Bet you didn’t know that Feb. 15 is National Gumdrop Day.

I sure didn’t until I got to scouring the web in search of gumdrops for my husband, Phil.

Gumdrops, those gooey, sugar-topped, dome-shaped treats reminiscent of childhood — remember Gumdrop Mountain in the Candy Land game? — aren’t so easy to find.

At least not the kind Phil prefers.

A few years ago, he got a hankering for gumdrops after watching an episode of “Wagon Train,” the television series from the late 1950s and early 1960s starring Ward Bond as wagon master Maj. Seth Adams and his scout, Flint McCullough, played by Robert Horton.

As McCullough rode off on his Appaloosa one day, Adams demanded he not forget to buy him gumdrops. Well, McCullough got the gumdrops, but was then caught in a storm and took refuge in a barn owned by a couple who also fed him, thus prompting him to give them the gumdrops as a thank-you.

When McCullough returned to the wagon train, Adams asked if he got the gumdrops, to which McCullough replied to a disappointed major that he had given them away.

After seeing the show, Phil and I went searching for gumdrops — and not just any gumdrops.

They had to be the little, dome-shaped ones. They couldn’t be spice drops, which come in cinnamon, licorice, clove, mint and allspice flavors and are sharp to the palate. Gumdrops shaped like orange wedges also didn’t fit the category, nor did the fruit-flavored ones.

Every time we drove through a town with a candy store, we stopped to investigate. We found plenty of spice drops, gummy candies shaped like orange slices and gumdrops that were the right shape, but much too large.

Our mission began to seem fruitless until at long last, we found gumdrops that were perfect, just like the bed in “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.” Just right.

It was right before Christmas a couple of years ago when we eyed them at the Granite State Candy Shoppe in Concord, New Hampshire. The right shape, size and flavors. The only downside: They carry them only at the holidays (otherwise, they offer only spice drops). Last December, when we visited our friends Kim and Otis, who live in Concord, we gleefully purchased some.

National Gumdrop Day has been celebrated since the early 2000s. A form of gumdrop candies were popular in the 1800s, but the modern, softer gumdrop was invented in 1915 by a man named Percy Truesdell.

In my internet travels, I learned all sorts of things about gumdrops, including that there was a “Gumdrop” television series and book series based on a vintage car, and that you can create colorful gumdrop characters, ornaments and other figures using gumdrops and toothpicks.

I also found the source of an exclamation my mother and I used often when I was young: “Goody, goody gumdrops!”

“Goody gumdrops” was an expression in “Harold Teen,” a comic strip from the 1930s. It is also in a line from “Strike Out Where Not Applicable,” the novel released in 1969 by British crime writer Nicolas Freeling: “Buttered toast, and cherry cake, as well as Marmite. Goody, goody gumdrops!”

A shopper studies the offerings in 2021 at Incense & Peppermints Candy & Gifts at 48 Main St. in downtown Waterville. The store carries oversized gumdrops. Rich Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel file

I decided that, before I publish a column declaring gumdrops hard to find, I’d better confirm by visiting Incense & Peppermints Candy & Gifts, a popular shop in downtown Waterville.

Owner Malcolm Porter, who recently expanded the shop and added a cafe, showed me all sorts of sweets Wednesday, including spice drops and wedge-shaped gummy candies, but not the exact gumdrops we sought.

However, he does carry oversized gumdrops in the right shape and flavors — which will have to do.

Perfect, in a pinch. Thank you, Malcolm.

Amy Calder has been a Morning Sentinel reporter 36 years. Her columns appear here Saturdays. She is the author of the book, “Comfort is an Old Barn,” a collection of her curated columns, published in 2023 by Islandport Press. She may be reached at acalder@centralmaine.com. For previous Reporting Aside columns, go to centralmaine.com