Sweet Tooth

Progress is the name of the game here at the turn of the 20th century on Main Street, U.S.A. Everywhere you look, new innovations are helping to make life brighter and better. Some of the most prosperous locations on Main Street are those whose proprietors have embraced the exciting new trends and technologies. A great example is the Main Street Confectionery. Once a small candy shop, the Confectionery has grown by leaps and bounds, expanding into the entire corner of Main Street and Town Square.

As the story goes, Confectionery owners Thomas and Kitty McCrumb attended the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago back in 1893, where Thomas was particularly impressed with all the mechanical marvels on display at Machinery Hall. The McCrumbs returned home from the Fair, and Thomas set about applying his inspiration to the creation of fantastic new devices for making candies and chocolates.

This mechanization led to all the amazing growth and success seen at the Main Street Confectionery ever since. Today, the Confectionery is a wonderland of colorful contraptions, but if you look closely, you can find a few nods to the shop's more humble origins. In the back corner, behind the fudge counter, can be found displays of some of Thomas McCrumb's earliest attempts at mechanization. Here, you'll also find hung on the wall an original souvenir program from the 1893 Fair.

For those who haven't already picked up on it, this back story for the Main Street Confectionery actually includes some fun references to Disney history.

Walt Disney's father, Elias, worked as a contractor on the World's Columbian Exposition after moving his young family to Chicago in the early-1890s. Later, he would build the home on Tripp Avenue where Walt was born in 1901. The 1893 Chicago World's Fair also plays into the story of the Crystal Arts shop on Main Street, and the 2nd-story window tribute to Elias Disney (on Center Street in the Magic Kingdom) lists his profession as Contractor.

The other historical reference has to do with the name of the Confectionery's proprietor. In a little bit of Disney irony, the owner of the candy shop actually gets his name from a dentist. Dr. Thomas McCrumb commissioned Walt Disney to make one of his very first films in 1922, an educational piece entitled Tommy Tucker's Tooth.