Boy makes tractors, trains out of candy

Thursday night was a perfect night for a farmers market. The weather had been in the 90s and even 100 at a few of the recent markets, but Thursday?s market was notably cooler than that. No one appreciated the mild weather more than Dalton Sorrells. Dalton is the son of Cara and Brett Sorrells, and he was at the market selling chocolates and candy.

It must be said that Dalton?s candy was no ordinary candy. Dalton had taken a variety of soft and hard candies and glued them together to make familiar shapes. With the help of his parents, Dalton had manufactured a line of sugary automobiles which he displayed at his own booth.

Thursday was not the first time Dalton had attended the market. He is a frequent visitor owing to the fact that his grandparents, Maurice and Sherry Sass, have a regular booth from which they sell their fresh produce. Dalton had become intimately familiar in the arts of salesmanship and marketing through his weekly observations of vendors and their customers. At the age of 13, he was ready to strike out on his own and make a name for himself. He could wait no longer to join the ranks of the Central Park craftsmen he so deeply admired.

Dalton?s idea was to sell pieces of candy that had been stuck together to form a recognizable object. He got the idea on a recent visit to a bakery in Kalona, where he saw pieces of candy in the shape of a tractor. He and his parents discussed the prospect of young Dalton assembling candy in a similar fashion and selling the products at the Washington Farmers Market. His mother agreed to work the hot glue gun but it would be Dalton?s responsibility to market the edible miniatures and perform some elementary accounting such as keeping track of the dollar bills.

Dalton?s debut at the farmers market came Aug. 4. Since it was his first time, and since he was still in the experimental stage with his products, he displayed only one line of merchandise. That line was candy tractors. The front of the tractor is made of a pack of five sticks of gum. A Hershey kiss represents the steering wheel. Other ingredients include mint patties, nuggets and two miniature candybars.

?We thought the tractors were cool so we started with them,? Dalton said. ?We sold them here and they did all right, so we decided to go ahead and make some more.?

Dalton knew he was on to something good so he surfed the World Wide Web in search of other marketable shapes. He came across candy glued in the shape of a truck and quickly added that to his repertoire. He saw many of his ingredients used to construct a tiny train, and he liked that idea, too. Dalton did not limit himself to terrestrial vehicles. He could hardly keep his feet on the ground when he saw a helicopter made from gum and a tootsie pop.

Two perpendicular sticks of gum represent the rotating propellers of the helicopter. The tootsie pop is the body of the aircraft and its stick is the tail. Another piece of candy is attached below the tootsie pop, which Dalton said could be anything at all such as a box of ?Now and Laters.? On either side of that bottom box are Smarties, which are the helicopter?s landing gear.

The trucks consist of Hershey?s nuggets and employ life-savers for wheels. Dalton said he was afraid the wheels would adhere to the table so he wrapped the trucks to make sure they wouldn?t stick to anything.

The body of the trains is a whole roll of life-savers, and underneath that is a pack of gum. Mint patties play the role of wheels. The conductor would sit behind a Rollo and a Starburst, and he would look out to see a Hershey?s kiss as the locomotive?s smokestack.

Dalton has every intention of keeping that glue gun warm. He has discovered even more designs he would like to try in the coming weeks. Before long, he plans to add racecars to his lineup of artistic appetizers.