Kickstart: Ring Pops are back in business

The Ring Pop, a hard candy mounted on a plastic ring, has returned to production in Pennsylvania.

Bazooka Candy Brands announced April 4 it has started manufacturing at a new 120,000-square-foot, 100-employee plant in Moosic, Pa., capable of making 1.5 million ring pops a day.

It's a sweet story for the candy maker that had been forced to close the original Ring Pop factory in Scranton, Pa., in August 2024 because mine shafts far underground caused the building to become unstable after 47 years of operation. Suddenly, Bazooka found itself shut out of manufacturing for a brand expected to surpass $100 million in retail sales this year. The plastic-mounted candy sells at stores for about $1.

"It would not have been surprising for it to take at least a year or more to get back up and running," Bazooka Brands CEO Tony Jacobs said in a news release. "But we have an incredible team, and I could not be prouder of how they responded.

"In a matter of weeks, they found a new location. In a matter of months, they moved our equipment. And in just six months, the facility, our equipment and our team were fully operational again. What an unbelievable accomplishment," he said.

Jacobs told Fast Company that Bazooka expects to recover from its supply gap within six months.

In July 2024, math teacher Sarah Flohr visited liquid silicone rubber molder R.D. Abbott and supplier NovationSI as part of a "boot camp" to help teachers learn more about engineering so they had more information to give their students in science, technology, engineering, arts and math (STEAM).

In February, she returned with two colleagues and 21 of her students from Roberts Middle School in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, so they could get a hands-on education in polymer science just like she'd had.

The students toured laboratories, mixing rooms and warehouses and were able to check out daily duties of technicians, NovationSI said in a news release.

The visit was such a success Flohr hopes to make it an annual event for students in her Math Academy at the school.

Computer equipment supplier Logitech is setting its mice free from their plastic containers.

The Swiss company said April 2 that it will eliminate plastic clamshell packaging for the computer mouse by the end of 2025 for the "tens of millions" of mice it sells each year, switching to paper packaging. Logitech says that drops the equivalent of 660 tons of plastics from its packaging, or the equivalent of 37 million single-use water bottles.

The mice are just part of an overhaul of Logitech packaging to reduce the use of plastics.