awesome & jetsam

The unsettling object at the top of this post is a prototype for a particularly strange and disgusting candy called “The Barfo Family Candy.” That’s right, it was an entirely family of candy dispensers (including the family dog) that puked up the gooey candy contained within each of them. Awesomely weird. It was released by the Topps bubblegum company back in 1990:

“The armless & legless torsos featuring an unhappy, nauseated, white bread family, with their heads mounted on accordion-like shaped bodies containing a delightful glop- like gel/”candy” (ingredients: sugar, water, glycerin, gelatin, citric acid, potassium sorbate, artificial flavors, artificial colors), are still fondly recalled by vomit novelty toy and candy afficianotos. Barfo was a collaborative effort of Topps’ new product development department, the original notion hatched by veteran candy man Abe Morgenstern, who arrived at Topps one morning in Brooklyn with a Thanksgiving turkey baster demanding to know: “How can we turn this into a candy container?” Mark Newgarden suggested a vomiting head, and The rest is history. As journalist Patrick Rosenkranz chronicled in “The Bubble Gum Wars”: “The concept that couldn’t be ignored, The Barfo Family quickly became a legend in their own time.”