Cone Brothers Ice Cream Introduces 'Candy Town'

Editor's Note: The following is a Cone Brothers Ice Cream press release.

Just in time for Halloween and the upcoming holiday season, the 1950s-themed Cone Brothers Ice Cream Shop at Penn and 66th in Richfield announced the opening of “Candy Town”, which boasts the region's largest variety of penny candy and taffy, a perfect compliment the shop’s regular fare premium ice cream, blended fruit smoothies and vintage sodas.  

Now, visitors to Cone Brothers will find more than 100 varieties of “penny” candy; dozens of vintage and novelty brands; 70 flavors of premium taffy; and an array of gourmet licorice, toffee, chocolates and jelly beans. From homemade fudge to gummy worms and bubble-gum cigars, Candy Town’s variety is seemingly endless. Meanwhile, even more products will be added soon with the arrival of the Holiday shopping season.  

Candy Town is also the region’s new home for Terry’s Toffees, a complete line of A-list, celebrity-embraced confections that have been included in the annual Oscar Awards swag bags every year since 2005.

The addition of Candy Town comes in tandem with owner Jock Shields’ decision to keep Cone Brothers open throughout the fall and winter seasons for the first time since opening the store with his wife, Marilyn, in 2010. 

Shields, an avid collector of 1950s and early 1960s memorabilia, has packed Cone Brothers with showpieces from his personal collection. From the purple, mint-condition, Schwinn Stingray in the front window to the chrome, tail-finned, jukebox (circa 1958) spinning old 45s inside, Cone Brothers is a virtual museum of mid-century pop culture. 

“I’ve been fascinated with early post-war American culture since I was a teenager,” says Shields, who grew up Minneapolis’ Linden Hills neighborhood in the mid- to late-1970s. It was a time when movies like Grease and American Graffiti; television shows like Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley and musical groups like Sha-Na-Na fueled an interest in 50s and early 60s nostalgia. 

“I think there was an innocence in those days that has been lost. You especially see it in the advertising of the day,” Shields says, motioning to a vintage Mountain Dew sign at the back of the store. On the sign, a cartoon hillbilly holding a jug exclaims ‘Ya-hooo! Drink Mountain Dew! It’ll tickle your innards!”

These and the store’s other showpiecesą including dozens of scale model cars, super hero figures and miniature Coca-Cola machines, for exampleąrepresent just a fraction of Shields’ collection. He keeps most of it in his Richfield home just few blocks south of the store. 

Shields expects he’ll be displaying other items in an addition to his home now under construction. “I’m building a full scale replica of 1950s gas station that will be attached to the house.,” he explains. “I guess it will be a man cave of sorts. But that’s a whole ‘nother story!”