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Find of the week at Safeway: Jolly Rancher gelatin (never call it Jell-O), in the signature watermelon and green-apple flavors that still taste of childhood to many adults many decades beyond that. Jolly Rancher was founded in 1942 by Bill and Dorothy Harmsen, who sold the company to Hershey in 1996, though the Wheat Ridge factory that made the glossy candies — as many as fifteen million pieces a day! — stuck around until 2002. See also: Best Art News for the City — the Harmsen collection
The Harmsen legacy lives on not just in the Western art collection that the couple gifted to the Denver Art Museum, but in the various Jolly Rancher products that are still available — not just the hard candies that made the brand famous, but fruit chews and gelatin.
Hershey struck a deal with the Chicago-based Jel Sert company to make Jolly Rancher-flavored gelatin. So far we’ve spotted watermelon, green apple and cherry; we’re still looking for grape and Fire Stix.
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