There was only one store that had “penny candy” when I was growing up in the mid 1960s, and it was one I rarely had access to, as it was a block away from my school and I took a bus to and from. We used to sneak down there before afterschool choir practice occasionally. There was one candy that was 4 pieces for a penny, most others were a penny each.
We could get small chocolate bars for a nickel when I was 7 or so, though that was the last year it was that cheap. I remember once being thrilled I found out that the grocery store we rarely shopped at had those nickel bars for FOUR cents instead of five.
I answered 10 cents because I don’t firmly remember the price of tiny per-each candies like Bazooka Joe or fireballs. I do remember that packs of gum used to be 20 cents and I remember when half of them in the bin I was looking at had 25 cent stickers on them and some of them had 20. So if packs of gum were 20 cents, smaller things were certainly cheaper.
Until I was eight I lived in a small country town. We had a small grocery store, about the same size as a convenience store. We lived across the street from it. I would go across the street and look for pennies that people dropped and used them for some sort of candy. I may have outgrown that while I lived there. When I earned money I bought the more expensive stuff.
Yup. Don’t remember what they were called, though.
I don’t remember what the cheapest candy was that was available, so didn’t vote. What I do remember was how big a Hershey bar you could get for a nickle in the 1950’s. Yum.
(I don’t much like Hershey’s now. Not sure whether their ingredients or my taste buds changed. Or both, I suppose.)
I am almost positive that in the 80s I could get a little box of Lemonheads, Alexander the Grape or Mr. Melon for 25 cents at the local Convenient Food Mart.
Once a year there would be a Penny Candy Sale at the local Girl Scout camp for Juliet Low Day and it would blow my mind to be able to buy candy for a penny!
I was a kid in the 50s/60s, so you can guess that penny candy was common. Full-sized bars were a nickel. I used to buy something called Tecola sticks, which were wax tubes filled with sugar water. They were a penny, as was bubble gum. Jawbreakers may have been even cheaper than that.
Convenient Food Mart in western NY was the first place, in the 80s, that was in my area that I knew as a formal “convenience store”, although I did live down the road from a general store which sold much of the same items, and I was way too young to know or remember whatever non-candy items they sold.
I said ten cents because that was the price of a full-size candy bar at the local drug store when I was in elementary school, ‘69 - ‘75.
But now that I re-read the OP, they’re asking for the cheapest candy. We could get smaller candies like the single Reese’s cup for a nickel, and there was a penny gumball machine by the door. Some of the gumballs were “winners” - yellow with red stripes, I think - and we could trade them in for a full-sized candy. That was always exciting.
No two for a penny for me. Born in ‘51 and remember penny bubble gum and penny gum machines. Candy bars were a nickel, except for ‘grown-up candy’ like Mounds or Almond Joy, which were a dime.
Small fountain Cokes were a nickel, but vending machine Cokes were a dime. Single scoop ice cream cones at the drug store were a nickel.
Kids’ admission to the movie was a quarter. (Kid meant twelve and under), so you could go to the movie, get a coke and a candy bar, and have a nickel change in your pocket from your half dollar!
When I was quite young in the early 1970’s I spent several summers in a tiny town in Western PA visiting with my grandmother and assorted aunts, uncles and cousins. I still recall quite clearly that first year was post-1rst grade and there was still penny candy in the local corner store (something not available back home in NYC). The next year that price jumped all the way to a nickel, quite the inflationary shock to my young soul .
I may be a little too old for those–all I remember are bubble-gum flavoured Dubble-Bubble, and I never broke a tooth on them.
I do remember the sticks of gum that came with baseball cards, hockey cards, and similar. Some of those sticks of gum were so old and stale that you could break a tooth on them. Five cents a pack, as I recall.
We call them lollies here in Aus, and back when I was a little kid, you could buy four individual lollies for a penny, then when decimal currency arrived in 1966, a cent. They’d be lollies like raspberry drops, mint leaves, milk bottles, liquorice blocks and the like. Sixpence, later 5c was a small bag FILLED to the brim with lollies.
Kids used to drive the shopkeepers bonkers when they’d stand at the lolly counter and slowly point out their preferred treats. “I’ll have one of those, and two of those, and…hang on, no, ONE of those and three of those…” until they’d spent their sixpence, myself included. I’m so sorry Mister and Missus Skinner for annoying you so often in my childhood.
In the late 60’s there was a candy that came packaged just like Pez, but it wasn’t Pez. But they were little square tablets like Pez. Don’t remember their name but they were a penny for 1 little pack.
Does gum count? Ford bubble gum was a penny and each color was a different, unique flavor.
When I was a kid back in the early-mid 70s, there was a brand of bubble gum we used to buy - I forget the name - that came in rods about a foot long for a nickel. I remember being outraged when the price jumped to a dime!
The cheapest candy I can remember was probably Bazooka Joe bubble gum, I think they were 2 cents apiece.
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They were a great value for the money.