Magic Circle on a Stick

Wheels not meant to rotate!

Cotton candy is the intangible fusion of sweetness and light, transubstantiated into sugar and air by the calliope pipings of merry-go-rounds, three-ring circuses, and Ferris wheels. The preferred diet of radiant beings like Tinker Bell and My Little Pony, it is formed in the magic circle of centrifugal force.

The mechanics of cotton candy making are always the same: Heat up some sugar and spin it. But untangling the history of the machinery involved is as sticky as eating the substance under discussion. Wharton and Morrison, a pair of candy-makers from Nashville, patented their "fairy floss" maker in 1897 and peddled the resultant sensation at the St. Louis World’s Fair of 1904. Patton sold his patented device to the Ringling Brothers circus in 1900, where the insubstantial filaments it blew forth became an instant crowd-pleaser. Lascaux, a dentist in New Orleans, came up with the actual name “Cotton Candy” in 1921 when devising a gizmo that would ensure his practice had a brisk repeat business. Gold Medal Products patented a spring-loaded machine in 1949, and their dynamos are still industry standards, with well-ventilated names like Tornado, Whirlwind, Twin Wind, and Super Breeze. (Gold Medal also sells Flossine, which turns white unflavored sugar into colorful billows of cherry pink.)

A cross section of the ideal puff of cotton candy should look something like Ben Franklin’s diagram shown below:

Fat chance of coming up with something so pretty using this week’s featured piece of junk, a hot pink Nostalgia Electrics counter-top "old-fashioned carnival" cotton candy maker. The price at Value Village was only $1.91, and these things retail for $44, a mark-down which reflects the fact that the pan to catch the exiting sugar strands has disappeared. Since the word centrifugal means to "flee the center" and a horizon is nowhere to be found, this translates into Big Old Mess. Plug it in, pour in the sugar, and let it fly!

Suggested musical accompaniment? Spinning Cotton Candy in a Shack Made of Shingles by Black Moth Super Rainbow.

We bring you this Ghost of Puffery Past from the defunct Cold Dirt Press.