The Goo Goo Cluster was first made in 1912 at the Standard Candy Company's plant at Clark and First Avenue in Nashville, by Howell Campbell and his plant supervisor Porter Moore. Caramel, marshmallow nougat and roasted peanuts under milk chocolate does not sound like an invention now, but the Goo Goo is generally credited as the first combination bar made in America. The early ones were hand dipped and sold unwrapped, and they were advertised as a nourishing lunch for a nickel. The name carries a widely believed false explanation. Standard Candy sponsored the Grand Ole Opry from the late 1960s to 2006, and the line sung on the broadcast, go get a Goo Goo, it's good, tied the two together so firmly that people concluded the letters stood for Grand Ole Opry. The candy is thirteen years older than the radio show.
The company's own account is that Campbell, asked on the streetcar to work what he meant to call the thing, mentioned that his small son had just said his first words, goo goo, and that a schoolteacher riding with him said that was the name. Standard Candy has made them on Massman Drive since 1979, and the company's shop on Third Avenue South, a block off Broadway, sells them beside bars made to order.
Getting there
36.1610, -86.7754
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