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When the Ring Pop factory in Scranton, Pennsylvania, unexpectedly shut down last summer because of a shaky floor, it abruptly halted production of tens of millions of the iconic oversized candy bauble lollipops that come attached to a cheap plastic ring meant to be worn on a finger. It was a shocking moment for an American candy brand whose enduring popularity spans at least five generations of consumers. Everyone knows Ring Pop. All I have to do is put its shape in front of somebody and they know immediately what it is, says Tony Jacobs, CEO of Ring Pop maker, Bazooka Candy Brands. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/bagable_logo.jpg","headline":"Bagable","description":"Discover the brands and trends to shop, by Parija Kavilanz. To learn more visit bagable.com","substackDomain":"https:\/\/www.bagable.com","colorTheme":"salmon","redirectUrl":""}} After seven months, a new Ring Pop factory opened in Pennsylvania in March. New York-based Bazooka Candy Brands is doubling down on not only quickly closing the supply gap for Ring Pops triggered by the shuttered plant but has also set ambitious new production targets for the candy. We should be able to fill up the pipeline by June, Jacob says, adding that the new factory is expected to churn out nearly double the amount of Ring Pops made annually. [Photo: Bazooka Candy Brands] Shut everything down Since 1977, the stickless lollipop has been made in a 30,000-square-foot plant in Scranton that cranked out as many as 280 million Ring Pops annually. A novelty confectionery, and among the most recognized hard candy brands in the market, Ring Pop has captivated generations of sweet treat seekersfrom Gen Xers to Gen Alphafor decades. Ring Pop, which sells for under $1 to about $1.50 a piece, was consistently growing sales over the last decade, with year-over-year brand sales up 7% at the end of last year. That number doesnt even fully include our ecommerce sales, Jacobs says. On August 29, 2024, everything came to a grinding halt, except the ground beneath the Ring Pops Scranton plant. [Photo: Bazooka Candy Brands] I remember that day very clearly, says Jacobs. Weve had movement in the ground under our factory and the floor had become unstable. Its no secret that Scranton has a lot of mines and there are mine shafts under our factory. We decided we had to shut everything down until we knew exactly what was going on. Jacobs says that it was a tough decision, knowing the impact it would have on the company and the brand. In a lot of ways, Ring Pop is our flagship product. But it was also an easy decision because it was a question about safety, he says. But the factory closure also created a supply crunch that slowed down Ring Pops momentum. I can tell you right now that its been painful not having a facility. Historically, we have outstripped the candy confectionery sales growth for our brands by how we innovate and market our candy products, says Jacobs. Right now, we’re not outpacing the category because we havent had supply. According to the National Confectioners Association, total confectionery sales in the U.S. reached $54 billion in 2024. A little over half of sales were driven by purchases of chocolate products (52%) and 40% by candy (excluding gum). In 2024, overall chocolate sales reached $28.1 billion, up from $25.9 billion in 2023, while non-chocolate candy sales reached $21.7 billion last year, up from $19.2 billion in 2023. [Image: Bazooka Candy Brands] ‘Were about edible entertainment’ With Ring Pop, especially, both the brand and consumersincluding a few celebrities like Drake, Joe Jonas, and Sophie Turnerhave leaned into its quirkiness to create viral moments in a way thats given the affordable lollipop a multi-generation appeal. Everything that we do is around not just hand-to-mouth candy. Theres a lot of great candy out there, but were about edible entertainment, Jacobs says. Thats play value, and viral value that really helps define our portfolio of candy brands. To have a product thats been around for 48 years, thats over the top, that people want to engage with and talk about, and it’s become a kind of social currency, is even more important, he says. We see Ring Pop packs at kids birthday parties and at bridal showers. Bazooka Candy Brandss other candy products include Push Pop, Juicy Pop, Bazooka Bubble Gum, and Baby Bottle Pop candy. Another current market trend in Ring Pops favor is that, a younger demographic, Gen Z and Millennials, are a little bit more interested in non-chocolate options. Its just their taste and preference, said Christopher Gindlesperger, spokesperson with the National Confectioners Associations. A prime example of that is the explosion in popularity of squishy, chewy gummy candies. Last year, peelable gummy candies went viral and retailers scrambled to source and stock them fter TikTokers couldnt get enough of tiny mango-shaped gummy candies that you could, indeed, peel like a real mango fruit to reveal an inner gummy pulp candy and an edible gummy outer peel. Bazooka Brands says for Ring Pop, its biggest fans currently are even younger. Theyre Gen Alpha. While we dont have exact figures on the breakdown of Ring Pop purchasers by generation, we do know that the brand over-indexes with households that have kids ages six to 12, making Gen Alpha the primary consumers, says Becky Silberfarb, the companys vice president of brand marketing for the Americas. Jacobs expects Ring Pop to fully close its supply gap and reestablish its brand dominance in the market within six months. The comeback plan begins with a move into the new factory. The company last week inaugurated a 120,000-square-foot factory in Moosic, Pennsylvania, about seven miles from the Scranton plant. The new plant, with just over 100 employees, will produce up to 1.5 million Ring Pops a day. Our business has been growing. We need more manufacturing and more product, says Jacobs. Once we have our full production lines up and running efficiently, we should be getting close to 400 million Ring Pops made annually out of the new facility, he says. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/bagable_logo.jpg","headline":"Bagable","description":"Discover the brands and trends to shop, by Parija Kavilanz. To learn more visit bagable.com","substackDomain":"https:\/\/www.bagable.com","colorTheme":"salmon","redirectUrl":""}}
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The way Bran Ferren sees it, the future of warfare depends as much on creativity as it does on raw firepower. The former head of research and development at Walt Disney Imagineeringthe elite R&D arm responsible for the entertainment empires secret saucethe 72-year-old Ferren has spent decades building a reputation for fusing art, design, and storytelling with serious technical and engineering know-how in pursuit of novel innovations and experiences. This pioneering approach to creative technology is the heart and soul of Applied Minds, the company Ferren cofounded 25 years ago to help clients from the Pentagon to Fortune 500 companies envision and test breakthrough technologies before they even realize they need them, from rapidly prototyping advanced robotics and vehicles to designing futuristic command centers and immersive simulators. If you can imagine it, chances are the artists and engineers at Applied Minds can make it a reality. Now, with the United States gearing up for its next big war, Ferren and Applied Mindss unique brand of prototyping has never been more important. In a defense sector often constrained by bureaucracy and incremental improvements, the companys ability to think outside conventional silos and pull insights from unexpected fieldswhether theme park design, Hollywood special effects, or commercial techoffers a much-needed jolt of creative problem-solving and gives Applied Minds an edge in a defense landscape that increasingly demands speed and creativity over incremental improvements. Weve turned into, for lack of a better word, an imagineering resource for hire, says Ferren in a recent interview with Fast Company. The son of two artists, Ferren grew up surrounded by people doing art and technology, whether it was uncle Roy Ferren, the director of flight test for North American Aviation (now part of Boeing), or uncle Stanley Tonkel, the prolific Columbia Records recording engineer who helped produce tracks for famous musicians from Miles Davis to Frank Sinatra. Ferrens early career encompasses a constellation of creative endeavors. In the 1970s and 1980s, he cofounded Associates & Ferren, a design and special effects firm that quickly rose to prominence for its work in film, theater, and high-tech installations. The company contributed to several Hollywood productions, providing innovative visual effects for movies including Altered States (1980), Little Shop of Horrors (1986), and Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989), as well as special effects for Broadway plays like the Sherlock Holmes mystery The Crucifer of Blood and major concert performances by Paul McCartney, Pink Floyd, R.E.M., and Depeche Mode, among others. Ferren distinguished himself by marrying the theatrical and the technological; among his more unusual projects includes orchestrating a nationwide tour of the Bill of Rights to mark the bicentennial of the document, a task that involved designing and building a special transportation vehicle from the ground up to house the fragile artifact as well as a traveling exhibit space to accompany it. I really love doing new things that Ive never done before and that other people haven’t done before . . . theater, film, rock n roll touring. These were all early venues where you had the opportunity to do that, Ferren says. His expertise in blending technology with storytelling caught the attention of Disney, leading to the acquisition of his company in 1993 and his installation as head of R&D at Walt Disney Imagineering, which is responsible for master planning all of the companys far-reaching creative endeavors, including theme parks. Theme parks are story driven, Ferren says. It’s about bringing you into those stories. Ferrens group was also responsible for prototyping and demonstrating next-generation products for Disney executives to provide insight into the technological trends shaping the entertainment industry, including desktop gaming consoles, ebooks, and on-demand digital video delivery. Ferren likens the role of Imagineering at Disney as the defined job of what ARPA or DARPA is for the defense community, which is to prevent surprise, he explains. Imagineering was my home, but also from my perspective, my job was: How do I help bridge between different worlds, such as Silicon Valley and such as Hollywood, who often have very compatible goals, but speak different languages? he adds. Renderings and illustrations adorn the walls of Applied Minds headquarters. [Photo: Jared Keller] Always in search of the next big thing, Ferren left Disney in 2000 to cofound Applied Minds with computer scientist Danny Hillis, whom Ferren had previously recruited to Disney as a fellow in 1996, and entrepreneur Doug Carlston. Since then, the company has worked with major players across virtually every industry you can think of, from automakers General Motors and Ford and agricultural giant John Deere to geographic information systems pioneer Esri and defense primes like Boeing, as well as every branch of the U.S. armed forces. (The company declined to share the total value of its contracts but stated that its roughly an even split between military commercial clients). In the process, Applied Minds has notched more than 1,000 patents that encompass everything from full-color and enhanced 3D night vision devices, customizable instrument control panels, immersive display environments, centralized controls for autonomous vehicles, modular vehicles, and even portable systems for communicating undergroundthe latter of which is of particular interest to the U.S. military ahead of a future conflict. Applied Minds made a splash from the get-go. In what might be th companys most significant early innovation, Ferren and Hillis would end up playing a pivotal role in the development of pinch-to-zoom technology, the now-ubiquitous multi-touch gesture interface used on smartphones, tablets, and other touchscreen-based devices. (The pairs 2005 patent was at the center of a high-profile 2013 lawsuit which saw consumer electronics juggernaut Apple accuse competitor Samsung of infringing on its own patents, including pinch-to-zoom, which the former had popularized with the launch of the iPhone in 2007; Apples lawsuit was invalidated based on Ferren and Hilliss existing claim to the technology.) Applied Minds also established deep roots in the defense world. Among its most notable projects are the Photographic Landing Augmentation System for Helicopters (PHLASH), developed in 2007 to help prevent brownouts during dicey helicopter landings in the deserts of the Global War on Terror, and the U.S. Armys Expeditionary Lab, a mobile workplace designed to help soldiers engineer technical fixes on the fly while deployed overseas. The company has provided the Pentagon with prototypes for advanced combat vehicles, sophisticated cockpit interfaces for the militarys upcoming sixth-generation fighter jets, next-generation workstations to streamline operations, immersive simulators to improve training, and new approaches to data visualization that look like theyre ripped straight out of a science fiction movie; it even participated in the Pentagons ill-fated effort to build a real-world Iron Man suit to protect troops engaged in high-intensity combat. An Applied Minds rendering of the companys vision for the Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit (TALOS) that U.S. Special Operations Command sought to develop for ground troops. [Photo: Jared Keller] Among Applied Mindss latest victories is a critical fix for the U.S. Air Forces next-generation KC-46 Pegasus tanker, considered a critical aerial refueling capability for extending the range of tactical and transport aircraft amid a high-intensity future conflict. Unlike traditional tankers, which feature a boom operator positioned at the tail with a direct line of sight of a target aircraft for the delicate dance of lining up the refueling boom, the KC-46 instead transmits digital imagery from the so-called Remote Vision System (RVS) to operators at a high-tech Aerial Refueling Operator Station nestled in the body of the aircraft. But initial testing had revealed that the RVS feed was marred by image distortion, inconsistent lighting, and depth perception issues that made it consistently unreliable during refueling operations. Without an accurate picture of the outside world to work from, operators simply cant do their job, rendering the KC-46s core mission of keeping other aircraft fueled and ready to fight effectively moot. At the behest of Boeing, the prime defense contractor on the system, Applied Minds eventually rolled out a fix in the form of the RVS 2.0, which features enhanced cameras and a full-color high-definition display to improve depth perception and counteract glare and shadow. Now, youd say, Clearly the U.S. Air Force Research Lab and Boeing and Rockwell Collins were working on this, they dont need a few more engineers and computer scientists to solve things. . . . Why would we have expertise in this? Ferren says. Its because we actually come from the film business, so some of us have expertise on how you make good looking images. Bran Ferren at the Applied Minds Electro-Optics Test Range at the companys headquarters, where employees evaluated their fix for the KC-46 Pegasus tankers Remote Vision System. [Photo: Jared Keller] While Applied Minds operates in the defense technology space, it doesnt function like a traditional defense contractor. Instead of competing for massive military contracts or manufacturing hardware at scale, the company has positioned itself as an elite think tank and prototyping powerhouse, working on a project-by-project basis and helping organizations rapidly develop creative solutions to complex technical challenges. This approach allows the company to remain agile, moving between industries while maintaining a small, highly specialized team of engineers, designers, and technologists. Indeed, those skills Ferren honed as head of R&D at Disney Imagineeringarchitecting immersive, intuitive experiencestranslate surprisingly well to a military context. To wit: One of the Applied Mindss specialties is the development of military command centers, those high-intensity spaces where critical information and life-or-death choices collide. The company has designed installations including the
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With tax season fast approaching, its the perfect time for parents to take advantage of valuable tax deductions and credits that can reduce their tax bill or increase their refund. Lisa Greene-Lewis, a tax expert with over 20 years of experience, has made it her mission to break down complex tax laws in a way thats accessible and actionable for families. As a trusted voice in the industryfeatured on programs like The Ellen Show and The Steve Harvey ShowLisa shares her insights on the most important tax breaks parents should know about. This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/acupofambition_logo.jpg","headline":"A Cup of Ambition","description":"A biweekly newsletter for high-achieving moms who value having a meaningful career and being an involved parent, by Jessica Wilen. To learn more visit acupofambition.substack.com.","substackDomain":"https:\/\/acupofambition.substack.com","colorTheme":"salmon","redirectUrl":""}} What are the top tax breaks parents should take advantage of before filing? Navigating tax season as a parent can feel overwhelming, but there are several valuable tax deductions and credits designed to ease the financial burden of raising children. Understanding these benefits can help you maximize your refund and keep more money in your pocket. One of the most well-known tax benefits for parents is the Child Tax Credit, which provides up to $2,000 per child under the age of 17. Even if you dont owe taxes, you may still be eligible for a refundable portion of up to $1,700. For parents who rely on childcare to work or search for a job, the Child and Dependent Care Credit can help offset costs. You can claim up to $1,050 for one child or up to $2,100 for two or more children under 13. Even summer day camps and sports camps qualifythough overnight camps do not. If your child has a disability, there is no age limit for this credit. If youre working and earning an income, you may also qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which can provide a significant boost to your refund. The amount depends on your income and number of children, with families of three or more kids eligible for up to $7,830 in 2024. Many eligible taxpayers miss out on this benefit, so its important to check if you qualify. For parents with college-aged children, there are additional tax credits to help with higher education costs. The American Opportunity Tax Credit offers up to $2,500 per dependent child for the first four years of college, if they are pursuing a degree and enrolled at least half-time. If your child is taking courses beyond the first four years of collegewhether for a degree or simply to improve job skillsyou may still qualify for the Lifetime Learning Credit, which provides up to $2,000 per return. Additionally, if youre paying student loan interest for your child, you may be able to deduct up to $2,000 per tax return. Its important to note that only the person claiming the child as a dependent can take advantage of these education-related tax benefits. If your child files their own taxes and claims these credits, you wont be able to do so. A conversation between parents and students is key to determining who should claim these benefits. Finally, if you are a single parent who provides more than half of your households financial support, filing as Head of Household can increase your standard deduction to $21,900significantly higher than the $14,600 deduction for those filing as single. Make sure to review your eligibility each year and consult a tax professional if needed to ensure youre maximizing your benefits. Are there any last-minute moves families can make to lower their taxable income or increase their refund? First, gather all your documents in one place before you beginthis helps ensure you dont overlook any important deductions or credits. One surprisingly common mistake is entering incorrect Social Security numbers, so double-check that you have the accurate numbers for yourself and any dependents. This is especially important for claiming valuable tax benefits like the Child Tax Credit, Earned Income Tax Credit, and the Child and Dependent Care Credit. Dont forget about opportunities to reduce your taxable income. You can still make a 2024 contribution to your IRAup to $7,000 (or $8,000 if you’re 50 or older)until the April 15 deadline, and you may be able to deduct these contributions. Similarly, if you have a High Deductible Health Plan (HDHP), you can contribute up to $4,150 to a Health Savings Account (HSA) if you’re on a self-only plan, or up to $8,300 for a family plan, with potential tax deductions available. What steps should families take now to prepare for next years tax season? One of the most effective is maximizing contributions to a 401(k) plan. In 2025, you can contribute up to $23,500or $30,500 if you’re 50 or older. Plus, thanks to the Secure Act 2.0, individuals aged 60 to 63 can contribute even more, up to $34,750. Not only do these contributions lower your taxable income, but they may also make you eligible for the Retirement Savings Contribution Credit, which offers up to $1,000 for single filers and up to $2,000 for those married filing jointly. This credit is essentially free money for prioritizing your retirement savings. Beyond retirement planning, parents can also find tax savings in everyday expenses. Keeping receipts for qualifying expensessuch as sending your child to summer campcan help maximize available deductions or credits. Additionally, if youre able to itemize your deductions, now is a great time to declutter and donate to a 501(c)(3) charitable organization. These donations can be deducted, offering financial benefits while supporting causes you care about. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/acupofambition_logo.jpg","headline":"A Cup of Ambition","description":"A biweekly newsletter for high-achieving moms who value having a meaningful career and being an involved parent, by Jessica Wilen. To learn more visit acupofambition.substack.com.","substackDomain":"https:\/\/acupofambition.substack.com","colorTheme":"salmon","redirectUrl":""}}
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