Rock that candy shop

If you admit to waxing nostalgic over Pop Rocks -- the exploding candy that, for the record, did not kill Mikey from the old Life Cereal commericals -- Marv Rudolph has your number. "You must be over 30," the former General Foods product developer told us when we started getting misty-eyed about recess on the blacktop schoolyard playground. Sigh. Guilty as charged. Still, we couldn't resist ta king a closer look at the Sharon resident's self-published book, "Pop Rocks: The Inside Story of America's Revolutionary Candy."
JOANNA WEISS

Q You write that when food chemist Bill Mitchell invented Pop Rocks, he wasn't trying to make a candy.

A He was trying to carbonate Kool-Aid. He first made a carbonated ice. They actually made a product out of it. Imagine a hockey puck that was made of carbonated ice, and they would coat it in chocolate. A customer would drop it in a glass of milk, and it would bubble and they'd have an instant ice cream soda.

Q Eventually, he came up with this fizzing candy. But it took awhile for it to be sold.

A It took 20 years. They said, "This is interesting, but this is not a serious product. It pops, but so what?" They weren't in the candy business. It didn't have Vitamin C. It wasn't healthy. It wasn't good for you. It didn't fit. Bill Mitchell would just make it. He was a really nice guy. You'd go to his lab and say, "Bill, make me up a batch for my kid's birthday party." And you'd show it to the kids, and they'd go nuts.

Q Finally, the patent was about to run out.

A General Foods was very nervous about somebody else getting into this. They were worried about a big candy company coming in and really stealing their thunder. It was like the Manhattan Project at General Foods.

Q How long before the exploding kid rumors started?

A It must have started within six months. Their consumer hot line was going 24/7. People would go, "Are you the company that killed that nice little boy?" And right around that time, there was a rumor about spider eggs in Bubble Yum.

Q Do you think it might have been some grown-ups, trying to scare kids out of eating candy?

A That's interesting speculation. I have no idea. It could have been kids in the schoolyard. Kids like to be daredevils. So if they can brag to other kids -- I had a Coke and Pop Rocks, and I didn't die -- they can be little Eve l Knievels. They're really tough.

Q How long did it take for Pop Rocks to fizz le, so to speak?

A They were launched in 1976. By 1980, it was all downhill. Pop Rocks are out there, made by a company in Spain. Many convenience stores have it. But they don't advertise it.

Q What compelled you to write a book about them?

A When Bill Mitchell died in December 2004, I read some obituaries, and they made him sound like a mad scientist. I knew the man. He had 44 patents in 35 years. Jell-O, Tang, Cool Whip. These were products that he contributed to. He even made a product that -- it never went anywhere -- a dry alcohol. Powder that had alcohol in it. Flavored.

Q That sounds like candy for adults.

A Yeah. It could be.

Andy Rooney has never been shy about his opinions, but now he's being bedeviled by somebody else's words being circulated under his name. Rooney said yesterday that a racist commentary falsely attributed to him is circulating on the Internet and through e-mails. The "60 Minutes" essayist wants anyone who might have seen it to know he had nothing to do with it. "I suppose it's not important, but I hate the fact that people think I've been writing these things," he said. "That's hurtful to me."

Eddie Murphy and former Spice Girl Melanie Brown may have dated earlier this year, but the actor-comedian is making it clear that he's not sure if he's the father of her unborn child. Murphy was recently asked if he was excited that Brown -- known as Scary Spice when she was in the pop group of the '90s -- was pregnant. She has been photographed recently with an expanding belly. "So are you happy with her because she's pregnant with your child?" asks the TV interviewer, apparently referring to Brown. "Now you're being presumptuous, because we're not together anymore," Murphy replies. "And I don't know whose child that is until it comes out and has a blood test."

Farrah Fawcett has completed cancer treatment and is doing well, her publicist said yesterday. Fawcett, 59, who starred on the '70s TV series "Charlie's Angels," wrapped up several weeks of treatment last week after being diagnosed recently with the disease and going through chemotherapy, said publicist Mike Pingel. Pingel wouldn't disclose the type of cancer but said her prognosis was good. Ryan O'Neal, who has a 21-year-old son, Redmond, with Fawcett, told People magazine in October that she had anal cancer.

FROM WIRE REPORTS