Cannabis.net sat down with Eric Lefcowitz and talked about his new cannabis startup Space Food Sticks ®
Space Food Sticks ® Launched into Cannabis-Infused Edible Becoming the First Classic Candy Trademarked Brand to Do So
Eric Lefcowitz is a former author turned specialty food entrepreneur based out of New York. His company Retrofuture Products LLC recently spearheaded the launch of the classic brand Space Food Sticks® in the infused-edibles marketplace in California.
Q: How did Pillsbury Space Food Sticks, a kids snack which came out in 1969, become cannabis-infused?
A: Well it’s important to say that Pillsbury has nothing to do with the THC version. I applied for the trademark in 2002 and it is now a federally-registered trademark belonging to my company Retrofuture Products.
Q: Duly noted. That makes it one of first legacy American food brands to cross over into the cannabis space, right?
A: Certainly one of the first if not the first. I like to joke that’s one small step for a man...
Q: One giant leap for man’s mind!
A: That’s funny. Hey can I use that?
Q: Sure! Another question: what is a Space Food Stick anyway?
A: It’s a protein snack, an energy bar. It’s chewy like a Tootsie Roll but smoother and better for you. We’re getting rave reviews actually. More than a few people have assured me it’s one of the better tasting edibles currently available.
Q: And where is it currently available?
A: Right now we’re street legal in California. I am working with B Le Grand who runs Edibles List magazine. She and her partner Patrick now own a licensed production kitchen called The Art of Edibles. We launched a week ago, exactly on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo Moon Landing.
Q: Cool. Why them?
A: I could have gone with a Canadian-funded company where everybody seemed to have MBAs but I’m from the indie entrepreneur world and I was seeking out people like myself, grassroots people. My partners know cannabis culture from the traditional market days. They are authentic people so they were the best fit.
Q: Expansion plans?
A: Absolutely. There’s interest. If any of your readers in states where it’s recreational legal own an edibles plant want to get in touch I’d love to talk. I love Canada too.
Q: How did you choose Space Food Sticks as a project?
A: OK that's a longer answer but it's I think it's pretty interesting because it speaks to how random life can be. In 1999 I was a freelance writer working for AOL. Remember AOL?
Q: How could I forget? I used all those free discs as coasters.
A: We all did! Anyway I writing a weekly column about the countdown to the millennium which I called Retrofuture. Basically I was looking at all the fabulous things that were supposed to happen by the year 2000.
Q: Jetpacks?
A: Yes. Jetpacks, household domestic robots, vacations on the moon, how we would need "leisure counselors" in the future because of all the free time we would have.
Q: That one didn't pan out.
A: No it didn't. I also wrote a column called Let Them Eat Fake! which was somewhat prescient because I wrote about Soylent Green the movie and now we have Soylent. I also discussed protein pills and the role of Space Food Sticks in food history.
Q: So how did it go from that article to a cannabis-infused edible?
A: Here's where things get slightly weird and random. Yahoo had a print magazine, haha, to help people understand the Internet and they wanted to write about my Retrofuture project so I ended up putting my content on the web. And Space Food Sticks started getting a lot of search inquiries on Google. This is the year 2001.
Q: So what then?
A: I decided to found the Space Food Sticks Preservation Society. On a whim. It seemed fun and I had a hunch there was something there. A thousand people wrote in right away and many of them said they wanted to see the product re-introduced. So that's what I did.
Q: You became a candy maker?
A: Basically yes. Of course it took a lot of time and effort and the learning curve was steep but eventually I re-formulated the products and found a candy manufacturer in upstate New York. Amazingly people started buying them. Food Network came and filmed. We were selling at Kennedy Space Center! And I talked to an astronaut named Ed Gibson who ate Space Food Sticks in actual space. You know unlike Tang these babies actually flew!
Q: But why cannabis?
A: Why not? Haha. OK it was a wee bit more complicated than that. After I lost my manufacturer Vice magazine called me to write about Space Food Sticks and I just improvised an answer that I bringing them out as a cannabis edible. They loved it and ran it.
Q: You're right. That is a pretty crazy story.
A: But true.
Q: So one last question: you wrote a popular biography on the Monkees back in the 1980s. Did any of those guys get high?
A: Did they? Hahahaha. They were so high on the set their second season—they look absolutely blazed. And then they made that psychedelic cult movie with Jack Nicholson called “Head.” Let’s just say they were fans.
Q; How can people get in touch with you about Space Food Sticks?
Contact Eric at eric@retrofuture.com or check out our website here.
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