Dispatch #415: Rothchilds Toffee

 

Rothchilds Toffee

In Dispatch #413, I wrote about the first time I watched a US President deliver a State of the Union speech. My research into the subject sent me down an internet rabbit-hole of 1970s history & trivia.

Which brings me to Rothchilds Toffee. During the Carter Administration, a series of commercials for Rothchilds began airing on TV. They were shown so frequently that I saw them nearly every weekday afternoon when I got home from school. 

In the ads, people who'd just popped a Rothchilds toffee into their mouths explained they simply couldn't engage in any other activities until they'd completely finished savoring that delicious candy.

The title card from Robert Gorman's Rothchilds ad

My favorite of these commercials featured actor Patrick Gorman as a 17th century swordsman whose duel is delayed by the timely consumption of a Rothchilds candy.

Rothchilds toffee came in three flavors: chocolate, caramel, and butterscotch. Although I remember seeing them at the candy counter in local drugstores during the late 1970s, I don't ever recall buying any—despite those inescapable TV ads.

This didn't prevent my friends and I from uttering the catchphrase from those commercials—"not now, I'm in the middle of a Rothchilds!"—nearly every chance we got back then, which I'm pretty sure we all believed to be the height of hilarity.

Rothchilds toffee faded from the scene sometime in the 1980s, consigned to the candy graveyard of yesteryear. If you hear the name Rothschilds these days, it's likely from a wacky conspiracy theory promoted by right-wing nutcase Marjorie Taylor Green involving Jewish space lasers.

Frankly, I'd rather watch those 1970s Toffee commercials in an endless loop for all eternity than listen to one second of that woman's antisemitic drivel.

"Not now, Marjorie—I'm in the middle of a Rothchilds!"

There's more to come in the next dispatch.

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