Celebrating the New Year with the PEEPS® Chick Drop
For a change of pace from the early history of Bethlehem, let’s take a look at how today’s city celebrates the New Year with a family-friendly version of the Times Square Ball Drop, featuring a 400-lb. baby chicken.
The PEEPSFEST® Tradition
Photo attribution: :"Fiberglass Peep at the Peepsfest in Bethlehem, PA" by slgckgc is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Times Square has nothing on Bethlehem. For fourteen years, the city has been celebrating the New Year by dropping a lit-up, 400 lb. PEEPS® Chick. And they don’t do it just once--they drop it twice. Take that NYC!
The family-friendly event is held on the 30th and 31st of December with the famous chick (a plump 4’ 9” stunner) dropping at 5:30 p.m. each day, followed by spectacular fireworks. And this chick really is famous. Fans from all over the country flock to Bethlehem for the event, and news coverage has included USA Today, Fox News, and Travel + Leisure magazine.
Entertainment includes music, clowns, and all kinds of Peeps-oriented fun like the Leaning Tower of PEEPS®, a diorama contest, and a chance to have your picture taken with the famous Peepsmobile, a bright yellow Volkswagen beetle with our favorite you-know-what on top. Kids can even toast PEEPS® over a fire pit and eat them as s’mores.
PEEPSFEST® is a collaboration between ArtsQuest (the folks who also bring you Musikfest) and the Bethlehem candymaker called Just Born, creator of the sugar-coated marshmallow confections with the shiny, little eyes.
The History of PEEPS® and the Just Born Company
Photo Attribution: "Peeps on Parade" by bgolub is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
In business since 1923, the family-owned candy manufacturer known as Just Born was founded by Sam Born, who grew up in Russia, lived in France, and eventually immigrated to the United States. Sam Born opened a small store in Brooklyn where he marketed his freshly-made candy as “so fresh it’s as if it was just born.”
Born acquired the Rodda Candy Company of Lancaster, Pennsylvania in 1953 and became fascinated by Rodda’s marshmallow chick candies that were popular, but painfully time-consuming to produce. Sam’s son Bob Born mechanized the chick-making process and reduced production time from twenty-seven hours to just six minutes. And just like that, Just Born became the largest manufacturer of seasonal marshmallow treats in America.
A Taste of PEEPS® Trivia
Photo attribution: heymrleej, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Yellow is the fan favorite PEEPS® color, followed by pink and blue. But, you can also get the little darlings in lavender, green, and orange.
PEEPS® also come in little bunny rabbit shapes, but four out of five PEEPS® sold are chicks.
Those beady little chick eyes are made from food-grade carnauba wax.
The Just Born folks go crazy at Easter, offering PEEPS® in over a dozen different flavors, including the most popular ones: Party Cake, Fruit Punch, and Sour Watermelon.
A baby is born every nine seconds in the United States, but in that same amount of time, over 500 PEEPS® are hatched. (On average, about 5 ½ million are produced every day.)
I’ll leave you with this visual: every year, Just Born produces enough PEEPS® to circle the earth two and a half times!
