So given that it’s Good Friday, here’s some good clean fun!
This Easter Holiday, while you’re celebrating with your family and having fun with the kiddos – here’s some Eggs-cellent Easter Facts to fill your baskets.
Fill more than just your kids’ bellies – fill their minds by empowering them with some sucrose-laden Holiday Fun.
Can You Say Sugar Rush!
Easter is the second most important candy-eating occasion of the year for Americans, chowing down 7 Billion pounds of candy in 2010, according to the National Confectioners Association.
In 2000, Americans spent nearly $1.9 billion on Easter candy, while Halloween sales were nearly $2 billion; Christmas, an estimated $1.4 billion; and Valentine’s Day, just over $1 billion. In 2010 we gobbled up 8.2 BILLION dollars in sweets–so much for improving the American diet!
Heads Or Tails?
- Ninety million chocolate Easter bunnies are produced each year.
- Chocolate bunnies should be eaten ears first, according to 76% of Americans. Five percent said bunnies should be eaten feet first, while 4% favored eating the tail first.
- Adults prefer milk chocolate (65%), to dark chocolate (27%).
Peep Show!
- Each Easter season, Americans buy more than 700 million Marshmallow Peeps, shaped like chicks, as well as Marshmallow Bunnies and Marshmallow Eggs, making them the most popular non-chocolate Easter candy.
- As many as 4.2 million Marshmallow Peeps, bunnies and other shapes pop up daily.
- In 1953, it took 27 hours to create a Peep. Now, just six minutes!
But today, they come tricked out!
Like this:
Or you can create your own Peep Galaxy:
In fact, some peeps these days go Peep-Crazy. There’s even a dedicated Candy Blog and Peeps blogger “bringing you awesome news about Peeps day and night.”
A Jelly-Belly
- Americans consume 16 billion jellybeans at Easter. And get this: If all the Easter jellybeans were lined end to end, they would circle the globe nearly three times.
- Jellybeans did not become an Easter tradition until the 1930s.
- They were probably first made in America by Boston candy maker William Schrafft, who ran advertisements urging people to send jellybeans to soldiers fighting in the Civil War.
And while you’re filling up, show your little critters how jelly beans are made:
Busting Out Of The Baskets
Candy makers are offering more and more Easter products. In the early 1980s, M&M’s became available in pastel spring colors. Reese’s makes peanut butter eggs, and Smucker’s produces jellybeans.
- Some supermarkets have doubled the space allotted to Easter candy in the past few years as the market has increased.
- Candy is a relatively recent Easter tradition. Chocolate eggs, the most popular Easter candy, were first made in Europe in the early 1800s.
- Hot cross buns were among the earliest Easter treats, made by European monks and given to the poor during Lent.
- Pretzels were originally associated with Easter. The twists of a pretzel were thought to resemble arms crossed in prayer.
You worried your kids might go into sugar shock and eat too many Cadbury Eggs and Jelly Bellys ? Put some non-edible items in the Easter basket: books, bubbles, flashcards, crayons, movie passes, jump rope, baseball cards, stencils, markers, paperback books, chalk, Playdoh, stuffed animals or balls.
Most importantly, teaching the real reason for the holiday will last long after the sugar-high has worn off.