Even when made with brown-rice syrup and organic cane sugar, marshmallows are not a health food, unless you can ascribe nutritional value to fun. "They're soft, squishy, they're sort of messy; the cornstarch-and-powdered-sugar coating falls on your clothes a little bit," Lombardi says. "It's fun to get messy and enjoy your food like that."
Once a sore-throat remedy derived from the sap of the marsh mallow plant, the confection has been made instead with gelatin since the mid-19th century. With the advent of the extruding machine in the mid-20th century, marshmallows became a popular novelty food that found its way into untold Jell-O salads, campfire feasts and Rice Krispie treats.
As both a staple of American foodways kitsch and a hip nibble for cool kids, marshmallows have steadily gained in popularity. Sales of regular-size marshmallows produced by Kraft, Campfire and other brands edged toward $140 million for the year ending Jan. 26 in all outlets excluding Wal-Mart, according to the Nielsen Co. This marks a 10 percent increase from the previous year.
Flavored marshmallows comprise only about 9 percent of those sales. And yet, within the realm of boutique confections, fanciful marshmallow flavors such as cinnamon, peppermint and Kona coffee have increasingly captured the attention of consumers in search of edible curios.
Sales of Plush Puffs continue to multiply, Hickey says. Since her company was founded in 2005, she estimates that it has produced 7 tons of marshmallows.
"We haven't seen this trend die down," says Lombardi of Tiny Trapeze. "On an average day, we're probably making about 400 pounds."
Campfire, Kraft and other brands are heeding the current captivation with flavors, even if sales don't compare to the market for plain vanilla marshmallows. "Recent successful product launches of Kraft Jet-Puffed StrawberryMallows and ChocoMallows in 2007 have tapped into this growing trend," says Daisie Siska, brand manager for Jet-Puffed Marshmallows at Kraft Foods. In an e-mail message, she says that Kraft also introduced a variety pack of flavors last August inspired by the trinity of Neapolitan ice cream flavors: strawberry, chocolate and vanilla.
Just Born launched flavored Easter Peeps products in the mid-1990s, says spokeswoman Ellie Deardorff. For Easter, egg-shaped Peeps come in strawberry, orange and vanilla cream flavors.
