Take a Peek Inside the Candy Wrapper Museum | Travel

In 2019, an unassuming package arrived at my front door.

Inside was a sooty 2-by-4-foot scrapbook filled with candy wrappers over 70 years old. On the surface, a piece of trash—one that in fact came from a dumpster, saved from oblivion during the move of Necco (the New England Confectionery Company) from its Cambridge, Massachusetts, factory to nearby Revere in 2003. After the company went bankrupt 15 years later, the scrapbook traveled 2,950 miles to La Verne, California, to the ranch house my husband, Joe, and I call home.

Why am I now its keeper?

I’m curator of the Candy Wrapper Museum, my online “roadside attraction.” Here I share my 50-year collection of little slips of paper, designed to be torn and thrown away. Why? Because these ephemeral objects serve as time machines, opening an emotional portal to the past.

I was 15 years old when I started collecting, inspired by friends with cool collections like beer bottles from around the world. I wanted to start one of my own, but of what? I usually spent my few coins on candy at the 7-Eleven. The candy shelves were a wonderland of tasty treats with colorful wrappers and names, all clamoring: Pick me! Big Hunks, Milk Duds, Jujyfruits, Choco’Lite, Lemonhead… How could a girl decide?

Then inspiration struck. Instead of throwing away those wrappers, I would save them. I would create the Candy Wrapper Museum, where I envisioned that the wrappers would one day be enjoyed as art, nostalgia and humor. It was 1977, and teenage me had a plan: I would collect these wrappers throughout my lifetime, then open up the museum as a roadside attraction in my old age. I chose my first pieces, Nice Mice and Cinnamon Teddy Bears, and so began this journey. Friends caught the spirit of fun and donated pieces. Collecting became an affordable, novel way to explore the world around me, one that could turn even a mundane shopping trip into a treasure hunt.

In 2002, inspiration struck again. Why wait until retirement?…