Wednesday, August 12, 2015
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Monday, May 30, 2011
Friday, March 25, 2011
OUR NEW JELLY BEAN
Hello everyone......we will introducing our new jelly bean May 24 at the big Chicago candy show. Until now I have always told everyone that Jelly Belly is the best jelly bean on the market...All I can say is that we would not be introducing this new bean if we did not believe that this statement now applies to our product. Much more on this later.....
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Friday, June 4, 2010
CANDYMAN
| HotDocs 2010 Day Five: Sweet, Sweet, Sweet |
Sometimes, I find myself lucky enough to be present for a really magical festival experience. Something that’s so special it reminds me why I attend film festivals in the first place, and something so unique that it couldn’t really happen in any other context. And, for me, it’s usually not the big, fancy premieres or high-profile films that provide them. It’s often the tiny films, the unknowns, that cement themselves in my memory for years to come and become part of my festival history for life. Today, I had one of those experiences.
I’ve been eating, and loving, Jelly Belly jelly beans for more than 20 years, so when I was flipping through the festival schedule and saw that HotDocs would be screening a film about their creator, it was a no-brainer. And, as I queued up for the screening of Candyman: The David Klein Story (7/8) all I was really expecting was, perhaps, a colorful film about an unsung hero of the confectionery world.
But no sooner did I take my spot in line when an exuberant, rumply guy in a rhinestoned cowboy hat began working his way from person to person, introducing himself. It was David Klein. He stopped to talk to everybody, and thanked each of us profusely for coming to the film. He talked about how much he was loving the festival, and Toronto, and invited us all down to visit him at his shop in California if we’re ever in the area. His son, Bert, who appears in the film and is one of its producers, was also on hand, taking photos and letting slip that we’d all be getting a bag of Jelly Bellies when we got into the theater. What?! Awesome! I watched the Kleins work the entire line, and I watched as the faces of the people in the line lit up, one by one, as father and son made their way amongst the ticket holders. It was like everyone suddenly turned into delighted children, eager for candy and excited to meet the guy who made it. Certainly, that was the case for me. By the time I sat down in the theater, bag of beans in hand!, I knew this would become a festival experience I’d talk about for years to come. It’s not every day you meet someone with as genuine a generosity of spirit as David Klein.
The film itself was equally great, revealing the big heart (and big brain) of a smart, creative law-school grad who, in the 1970s, introduced the world to “gourmet jelly beans” but, who, after selling the rights to a one-time business associate in 1980, has since been excised from the candy’s history. The story has something of a “nice guys finish last in business” lesson to it, but any fears that the doc might be a downer are erased when you see that Klein is much more interested in helping other people than in the bottom line. Happy to give away his money (or time or expertise) if it means lending a hand to someone else has, perhaps, been his undoing as a would-be multi-millionaire, but has allowed him to put more than his share of good out into the world.
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