Marlow!

When the kiddies ask you, "Grandpa or Grandma, what did the 1970s look like?"

Right after you're done correcting them as to your preferred gender, show them this:

This rack of snacks from Marlow, of Englewood, New Jersey, seen in a shop in eastern Pennsylvania, seems to have single-handedly preserved the "Me" decade. The moment I saw it, I had to look down to see if I was wearing double-knits.

Checking the company Web site, I see I pretty much pegged the dates:

Marlow Candy was founded in 1968, incorporated in 1970, and grew from a storefront in the Bronx to its present location in New Jersey. Due to Marlow’s success and growth it was necessary to move three times before finally settling into the present location in 1979, where it has already expanded twice.

I think every area of the nation has a relatively small outfit like Marlow, filling gas stations and bodegas and delis and tobacco shops with snacks made of candy and dried fruit and chocolate and nuts. Few can say they've kept their 70's-era shades-of-orange, classy-hippie-signature logo, but I believe Marlow can. I suspect they haven't changed the packaging at all since 1979.

In this era where companies will constantly change the look of well-known products just to get you to see them again, I have to admire an outfit that sticks to its package design guns. I will go so far as wager that generations in the greater Englewood, New Jersey area, generations that have no idea who Philip Marlowe or Marlo Thomas or Christopher Marlowe or Marlo and the Magic Movie Machine are, will automatically see that logo and think of sunflower seeds or starlight mints when they hear the name Marlow.

You can almost taste the gummy bears and yogurt raisins, can't you?