The glass jar on the store counter was a system of government.

You had to know what you wanted before you got to the front of the line, because asking for time to think was embarrassing, and the person behind the counter had other things to do. You had to know how much you were spending, because the math had to work out exactly. And you had to point at the right jar, clearly, because guessing at what you meant was not the counter person's job.

Most of the jars were round, with wide mouths and either a glass or a metal lid that sat loose on top. Some had handwritten price signs leaning against them. Some had no signs at all because everyone already knew. The jars sat in a row on the counter or on a low shelf behind it, and they were part of the fixed geography of the store. You looked for them the moment you walked in.

Here are twelve of what was inside.

1. Root Beer Barrels

Hard, amber, shaped like a barrel with ridges running around the circumference. The flavor was strong enough that you could smell the bag on the way home. One barrel lasted a reasonable amount of time if you were disciplined, and no child was disciplined, so they were gone in four minutes flat.

Root beer barrels were one of the more grown-up candies in the jar collection. Kids bought them, but so did old men who had been buying them since 1941. They were a candy with cross-generational currency, which was unusual. Most of the jar candies belonged to one age group or another.

2. Atomic Fireballs

Perfectly round, brilliant red, and made by Ferrara Pan in Forest Park, Illinois. The cinnamon hit immediately and then kept intensifying, which was the whole premise of the candy. You could roll it around in your mouth for a while before the heat built to the point where weaker kids took it out and put it on the counter, which was unacceptable.

There was a status economy around Atomic Fireballs. How long you could keep one in your mouth was a legible thing. The jar behind the counter was a supply chain for a minor social competition.

3. Mary Janes

Individually wrapped in orange and black wax paper, which meant they were one of the jar candies you could buy by the piece and pocket for later. Peanut butter and molasses, with a dense, sticky chew that had a way of finding every filling in your mouth. Mary Janes were invented in 1914 by the Charles N. Miller Company in Boston, which is a piece of information that would have meant nothing to you at the time but now has a particular weight.

4. Squirrel Nut Zippers

Similar category to Mary Janes but with a caramel base and a slightly more complex flavor. Also individually wrapped. Also a serious threat to dental work. The wrapper was distinctive enough that you recognized it before reading it, which is the candy equivalent of a familiar voice on the phone.

The name came from the original Squirrel Brand nut company in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The jazz standard by the same name came later and has nothing to do with the candy, though people assume otherwise.

5. Candy Buttons

Paper strips with candy dots pressed onto them in rows. The dots came in pink, yellow, and blue, flavors that were officially fruit-based and unofficially just "sweet," "sweeter," and "the other one." You ate them by pressing your lower lip against the strip and pulling. You always got some paper.

There was no good way to eat candy buttons. That was, arguably, the point. The consumption was as much a fidgeting activity as a snacking one, and the paper-to-candy ratio was a design flaw you tolerated because there was no alternative.

6. Wax Lips

Not exactly candy in the eating sense. You bought a pair, wore them over your own lips for the theatrical effect, and then chewed the wax for the faint sweetness that came out of it in the first thirty seconds. After that you were just chewing wax, which was fine, because you'd already extracted the value.

The joke was the point, not the flavor. The glass jar that held them was stocked for a specific kind of kid, the one who was less interested in eating candy than in using it as a prop. These were not the same children who bought Atomic Fireballs.

7. Chocolate Covered Cherries

Some counters carried a nicer category of jar candy aimed at adults who wanted something presentable for a nickel. Chocolate covered cherries, usually made by Cella's or Queen Anne, had a hard chocolate shell with a liquid cherry center. If you bit straight through the chocolate the liquid ran.

The trick was learning to hold it level in your mouth before you bit down, which took practice. Adults who had been buying chocolate covered cherries for twenty years knew how to eat one without incident. First-timers did not.

8. Horehound Drops

A hard candy made from the horehound herb, with a flavor that was bitter and slightly medicinal and genuinely not sweet in any conventional way. Horehound drops were a holdover from before candy was purely about sweetness. They had been sold out of general stores and pharmacies since the 1800s, and by the mid-twentieth century the customer base was mostly elderly.

Kids bought horehound drops occasionally on a dare, tasted one, and returned to the root beer barrels. The jar of horehound drops at the back of the counter row was the one jar that was always full.

9. Jaw Breakers

The large kind, the size of a golf ball. You did not finish a jaw breaker in one sitting unless the sitting lasted several hours. The standard strategy was to work on it, leave it somewhere wrapped in wax paper, and come back to it. Jaw breakers changed color as you ate through the layers, so you always had information about your progress.

The jar behind the counter held jaw breakers in the three-cent-each range, which was the individual unit the childhood candy economy was built around. A dime was enough for a real candy purchase. A quarter was wealth.

10. Boston Baked Beans

Candy-coated peanuts in a cinnamon sugar shell, dyed red to look approximately like actual baked beans, which was the extent of the concept. Made by Ferrara Pan, same as the Atomic Fireballs. The coating had a satisfying crunch before you got to the peanut. You could eat a handful without particularly trying to.

These were one of the few jar candies that sat in the middle ground between candy and snack. If you were hungry and had a nickel, Boston Baked Beans were more filling than most of the alternatives.

11. Necco Wafers

Rolled in a paper sleeve, each roll containing eight flavors: lemon, lime, orange, clove, cinnamon, wintergreen, licorice, and chocolate. The chocolate was the best one. The licorice was the one you traded away. The clove tasted like dentist's office and had a following among people who apparently liked that.

Necco Wafers were invented in 1847 and carried by Union soldiers during the Civil War, which the candy company mentioned in its promotional materials with some regularity. Whether this made them taste better is unclear.

12. Ribbon Candy

Only appeared in the jar around Christmas, which gave it a scarcity that its flavor did not entirely justify. Thin, folded into loops and curves, hard, and flavored with peppermint or fruit. It broke if you handled it wrong, which you always did. The pieces were sharp enough to be a minor inconvenience.

Ribbon candy was bought as much to look at as to eat. The colors ran through the folds, and the shapes were elaborate, and the overall effect on a glass jar near a cash register in December was a kind of modest festivity. It tasted fine. It looked better.

---

What the jar candy left out

The sanitation situation around an open glass jar in a busy store was not reviewed by anyone in authority. The wide mouth. The loose lid. The fact that the candy sat at hand level for every customer who came through. If you think about this too long, you stop buying jar candy.

Bulk candy today, the kind you scoop at specialty stores, is genuinely better regulated. Sneeze guards exist. Scoops are provided. Handwashing is at least theoretically enforced. The glass jar was a more trusting arrangement, or perhaps a less informed one. Either way, the nostalgia for it should probably stop at the glass and not extend to the hygiene protocols.

Do you remember which candy lived on the counter of your particular store? Was there one you always went back to, or one you tried exactly once and never again? Share your story in the comments -- we're listening.