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A Snack Of Galactic Proportions

MoonPie photo

What do you get when you stick two graham cracker cookies together with a layer of marshmallow, and dip the whole thing in chocolate?

It’s more than a MoonPie. The “original marshmallow sandwich” is a road-trip treat as Southern as boiled peanuts—and a whole lot more universally loved.

The family-owned Chattanooga Bakery trademarked MoonPies in 1919, two years after coming up with the winning recipe, and today are said to make more than a million of the snack cakes a day. Fans can pay homage—as well as try new flavors and stock up on paraphernalia and retro souvenirs—at the MoonPie General Store in downtown Chattanooga as well as at an outpost in Pigeon Forge.

The only thing richer than its flavor is the history behind the hallowed ’mallow. 

According to official MoonPie lore, in 1917, Earl Mitchell wanted to sell some cookies hearty enough to sustain even Appalachian coal miners. The traveling salesman asked a group of Kentucky miners how big of a snack would satisfy their hunger, as they often worked through lunch. As a miner held out his hands to frame the moon shining in the night sky, he replied, “About that big!” Back at the bakery, Mitchell noticed graham crackers dipped in marshmallow left to harden on the windowsill. The bakery turned the DIY snack into a cookie sandwich coated in chocolate. At just 5 cents a pop and a hearty four-and-a-half inches in diameter, the MoonPie became an instant success.

During the Great Depression, the MoonPie became forever linked with another Southern export, RC Cola, both of which came in larger servings than their competitors. At a combined cost of a single dime, the sweet pairing was dubbed the “working man’s lunch” and inspired a 1950s honky-tonk tune by singing cowboy Big Bill Lister. In 1973, the rock band NRBQ paid nostalgic tribute with “RC Cola and a Moon Pie,” which led to a MoonPie-themed music festival that ran for many years in Hartford, Connecticut.

Where two Southern traditions come together, others can’t be far off. Since the 1970s, the cellophane-wrapped cake has been the edible throw of choice at Mardi Gras parades. For a couple of years in the late 1990s, NASCAR adopted the MoonPie as its official snack cake (the rest of the time its popularity is a given). U.S. troops have received MoonPies in their care packages since World War II.

Perhaps it’s only fitting that the new millennium would bring even more out-of-this-world directions for the humble MoonPie. Mobile, Alabama, now rings in the New Year by dropping a 600-pound electric MoonPie accompanied by a laser show and musical acts such as last year’s headliner, the Village People. In 2009, the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing with a 40-inch MoonPie, served by the slice. During a homecoming event last fall, the University of Tennessee dished up a 50-pound MoonPie that clocked in at more than 45,000 calories and claimed to be the “world’s largest MoonPie.”

Though MoonPie has introduced a variety of flavors over the years—from the recent addition of salted caramel to the discontinued chocolate-mint—the original s’mores-like combination remains the most popular, followed by vanilla and banana. But the latest way to consume those three favorite flavors packs the most potent punch. In collaboration with MoonPie’s Campbell family, Kentucky’s seventh-generation Limestone Branch Distillery has introduced a line of MoonPie Moonshine, available in chocolate, vanilla, and banana. The uniquely Southern sip recently won a blind taste test in the 2015 World Liqueur Awards. 

Really, the marriage was only a matter of time: “MoonPie” has long appeared just before “moonshine” in the venerable Encyclopedia of Southern Culture.

MoonPie General Store

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