When I was a kid, every Wendy’s Kid’s Meal came with a Dum Dum lollipop. (Maybe they still do. I estimate that I last ate a Kid’s Meal circa 1986.) The Dum Dums weren’t as good as a Frosty, but they were a fixture of my childhood nonetheless.

The only flavor I remember anymore is the “mystery” flavor, complete with question marks on the wrapper. Flavors like lemon or cherry may be reliable candy mainstays, but what was that strange, elusive, ever-so-yummy mystery flavor? It actually never occurred to me to actually ask that question as a child, because I had a Dum Dum in my mouth and it would have been rude.

Now, thanks to Mental Floss, we have an answer to the age-old question of the “mystery” flavor. Actually, we may have already had an answer, since it’s right there on the Wikipedia page. Maybe a Mental Floss writer had a deadline and found an old “mystery” Dum Dum behind the fridge or something. Whatever, because now I know, and that’s what’s important.

First, we learn a little history, like how the Akron Candy Company invented the Dum Dum in 1924, and it gots its name from a sales manager named I.C. Bahr. The Spangler Candy Company bought the brand in 1953 and has manufactured it ever since. They’ve had numerous flavors over the years, but that “mystery” flavor has long enticed young & old alike with its puzzling deliciousness. (Am I overselling this?)

Some Dum Dums have wrappers with question marks where the flavor is normally printed. This was a marketing idea that made the production process run more smoothly and made eating Dum Dums more fun. The Mystery Flavor pop is a mixture of two flavors that come together when the end of one batch of candy meets the beginning of the next batch. Rather than shutting down to clean out the candy equipment between flavors, Spangler turned lemons into lemonade and made pops out of the combination of flavors – the tail end of the old, and the beginning of the new. The candy lines keep running continuously, and the Mystery Flavor pops are a surprise treat every time.

That’s fascinating, but it also helps me realize how much older I’ve gotten since I last truly enjoyed a Dum Dum. Rather than want to grab for the nearest available candy, I keep thinking of the cost-saving measure of making mystery candies rather than losing production time to clean out the machine.

I really hope someone has cleaned out that machine since 1953.

Photo credit: ‘Dumdums’ by Linuxerist [GFDL, CC-BY-SA-2.5, or CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.