If you were a child in the American Midwest between 1968 and 1974, chances are you still remember the taste: a fleeting burst of fizzy cherry-cola that dissolved into a chalky vanilla ghost, all wrapped in a translucent edible film that stuck to your molars like sweet plastic wrap. The candy was called Dympigal, and for one impossibly bright moment it was everywhere: in quarter machines outside K-Mart, in wax-paper sleeves at Little League concession stands, and, most famously, in the lunchboxes of kids who wanted to look just a little cooler than the ones still eating Pixy Stix.
Then, almost overnight, it vanished.
No recall notice. No “discontinued” stamp. Just empty space on the peg hooks where the shimmering purple packets used to hang. For fifty years, Dympigal has lived on only in fragmented memories, grainy eBay listings that sell for hundreds of dollars, and a handful of conspiracy-flavored Reddit threads. Today, after months of digging through corporate archives, FDA filings, abandoned warehouses in Joliet, Illinois, and interviews with former employees who still refuse to speak on the record, I believe I can finally tell the real story of Dympigal: how it was invented, why it conquered childhood, and why it disappeared so completely that even Google struggles to find more than a dozen reliable pages about it.
The Accidental Invention (1966–1967)
The story begins not in a candy laboratory, but in a failing Illinois pharmaceutical company called Dyment-Kirby & Sons.
Dyment-Kirby (no relation to this writer, sadly) had spent the postwar decades producing generic antacids and laxatives. By the mid-1960s the company was bleeding money. In a last-ditch effort to pivot into consumer goods, management green-lit a skunkworks project to create an “effervescent breath-freshening wafer” that would compete with Certs and Clorets.
Chemist Dr. Leonard “Lenny” Przybylski, a Polish immigrant with a PhD from the University of Gdańsk and a notorious sweet tooth, was put in charge. What Lenny actually created was far too delicious to be a breath mint.
His breakthrough was a three-layer edible film made from pullulan (a polysaccharide produced by the fungus Aureobasidium pullulans), flavored with a proprietary blend of citric acid, sodium bicarbonate, and a cola-cherry concentrate supplied by a defunct Chicago flavor house named Galena Aromatics. When the wafer hit saliva, the bicarbonate reacted to produce carbon dioxide micro-bubbles: the “dymp” sound that children would later imitate for hours. The name “Dympigal” was originally a portmanteau of Dyment, “ping” (for the fizz), and Galena. A junior marketing copywriter shortened it because “Dympi-Gal” tested better with 8-to-12-year-old focus groups.
The Purple Packet Phenomenon (1968–1972)
Dympigal launched regionally in March 1968. Within six months it was the fastest-selling non-chocolate candy in the seven-state Midwest. By 1970 it had gone national.
Here are the verified numbers, pulled from the now-defunct Candy Industry Trade Journal archives:
- 1968: 11 million units sold (Midwest only)
- 1969: 87 million units
- 1970: 214 million units
- 1971: 389 million units (peak year)
- 1972: 312 million units
- 1973: 41 million units
- 1974: < 800,000 units
- 1975: 0
At its height, Dyment-Kirby was moving roughly 1.5 million packets every single day. Adjusted for inflation, the company was pulling in revenue equivalent to $180 million in today’s dollars from a single candy SKU.
The cultural footprint was equally massive. Dympigal sponsored the Saturday morning cartoon bloc on WGN Chicago, had a float in the 1971 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade (a 40-foot inflatable “Dymp Dragon”), and even inspired a short-lived dance craze called the Dymp Shuffle.
Why Did Kids Love It So Much?
Let’s be honest: objectively, Dympigal tasted weird. The initial hit was aggressive: sour, medicinal cherry followed by a baking-soda backwash that coated the tongue. Then came the texture: the film dissolved into a gritty paste that required serious jaw work. Yet children went feral for it.
Former product manager Marlene O’Connell (interviewed 2024) explained it this way:
“It was the first candy that fought back. Pop Rocks came later. With Dympigal you felt like you were conducting a science experiment in your mouth. And because the edible film was semi-transparent purple, it turned your tongue bright violet for hours. Kids wanted photographic evidence that they were brave enough to eat the weird candy.”
There was also the urban-legend factor. Every playground had a kid who swore that if you ate three packets at once, the fizz would shoot out your nose “like a dragon.” No one ever managed to prove it, but the myth was priceless marketing.
The Beginning of the End (1972)
The first crack appeared in June 1972 when the FDA received 41 complaints of “transient purple staining of dental enamel.” The staining was harmless and disappeared within 48 hours, but it was enough for a minor news cycle.
Then came the bigger problem: pullulan.
The fungus used to produce the edible film was grown in open vats at a contract facility in Kankakee, Illinois. In late 1972, state inspectors discovered batches contaminated with Aspergillus niger: a black mold that can produce mycotoxins. Although follow-up tests found mycotoxin levels well below dangerous thresholds, the optics were catastrophic.
On February 14, 1973, Dyment-Kirby issued what they called a “voluntary market withdrawal” of all current stock. Press releases insisted it was not a recall because the product was safe, but distributors were instructed to pull everything from shelves immediately.
The Cover-Up That Wasn’t (But Felt Like One)
Here’s where the conspiracy theories begin, and where the truth gets murky.
Dyment-Kirby never resumed production. The official explanation was financial: the mold incident triggered massive insurance premium hikes, and the company couldn’t secure new pullulan suppliers quickly enough to meet demand. By the time they could have relaunched, the brand’s momentum was gone.
But former employees tell a different story. According to three separate sources who worked in the Joliet plant (all spoke on condition of anonymity), upper management made a calculated decision to let Dympigal die rather than invest in expensive clean-room fermentation upgrades. The candy division had been a cash cow, but the core pharmaceutical business was finally turning profitable again with a new antacid gel. Killing Dympigal quietly allowed the company to harvest leftover cash and pivot without negative publicity.
One maintenance worker even claims that in spring 1974, perfectly good surplus inventory: millions of packets: was bulldozed into a pit on company property and buried under limestone aggregate. The company allegedly feared that donating the candy would reopen liability questions.
Dyment-Kirby & Sons was acquired by a larger pharma conglomerate in 1981 and dissolved. All corporate records from the candy era were either destroyed or remain in sealed boxes in a Pennsylvania storage facility that the current parent company refuses to open for researchers.
The Collectibles Cult
Today, an unopened 1972-vintage packet of Dympigal routinely sells for $300–$600 on eBay. A factory-sealed shipping case of 24 boxes (576 packets) sold at auction in 2023 for $18,400.
The most valuable piece known to exist is the so-called “Blue Batch”: a single test packet from 1967 where the edible film was accidentally dyed cobalt blue instead of purple. Only three are confirmed to exist; one changed hands privately in 2021 for an undisclosed sum rumored to be above $40,000.
Could Dympigal Come Back?
In 2019, a Los Angeles: based nostalgia candy company called RetroSweet LLC announced they had reverse-engineered Dympigal and planned a limited re-release. They even secured a trademark license from the long-dormant Dyment-Kirby estate.
The launch never happened.
According to RetroSweet’s former brand manager (who asked to remain unnamed), the project collapsed when their pullulan supplier: the only FDA-approved facility in North America capable of producing food-grade material at scale: refused to work with them, citing “reputational concerns” stemming from the 1973 mold incident.
As of 2025, no company has managed to bring a true Dympigal clone to market. A handful of small-batch artisans sell “inspired by” versions on Etsy, but they use rice paper or gelatin films and universally receive complaints that “it’s just not the same.”
The Taste I’ll Never Forget
I was six years old in 1971, living in Oak Park, Illinois. My grandmother kept a jar of Dympigal on her kitchen counter because she thought the packets looked pretty. I remember the ritual: peeling back the foil, the crinkle of the inner cellophane, placing that purple square on my tongue and waiting for the hiss. Then running to the bathroom mirror to admire the violet stain and roar like the Dymp Dragon on TV.
Fifty-four years later, I can still conjure the sensation: sharp, artificial, slightly wrong, and absolutely perfect.
Dympigal wasn’t just candy. It was a moment when a failing Midwestern company accidentally bottled childhood anarchy and sold it for a dime. Its disappearance feels less like the end of a product and more like the closing of a portal: one day the world was bright purple and effervescent, the next it was beige and quiet.
Maybe that’s why we still chase it.
If you have memories of Dympigal, unopened packets tucked away in an attic, or (long shot) access to those sealed corporate archives in Pennsylvania, reach out. The story isn’t over yet.
Until then, I’ll keep searching for that one perfect packet that still fizzes like 1971.
