{"id":145678,"date":"2026-01-31T20:30:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T20:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/145678\/"},"modified":"2026-01-31T20:30:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T20:30:10","slug":"big-top-candy-shop-comes-to-hyde-park-the-austin-chronicle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/145678\/","title":{"rendered":"Big Top Candy Shop Comes to Hyde Park\u00a0 \u2022 The Austin Chronicle"},"content":{"rendered":"

The great American candy store. A place of childhood memories and seemingly forgotten sweet treats. Under the circus sideshow banners of Big Top Candy Shop\u2019s<\/a> new second location in Hyde Park, there\u2019s a sugary realm of candies both modern and nostalgic. There are the best sellers like Hershey\u2019s, but also imported delights like the twisting Curly Wurlies, vintage treats like gooey-hearted Mallo Cups, gourmet handcrafted truffles, and basket after basket of every saltwater taffy flavor imaginable.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s an\u00c0 la recherche du temps perdu moment somewhere on these shelves for everybody. For Brandon Hodge, the taste of his childhood is tied up with hot summers in Mauriceville, Texas. \u201cThere was a little tin-roofed, dirt-floor shack of a convenience store, right across the brambles from the pool, and after we\u2019d been swimming a couple of hours we\u2019d get out for lunch, and I\u2019d get two tubes of Sixlets and a Big Red,\u201d he recalls. \u201cI would down a tube of Sixlets, and I would down the Big Red, and then savor the second tube of Sixlets.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once in a while \u2013 not very often \u2013 he\u2019ll still indulge in that childhood treat, or maybe grab the odd handful of chocolate covered almonds, but he\u2019s pretty busy right now stacking candy rather than eating it. As the owner and manager of the original South Congress destination for the sweet-toothed, he\u2019s getting ready for the 43rd Street location\u2019s Jan. 31 grand opening.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Right now, he\u2019s completing the last finishing touches. The freezer that will hold frozen treats is being installed and the bins of pick\u2019n\u2019mix candy are being filled, all ahead of the event, with promises face painting, candy tasting, and a whole day of sugary delights. As he takes a brief break, a crocodile of preschoolers toddles past, and every little head turns and gasps at the delights within. One child looks up at the circus elephant painted on the window, points, and giggles. Inside, Hodge is the literal big kid in the candy store.<\/p>\n

Hodge has only really ever had two day jobs: working in a store and running one. He\u2019s also been a musician, playing Friday night residencies at the old Black Cat Lounge as a member of punk-swing-ska band Dot, and he\u2019s a historian and author, with an upcoming book on the strange machinery and devices of the American spiritualist movement. Yet like so many college grads his first real job was in retail. Fortunately, it was cooler than the average gig: working behind the counter at Lone Star Illusions, a magic and gift store in Barton Creek Square. He literally walked into the job after his college roommates told him to walk around the mall \u201cuntil you find a place you think you can stand to work at.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Eventually, Lone Star Illusions relocated to South Congress when it was \u201cstill kinda sketchy,\u201d Hodge says. Now they had a real standalone store, and could add all the decorations they wanted, including a fez-wearing monkey statue on the roof. When the owner finally retired in 2004, Hodge spent a year as a self-described unemployed poet\/musician, but when he saw a \u201cfor lease\u201d sign on the 1700 block of South Congress, he decided to get back into retail \u2013 this time as his own boss. He signed the lease, and in 2005 he opened toy and novelty store Monkey See, Monkey Do! In keeping with the theme, his boss at Lone Star Illusions even let him keep the rooftop monkey.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2007, his landlords let him know that the building next door was coming up for lease, and would he be interested? Suddenly struck a wild bolt of inspiration. He\u2019d recently been in Boulder, Colorado, and there\u2019d been a candy store on Pearl Street that caught his eye. \u201cI just blurted out, \u2018Well, yeah, we really need a candy store down here,\u2019 and they said, \u2018A candy store? Tell us more.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018Well, it would be circus- and sideshow-themed and I could call it Big Top.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt happened that spontaneously.\u201d<\/p>\n

This wasn\u2019t just any old candy store. This was a real retro gem, decorated with sideshow posters painted by and including images of the staff themselves as circus performers, with bins and shelves filled with literally every sweet and treat in the catalogue, plus an old-school soda jerk station where customers could order seemingly forgotten delights like egg cream sodas \u2013 all created with original vintage equipment.<\/p>\n

This second location came about almost as accidentally as both Monkey See, Monkey Do! and the original Big Top. One day Hodge was having breakfast at Julio\u2019s Cafe on Duval and saw that the shoe shop around the corner was having a sidewalk sale, which turned out to be a closing sale. In a familiar chain of events, he asked around, found out the lease was coming available, and now Hyde Park gets to experience the joy of this South Austin favorite.<\/p>\n

\"\"Credit: Big Top Candy Shop<\/p>\n

And Hodge is very aware that he\u2019s part of defending a great American tradition. Like many traditions, it\u2019s always in peril: Just this week, Primrose Candy Company, the confectioners behind Coffee Nips and Butterscotch Buttons, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protections after 98 years. Yet there are still small firms with long histories out there, as well as revivalists like Leaf Brands, which brought back the multicolored space-age sucker, Astro Pops. As long as those firms keep the production line going, Hodge will keep them on his shelves.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not just about the candy. This weekend, he\u2019ll be bringing a vintage hotdog machine from the Sanitary Hot Dog Company to the Hyde Park store, and there are plans to eventually bring the same kind of soda station that\u2019s currently such a beloved part of South Congress to Central Austin. And, of course, just like the original location, every spare inch of wall space is covered in the Big Top\u2019s distinctive yellow and maroon circus tent stripes, and those freshly-painted-but-old-fashioned canvas circus sideshow posters for characters like Fifi the Gummi Brained Gal, Lil\u2019 Bubblegum Bob, and the Lollipop Boy.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s places like Big Top that keep those connections to the past alive: not just to the history of the candy store, but to childhood memories that can be summed up in just one bite. When he was a kid, his grandpa would go to the Sunbeam General Store in Mauriceville, \u201cand you would literally pull up the bed of your truck, and for 25 bucks they would fill up the bed of your truck with the stuff they had pulled off the grocery shelves. Oftentimes, Little Debbie stuff would make it in there, so he would freeze Honey Buns. He would throw them in the freezer, and the texture. Oh, god. A frozen Honey Bun? That might be the one thing I could not live without.\u201d<\/p>\n

Big Top Candy Shop\u2019s Hyde Park grand opening takes place Jan. 31 at 417 E. 43rd.<\/p>\n

A note to readers:\u00a0Bold and uncensored,\u00a0The Austin Chronicle\u00a0has been Austin\u2019s independent news source for over 40 years, expressing the community\u2019s political and environmental concerns and supporting its active cultural scene. Now more than ever, we need your support to continue supplying Austin with independent, free press. If real news is important to you, please consider making a donation of $5, $10 or whatever you can afford, to help keep our journalism on stands. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The great American candy store. A place of childhood memories and seemingly forgotten sweet treats. Under the circus…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":145679,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,59143,59454,1551],"class_list":["post-145678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-big-top-candy-shop","tag-brandon-hodge","tag-feature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145678\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}