Movies and popcorn go together like a horse and carriage—but how did THAT happen?
Although popcorn is now the absolute no. 1 choice for movie theater snacks, it wasn’t always that way. In the 1880s popcorn started becoming very popular at the Circus, and for this reason, movie theaters did NOT want to sell it. They thought it was beneath them.
The big change happened when “talkies” became popular. You no longer had to be literate to enjoy films. This meant that movies could attract a much more economically diverse crowd. And a cheap snack such as popcorn was just fine in their book. Street vendors realized people with more of a popcorn kind of taste were going to the movies, and started posting up outside the theaters. Movie theaters wanted to capitalize on the trend, so popcorn became a staple of the movie theater.
