Is there an accepted first candy bar that sold nationwide?
My life long favorite is Baby Ruth. Created in 1920.
The history of the name alternates between President Grover Cleveland’s daughter Ruth and the baseball player. It’s not coincidence that the candy was introduced at the height of his fame.
Hard Candy makers and Chocolatiers have a long, long history. The corner candy shop that made and sold candy used to be common. It’s not hard to imagine the hundreds of mouth-watering recipes from immigrant families.
It’s surprising that such a easily made product got mass produced and sold across the US.
Payday is my 2nd favorite and first introduced in 1932
This page says the Hershey’s Milk Chocolate bar was created in 1900. It says the Nestlé’s Milk Chocolate bar was created in 1875, but the country of origin was Switzerland and it didn’t come to the U.S. until 1919.
The page says [emphasis mine]:
Although Nestlé debuted its milk chocolate bar 25 years before Milton S. Hershey, his milk chocolate bar was the first mass-produced chocolate in the United States.
I still occasionally buy Mallo Cup. I would love a Sugar Daddy except my fillings & crowns would get pulled loose. I substitute Werthers Hard caramels instead and let them dissolve without biting down.
That’s usually what I hear Hershey credited with. They didn’t invent the chocolate bar, but they were the first company in the United States to make it widely available to the average consumer.
It’s hard to imagine a world without chocolate bars.
You hear penny candy mentioned in movies. That was hard candy like lemon drops, cinnamon or butterscotch candies.
I vividly remember country grocery stores without air-conditioning. You learned early to break candy bars in half before eating. I’ve found and thrown away at least a dozen candy bars that had white worms. The cashier would swap it out with a different candy. It’s not that common. I probably bought a couple hundred candy bars during childhood. A dozen bad ones is a pretty small percentage.
I still snap a piece off my candy before eating it. But it’s probably been 40 years since there was anything wrong.
I suspect much of the trick was in figuring out how to ship chocolate long distances in varying weather, without having the customer get a melted and possibly resolidified lump instead of a chocolate bar.
Chocolate became popular in Spain in the mid to late 1500’s.
It was probably different from the smooth textured Hershey bar that we grew up eating. The consistency of Hershey is noteworthy. They get it right in every box.
I used to love Butterfinger. They changed it in 2019. Huge Marketing campaign. I don’t like the new texture and haven’t bought any since.
The foundation of many commercial candy bars is nougat.
My grandmother made Divinity candy. Isn’t that a type of nougat? Divinity is temperamental and will totally fail in the wrong weather. I bought pecan Divinity from Ebay 2 Christmas ago.
How to make commercial candy bars.
I wouldn’t even try to copy a Snickers or Twix. There are too many fantastic hand-dipped Christmas candies that are better.
I remember the Brach bulk assortment in grocery stores. There was a coin box for samples. It was an honor system. I usually had a nickel in change and dropped into the box for a couple Maple or Fudge caramels. I liked the White Nougat candy with fruit chips too.
The White Nougat candy got stale & hard quickly. I learned 12 to 15 seconds on medium strength in the microwave softened them perfectly fresh.
It’s been 20 years since I had these candies. The grocery stores removed the Brach assorted candy table in the mid 1990’s. You can only buy bags now.
I picked out the fudge and maple candies. I had to quit eating caramel candy in my thirties. It tore my stomach up. I can’t even eat a full Payday bar. A Payday is basically salted, soft caramel with peanuts.
I cut them into thirds, wrap in Saran wrap, and eat a piece once a day. I usually skip days and make a Payday last 5 days. That avoids belly aches.
When I was a child in the early 1970s in Pakistan the 10 paisa (0.1 Rupee, exactly 1 US cent at the time, and about 0.4 British pence) unwrapped hard candies (“seeets” or “lozenges”) sold from a glass jar were ubiquitous at every type of shop.
My mother of course thought that 10 paisa was an outrageous price as they were 4 pies (pre-decimalision) when she was little in the 1940s. She was also extremely poor, and 4 pies (equivalent of something like half a farthing (£0.0002) was still real money to their family.
Even as middle class people in the 1980s, a roll or Smarties or a Mars Bar was a treat you might see once a year.
I see that the buying power of the rupee has deteriorated by a factor of 150x, but I hear that the hard candies are no longer sold unwrapped in bulk, and almost all stores are now self service, not counter service.
Sorry in advance for the digression down memory lane.
Hard candy was one of the few treats that most children could get occasionally.
It depended on the family’s income. Honey and bread were treats for my dad. They sharecropped in
Louisiana before grandad saved enough to buy farm land. The honey came from my grandad’s hives. Chewing honeycomb was like gum to my dad. He did get hard candy once in awhile. They didn’t have a lot but dad had a few pennies in his pocket.
I had forgotten unwrapped candy. I bought some when I was very young.
The history channel actually produced a really good series on the history of candy in America.
As I recall, one of the first mass produced candy bar (other than a plain chocolate bar) was the Milky Way, introduced in 1923 and named after a malt shop shake. (Snickers, incidentally, was named for a horse)
The guy who developed it was named Mars, and he founded a successful candy company.
When he didn’t promote his son as an heir of the operation, the junior Mars teamed with another guy, named Murrie, to form a rival - M&Ms.
I remember a list of super-rich people from decades back where John D. Mars was the fourth richest person in the US, and prolly pretty far up on the world’s richest people list.
The little town in northeastern Ohio where I grew up had a “penny candy” store. As @aceplace57 noted, it was mostly hard candies - peppermints, butterscotches, root beer barrels, boot buttons (colored sugar drops on paper). Also Mary Janes and Sugar Daddies. Looking back as an adult, the commonality seems to have been long-lasting, easily shipped candies that could be sold in small amounts.
It was rather more complicated than that, as I understand it.
Forrest Mars (the son) moved to the UK with all of Frank Mars’s recipes, and started his own Mars company. He made a number of changes (for what seems to have been business and marketing reasons): the (US) Milky Way became the (UK) Mars Bar, the (US) Snickers became the (UK) Marathon, and so on. The new company was very successful, which is pretty good going since the British confectionery sector was (and still is) very competitive. More successful than the US Mars company apparently, since when his father’s business ran into financial trouble, Forrest was able to buy it out and take over.
M&Ms began as a WWII collaboration to supply the armed forces, since no single company could get enough supplies, due to wartime rationing.
mentioned in movies. That was hard candy like lemon drops, cinnamon or butterscotch candies.
popular in Spain in the mid to late 1500’s.
A Payday is basically salted, soft caramel with peanuts.