In perfect Wonka fashion, a chocolate-brown top hat was perched on Derek Lawson’s head. With an odd resemblance to the fictional chocolate maker, Lawson, creator of the world’s largest gummy bear, opened his factory doors, overpowering everything with the smell of gummy candies.

The world’s largest gummy bear weighs five pounds, stands one foot tall and resides in Crabtree Valley Mall. The qualifications for claiming the world’s largest gummy bear require it to be edible and readily available for retail and distribution worldwide.

“I did not expect any of this,” Lawson said. “When I was looking at the three working eyes of my stove stirring the pot of gelatin and sugar, there was no way I could have seen this coming.”

Lawson and his brother Brett created their bear in a time of frustration and desperation. With candy stores quickly closing all around them, they struggled to come up with an idea that would stick.

“We tried making a lot of different candies and we had a lot of ideas,” Lawson said. “I figured we should just try making a giant gummy bear and that’s exactly what we did. We were just making them and making our own molds — it took off.”

Making the decision to leave his original shop in Wilmington, Lawson moved to Raleigh to become business partners with Mike Horwitz, the man whose family sold Lawson and his brother their first candy shop.

“Wilmington was a great place, just bad for business,” Lawson said. “It’s a place you go to spend money, not make it. Raleigh is simply a better place for a business. We’ve got our factory here and we own Popalop’s Candy Shop in Crabtree Valley Mall.”

Lawson attributes his spark for the original clay mold bears to his lifetime fascination with creating.

“My mom tells me that when I was younger I would use the bread from my dinner plate to make little things,” Lawson said. “If I see a problem I just have to fix it.”

According to Lawson, though, it’s difficult to have a truly original idea.

“Having an original, original idea is tough,” Lawson said. “You have to remember when creating things that the first version of your idea is probably not going to be the final version — there’s no shame in letting the thing morph. You’ve got to let the idea go and figure out things for itself.”

Lawson and Horwitz’s ideas over time have included deep fried gummy bears, 3-D gummy roses, exoskeleton gummy crabs and even Gummy Gumby.

“Mike is a moratorium on ideas,” Lawson said. “Myself, I try and do a lot of detail and trickery. So many candies have no description and are bland to look at. I want people to look at our stuff and ask, ‘how’d you do that?’”

It’s Lawson and Horwitz’s ideas that landed them into the 2001 Ripley’s Believe It Or Not book for the world’s largest gummy bear.

“We were proud to have, what was once only an idea, in the book,” Lawson said. “I love it when a project is quick — you’ve got an idea and then it’s selling. More times than not it takes a year or two. That’s a little harder because then everybody wants to voice their opinion and with 20 chefs in the kitchen, it bogs things down.”

According to Lawson everything he does is in the prism of what can he turn into candy. 

“We don’t think we’ve even scratched the surface,” Lawson said. “We’ve got ideas coming that we’re just tickled about, but so far it’s been a sweet dream.”

Lawson described the journey the company has taken as a train on a set of tracks.

“Why would we quit this?” Lawson said. “We’re on this train until it  jumps the tracks. There’s no way we’re getting off now.”

At the end of the day, with the gummy bears boxed and his Wonka hat put away, Lawson says if he’s one thing, it’s surely not the candy man.

“I’m a mold maker,” Lawson said. “At the end of the day I make molds and it’s those molds that are making the candy.”