Breast Milk-Flavored Lollipops Selling 'Really, Really Well'
June 6, 2013— -- You may have heard last year about the London shop that was selling breast-milk ice cream. Now, right here in the good old USA, one Austin,Texas-based candy company is selling breast-milk-flavored lollipops.
Yes, that's breast-milk flavored. No actual breast milk involved. Just, you know, the taste of breast milk made from "artificial and natural ingredients," company owner Jason Darling told ABC News.
Darling said he'd been trying to come up with a "crazy, weird" flavor for his next lollipop (his company, called Lollyphile, has already made maple bacon and sriracha lollipops, among others) and noticed his friends with fussy babies could quiet them down with just a few drops of breast milk.
"I had to know what tasted so good it could knock out a screaming infant," he said.
So he asked his "good hippie mom friends" if he could try their breast milk. And they agreed.
There are two reasons the lollipops are breast-milk flavored and not made of actual breast milk. First, milk wouldn't hold up to the candy-making process, Darling said. Second, it would take "way too much breast milk."
Darling put the lollipops on his website Monday night and two days later, he said, he'd sold several thousand. "They're selling really, really well," he said.
Not that there haven't been detractors. "I read the blogs, and there are some people who think it's gross. But I really can't see what's gross about breast milk."
The goal of Darling's candy company, Lollyphile, is to "make the most interesting candy in the whole world," he said. "Candy right now is really boring. There's been very little innovation."
And a quick look at Lollyphile is all it takes to realize that despite its sudden breast-milk lollipop fame, Darling's candy is really made for adults. Many lollipops are alcohol flavored: bourbon, white Russian, absinthe, to name a few.
The breast-milk lollipops too, he said, are for adults. So how does he know they actually taste like breast milk?
"There's a certain amount of trying them to get it just right," he said. "But we work with flavor scientists whose entire job it is to make something that tastes exactly like something else. You can get a lollipop that tastes like the best cheeseburger in the world."
Which, if breast milk is so popular, has got to be a guaranteed hit.
Breast-milk lollipops are available on Lollyphile.com at the price of four for $10.