Pop Rocks is a carbonated candy with ingredients including sugar, lactose (milk sugar), corn syrup, and flavoring. The idea of the product was patented by General Foods research chemist William A. Mitchell in 1956.

The Pop Rocks candy was first offered to the public in 1975. Around 1983, General Foods stopped selling the candy. Some incorrectly believed that this was because of an urban legend that mixing Pop Rocks with carbonated soda could result in a person's stomach exploding.

In fact the candy was withdrawn for reasons largely owing to its success in the marketplace and to its relatively short shelf life. While distribution was initially tightly controlled to ensure product freshness, with its "exploding" popularity, unauthorized redistribution from market to market resulted in out-of-date product reaching consumers, many of whom complained that the candy was not performing as expected.[citation needed] In 1985, Kraft Foods bought the rights to the candy product and re-marketed it as Action Candy through a company called Carbonated Candy. Since 1979, Zeta Espacial S.A., a company based in the municipality of Rubí in Barcelona, Spain, has manufactured, sold, and exported the product.

In 2006, Dr. Marvin Rudolph, who led the group assigned to bring Pop Rocks out of the laboratory and into the manufacturing plant, wrote a history of Pop Rocks development. The book, titled Pop Rocks: The Inside Story of America's Revolutionary Candy, was based on interviews with food technologists, engineers, marketing managers, and members of Bill Mitchell's family, along with the author's experience.

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