The Everlasting Gobstopper
What it is
A candy that never gets any smaller no matter how long you suck on it — designed, Wonka explains, for children who have very little pocket money. It also changes color and flavor every ten seconds. In the 1971 film, the gobstopper becomes the moral hinge of the entire story: Charlie, pressured by Slugworth (Wonka's apparent competitor), is asked to steal a gobstopper for industrial espionage. His refusal to do so is the test of his character that wins him the factory.
Real-world basis
The gobstopper (British English) or jawbreaker (American English) is a real confection: a large, hard candy made by the process of panning — coating a small seed candy with successive layers of sugar syrup, building up the candy layer by layer until it reaches the desired size. Commercial jawbreakers can take weeks to manufacture and consist of dozens or hundreds of concentric layers, each potentially in a different color and flavor. Large jawbreakers can take thirty minutes to an hour to consume, which is about as close as real confectionery gets to Wonka's vision of infinite duration.
Gobstopper etymology: "Gob" is British slang for mouth (used in phrases like "shut your gob"), so a gobstopper literally stops the mouth. The American term "jawbreaker" makes the same point more violently. Both terms suggest a candy that is definitionally excessive, that demands the maximum physical engagement, that is designed to be in the mouth as long as possible. Wonka extends this logic to its absurdist conclusion: a candy that is in the mouth literally forever.
Real-world attempts
Nestlé produced an "Everlasting Gobstopper" branded product to tie in with both film adaptations. It is a layered, color-changing jawbreaker that is not, in any meaningful sense, everlasting — it lasts approximately thirty minutes. It is, however, a genuinely accomplished piece of confectionery engineering: the multiple layers, each dissolving to reveal a different color and a different flavor, produce a reasonable simulacrum of the Wonka concept. The product has been manufactured continuously since the 1971 film and is one of the most recognizable Wonka-branded confections.
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