The Soft N&L is one and a quarter inches square and a third of an inch high. Soft Now and Later are actually soft! They’re soft enough to bend while still in the wrapper.Ī regular N&L is one inch square and a quarter of an inch high. (But do have soy, for those who might be sensitive and are processed on machinery that also handles eggs.)Ī while back Farley’s & Sathers introduced Soft Now and Later, which seem to solve that problem most adults have with them.

They can also be considered vegan, as they contain no animal products. Now and Later don’t pretend to be healthy, there’s no real fruit juice in there, no detectable levels of vitamin C. Tangy, fragrant, artificial and satisfying. The flavor is at once like strawberry jam and those Italian strawberry hard candies that have the gooey filling. It’s very tangy and has the flavor of Lime Kool-Aid. Lime: the neon green wax wrapper is matched by the neon green color of the candy. Not terribly tangy, but still flavored to the very end and never gritty or grainy. Artificial through and through, it tastes like SweeTarts and ball point pen ink smells. Grape: was always my favorite in the Now and Later pantheon. There was something anxiety-producing as I wasn’t disciplined enough to just let them soften in my mouth, I had to chew them while they were still hard and then anchor my jaw together. But I gave up on them later as I got my permanent teeth. They came in 5 cent packs (little stacks of the squares), so were easy to buy even when I had little money. The most common format for the candy these days is either the pack shown here or in tubs of either mixed flavors or single flavors. Even today, there are a lot of flavors of Now and Later, though I never see them in stores. Wikipedia has a fun list of all the flavors known to have existed. (Either people really love this candy or just don’t know what to do with it.) ultimately landing at Farley’s and Sathers in 2002. They held onto it until 1992 when they sold it to Nabisco (who also held LifeSavers back then). Phoenix Candy Company of Brooklyn, NY later sold out to Beatrice Foods (1978), who later sold their confectionery lines to Huhtamaki Oy of Finland (1983) which then turned around and sold it off in 1986 to a Finnish investment firm called Kouri Capital. Now and Later have gone through a few different standard flavors and even a few owners. In some ways they resemble Starburst, since they are a fruit chew (they were introduced as Opal Fruits in 1960 in the UK) or Tangy Taffy which was sold in bars that you could whack and break into bite size pieces. The 18 piece classic bar features the flavors Strawberry, Grape and Lime. One of the original taglines for the candy was “Eat some now, save some for later.” (I remember the tune for the jingle, but nothing beyond those words.) They currently say, “Hard ‘n Fruity Now, Soft ‘n Chewy Later.” The little individually wrapped taffy squares start hard but become chewy. They were designed as an all-year-round candy, no problem eating these in the summer. Now and Later were first introduced in 1962 with only three flavors by the Phoenix Candy Company.

10 cents now and later candy