Victory Mall

 

 

August Goetz opened his own candy company in Baltimore, Maryland in 1894. His unique time-tested recipes have remained unchanged for 130 years and  the company’s flagship products are still made "altmodisch” - in the old fashioned way using traditional methods.
 

The V-Mail (Victory Mail) program was a wartime program implemented by the U.S. government  to streamline and expedite mail delivery to and from military personnel. Introduced in 1942, the V-Mail system was designed to address the logistical challenges and resource constraints of wartime mail. Here is how it worked,

Instead of sending physical letters, individuals wrote on special  5 x 7 inch V-Mail stationery. These letters were then sent to a central processing facility. At the processing facility, the handwritten letters were photographed and converted into microfilm significantly reducing  mail volume.

The microfilm rolls were sent via air or by sea to the recipient's location, where they were converted back into full-sized prints and delivered to the addressee reducing the weight and space required for mail transport.

 V Mail was a very complicated process, and it was Goetz’s knowledge of assembly line processing and mechanics that helped make it a success.

Troops and their families could securely correspond despite the constraints imposed by the war and helped to prevent sensitive information from falling into the wrong hands.

Alongside sending free candy care packages to GIs, Goetz contributed his industrial expertise directly to aiding military infrastructure and national defense operations during WWII.

You know his signature caramel crèmes as Bulls Eyes,