For generations of bar and bat mitzvahs, there was one final step before a 12- or 13-year-old boy or girl completed the rite of becoming a Jewish adult. It did not come from reading the Torah or receiving a blessing.
It came as a storm of Sunkist Fruit Gems, plastic-wrapped candy jellies in a rainbow of colors, were lobbed at the young person after all the praying was done.
“That was what was thrown at me, that was what was thrown at my father; it’s tradition,” said Mitchell Cohen, who runs his family’s candy store, Economy Candy, in New York City.
Ah, tradition.
Sunkist Fruit Gems are being discontinued by Ferrara, a Chicago-based candy company that also owns Jelly Belly, Brach’s and Nerds. The company attributed the sunset of the candies to a relaunch of the Jelly Belly brand.
“A careful reduction of the number of products including the licensed Sunkist Fruit Gems allowed us to better focus on our commitment to consumer demands and driving innovation,” Ferrara said in a statement Friday.
The news was greeted with much dismay by Cohen. A majority of the Sunkist Fruit Gems sold by Economy Candy are bought “to be pelted at bar and bat mitzvah boys and girls,” Cohen said.
Economy Candy typically ships about 30 to 50 packages of Sunkist gems every day, including to upward of 50 synagogues around the country.
The fruit gems’ origin story can be traced to a 1930s overabundance of citrus. The growers of Sunkist, then one of the dominant citrus harvesters, needed to transform its surplus oranges, lemons and grapefruits into byproducts. They approached Christopher Candy Co. of Los Angeles and asked it to develop a formula for a candy that could use new products — orange oil, lemon oil, citric acid and pectin.
Christopher’s Fruit Gems were soon sold all over the country, alongside the Sunkist fruit it was made from.
But fear not, a replacement is in stock at Economy Candy.
Nassau Candy of Hicksville, New York, just started selling Clever Candy Fruit Jelly Jewels, “created as a replacement for Sunkist Fruit Gems,” according to a news release.
Flavors include the classics — orange, lemon, grapefruit and lime — along with cherry and blueberry. The jelly rounds are still kosher, still individually wrapped and still perfect for hurling at bar and bat mitzvahs.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
