This is an I-Heart podcast.

And we continue with our American stories.

And up next we hear from Lori Spradley, the owner of the company, the GooGoo Cluster.

You may have heard of this candy bar that was created back in 1912.

But if not, here's Lori to share a little bit of the history of the goo-goo and where they are today.

So standard candy company was started in downtown Nashville in 1901, and they were making hard candies,

caramel, kind of single ingredient confections.

And in 1912, the founder, Howell Campbell, and his right-hand man, Porter, were in the kitchen kind of playing

around and they invented the Goo-Goo Cluster.

And it was the first time anyone combined multiple ingredients into a single finished product.

So it was made of caramel, milk chocolate, peanuts, and a marshmallow nugget.

And at first, it didn't have a name.

And Howell was selling them on a streetcar in downtown Nashville.

And story goes that a teacher was on the train and asked him what he was going to call this new confection. And he was like,

I have no idea. And they conversation shifted to his newborn son. They started asking what he was up to.

And they said, well, he just started talking. He's saying words like goo goo, gaga. And they said,

that's what you should call it, a go-goo.

They're so good, people will ask for them from birth.

And now we're stuck with this silly name.

So my grandfather had been in the confection industry and made wedding cakes and owned a bakery.

And my dad out of business school discovered standard candy.

It was on the verge of bankruptcy. And he called his dad and was like, I think we can save this.

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