Remember Nik-L-Nips? (You could also buy a box of 8 called 10¢ Nips, but the name will always stick in my memory.)

Mentioned these here earlier, and since then found a great blog post about many other kinds of wax candy at Do You Remember, including the “glow stick” kind and the “six-shooter,” which was full of enough syrup for a day’s buzz.

But I remember one that appeared in 1961, the same year as “Atlantis, the Lost Continent.”

That movie featured a crystal death ray, that did unpleasant things to everything and everyone on whom its deadly beam was focused.

Like turning them into instructional medical skeletons.

But that small detail aside, across the street from my home on Prince Street in New York City, in 1961, was one of those wonderful old-style variety stores that had comics and candy and hardware and just about anything else a kid might revel in.

Including these syrup-filled wax candies that looked just like that crystal engine of destruction. I swear it. I bought a lot of them. No trace of their existence seems to remain on the Internet, but I know they existed. I’m not crazy.

If anyone else remembers these, do leave a comment so I can rest easy knowing it wasn’t all an opium dream.

The Old Wolf has spoken.