Roth M.
Yelp
I toured Spangler Candy Co. as a kid probably 30 years ago. The tour was pretty cool, you could see the machines folding and kneading the hot candy prior to it being stretched and molded into lollipops and candy canes. The smell was amazing, watching the workers flip these huge globs of sugary goodness so they were properly mixed and aligned for making the right candies was pretty cool! WAS. pretty cool. From Cincinnati, headed to my lake in NE Indiana (where the Spanglers also have homes(!)), I decided to stop through Bryan and get another tour with chronologically "adult" eyes.
$5 tour fee. Ok, whatever. They take us to a little trolley, one of four. Total of 4 people on tour, fine. Basically the trolley takes you through the packaging, palletting, and warehouse parts of their operation. Because everyone wants to see how bags of candy get placed into boxes. And, OMG!!! Those boxes get stacked on pallets! WAIT! JUST WAIT!!! Those pallets are then stored in a warehouse with OTHER PALLETS OF BOXES!!!!!!! And you get to see all of these boxes! Exactly what you want to see on a candy factory tour! BOXES! Screw Willy Wonka, I didn't see one box in that whole movie.
Seriously, lame tour. There were some videos on the trolley that showed the mixing/molding room that they called "The Kitchen" but claimed it was due to health codes that they couldn't tour us through there. I get that, but why not put a tour lane on the other side of a plexiglass wall that shows how the candy is folded and manipulated and stretched to be made into the final product?? THIS is what people want to see in a candy factory. The Making of Candy......
So, if you've never seen boxes being loaded onto skids, or you've never been into a warehouse, this might be intriguing. You can YouTube "candy making" to see the equivalent videos shown during this tour, otherwise save the $5, and the drive out-of-the-way. This tour is lame now.
Oh, and you are forbidden to take pictures or video for some reason. In this Day and age of hashtags promoting EVERYTHING, you'd think that a company like this would not only allow pics to be posted on social media, but would encourage people to promote their products/tour with special hashtags to use to identify themselves out there. Just weird.