Philly Couple Debuts Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders Candy

Left: Mitt Coats and Samantha Gutièrrez. (Photo by JPG Photography) Right: Product shot of Trumpy Taffy.

Ah, good old American ingenuity. It brought us the Macintosh computer, the Roomba, and proton therapy. And now, Candidate Candy.

On Wednesday, Philadelphia husband-and-wife team Mitt Coats and Samantha Gutièrrez announced their candy company, which pokes fun at the presidential candidates through confectionery.

Should you wish to plunk down $23.95 and up, you could be the proud owner of Bernie Bears (the tin reads “FREE STUFF,” a nod to Bernie Sanders’ socialist tendencies), Trumpy Taffy (“JOKE’S ON YOU”), and the Hillary Clinton-inspired Clint Cat (“CRAFTY WAFER IN SWEET LIES”).

They say that 10 percent of all proceeds will go to St. Jude’s Hospital for Children and that they’ll donate 25 cents for every social media interaction (Facebook likes and shares, retweets, etc.) to the Wounded Warriors Project.

Coats, a medical student at Penn, and Gutièrrez, one year out of Temple Law, came up with the idea in March. Coats taught himself how to code and put together the website, while Gutièrrez is responsible for all of the product designs. The couple contacted candy companies all over the country, eventually deciding on Atlantic City’s James Salt Water Taffy for the Trump candy, Zwahlen’s in Valley Forge for Clinton’s, and a candy maker in Indiana for the Bernie Bears.

There are also candies inspired by Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, among others.

“When we started this, we didn’t know how things were going to shape up,” Coats points out. “Frankly, we thought that Kasich would drop and Rubio would stay, but … ”

Gutièrrez is originally from Texas, while Coats hails from Utah. The couple met while in school at Dartmouth and have been married for three years.

When asked who their own favorite was in the presidential election, the couple laughed.

“That’s the funny thing,” observes Coats. “We couldn’t really find someone we really loved, so we just thought it would be easier to poke fun at all of them.”

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