Most people don’t consider the jelly bean an ancient candy and, indeed, they belong in a time period unto themselves. Their history dates back a few thousand years to the venerable candy we call Turkish Delight. Flash forward and the Colonists were eating the Turkish delight. In the mid-1800s, a confectioner put a sugar shell on the Turkish delight, coming up with a new candy, called the “jelly bean.” William Shrafft had allegedly sent this combination to the Union soldiers and advertised for others to do so, but no one knows for sure. What’s certain is the jelly bean was a mainstream candy by the later 1800s, selling for nine to twelve cents a pound according to one ad in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle on October 2, 1898.

But why “jelly bean”? Obviously, it resembled a bean. But culturally, the name referred to a gaudy, goofy fellow. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote a story “The Jelly Bean” in 1922, in which he wrote: “‘Jelly-bean’ is the name throughout the undissolved Confederacy for one who spends his life conjugating the verb to idle in the first person singular—I am idling, I have idled, I will idle.” And Phil Harris wrote a song “Jelly Bean (He’s a Curb-Side Cutie)” in 1940. In other words, this guy was useless.

The jelly bean won its most enduring acclaim around 1930 as an Easter candy. The reasons are not entirely clear – perhaps because Easter, as other spring-time rituals, is about rebirth, and the bean is an excellent symbol.

Then came Jelly Belly. The jelly bean was revolutionized by candy distributor and entrepreneur, David Klein, who came up with the concept to infuse the entire bean with flavor. Later, as he was watching the TV show Sanford and Son, he thought the characters were talking about someone named “Jelly Belly.” They were really talking about “Lead Belly.”

Klein outsourced production to the Herman Goelitz Candy Company, who developed his concept into a candy. Later, in a move that ended in a lengthy legal battle, the Goelitz family pushed Klein out, paying him a relatively small settlement and shutting him out of his jelly belly legacy for good. An award-winning movie about the event, called Candy Man, the David Klein Story, came out several years ago and is now available on Amazon.

Regardless, the jelly bean entered a new and illustrious phase of life, making appearances everywhere, from movie theater concession stands to corner store displays. They showed up at a presidential inauguration in 1981 and were the first candy to go on a space mission in 1983. In fact, people ate enough jelly beans last year to circle the earth five times.