and dad's.

quote:

Originally posted by Scooter123:
BTW, as a Yankee I have to say I believe that the Whoopie Pie is superior.

Blasphemy !!

I had to look these up, and it seems that all my life I was eating a Commonwealth knock off, the Wagon Wheel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagon_Wheels