Everyone has a favorite candy. Some people like the powdery sugar in Pixy Sticks. Others prefer classics like lemon drops and root beer barrels. Some like chewy candy like licorice, and some like to suck on candy like jawbreakers.

Anyone who has a sweet tooth knows that candy is the best way to sate it. However, you may not know everything about your favorite candy—like where it got its name, how it was first made, or even why.

10 Saltwater Taffy Was Probably Named As A Joke

Although nobody knows who made it first, saltwater taffy got its start either on the boardwalk in Atlantic City, New Jersey, or at Midwestern county fairs in the 19th century.

Taffy is made with sugar, salt, flavorings, corn syrup, and other ingredients that vary between recipes. It is then pulled and molded to aerate the mixture so that it becomes soft and chewy. Regardless of its name, this soft taffy does not have saltwater in it, although some brands do add extra salt.

According to rumor, saltwater taffy got its name from candymaker David Bradley. During an 1883 storm, his taffy stock became soaked with saltwater from the Atlantic Ocean. But even though his store was flooded, customers still came in to ask for his taffy. He jokingly called it “saltwater taffy,” and the name stuck.

In 1923, John Edmiston trademarked the name and tried to get a cut of the profits from anyone selling “saltwater taffy.” But the Supreme Court decided that the name had already been used too often for candy and ruled against him. As a result, Edmiston did not receive any royalties. The term became common again and is now the accepted way to market nearly any taffy, salty or not.

9 Cotton Candy Was Promoted By Dentists

Originally called fairy floss, cotton candy has gone by many monikers, such as candy floss or spun sugar. John C. Wharton and William J. Morrison patented their version of a cotton candy machine in 1899. Then they introduced the machine and their new candy concoction at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904. They sold nearly 70,000 boxes of candy at that fair.

As cotton candy is made entirely from caramelized sugar, most people realize that such a sweet overload will probably send you to a dentist sooner rather than later. Interestingly, Morrison was a dentist. To be fair, he was also a lawyer, an author, and a civic leader. But still, a dentist creating cotton candy has to raise some eyebrows.

In 1900, cotton candy was introduced to the Ringling Brothers by Thomas Patton, who had invented a more modern version of the cotton candy machine. Even later, Josef Lascaux, another dentist, created another version of the machine that he never officially patented. He did, however, coin the name “cotton candy.”

As to why more than one dentist had a hand in the rise of cotton candy’s popularity, we can only guess that it has to do with the consequential rise of cavities.

8 Pop Rocks Caused Urban Legend And Widespread Panic

The fizzing candies Pop Rocks were developed in 1956 by General Foods research scientist William A. Mitchell. Originally sold for 15 cents a packet in the early 1970s, they came in orange, cherry, and grape flavors. Pop Rocks are small, crystallized pieces of sugar with air pockets of carbonation that “pop” and “crackle” when the candy melts in your mouth or in water.

This popping sound led to an urban legend. As early as 1979, there were rumors about a child who had exploded after eating Pop Rocks with soda. At one point, the Food and Drug Administration even set up a hotline to field any questions from parents concerned about their children eating the candy.

After a large marketing effort to combat the rumors that were gripping the imagination of the public, Pop Rocks eventually disappeared from market shelves in 1983. They have since popped back up and had a resurgence in popularity.

But the crazy rumors still linger and were even featured on MythBusters. Don’t worry about busting your gut, though. The most that Pop Rocks and soda will do to your stomach is to make it upset.

7 Lollipops Have Strange Name Origins

Since ancient times, candies and sugary sweets have often been put on the ends of sticks for easy eating. It became popular in the 17th century to enjoy boiled sugar treats that were pressed onto sticks to eat. This treat was soft candy rather than hard, but it was one of the forerunners of the modern lollipop.

In the 20th century, the owner of McAviney Candy Company often brought home for his children the leftover sticks used to stir batches of candy. He began selling these sticks in 1908, which coincided with the invention of the first automated machine that put sticks in hard candy. Samuel Born, the inventor of the candy machine, was even awarded a key to the city of San Francisco for his invention.

In 1908, George Smith began marketing the modern version of a lollipop through his confection company, Bradley Smith Company. He coined the term “lollipop” in 1931 after a famous racehorse of the time called Lolly Pop.

When lollipops stopped being produced during the Great Depression, the name fell into the public domain. The name also meant something like “tongue slapper” because “lolly” was Old English slang for “tongue” and “pop” meant “to slap.”

Some linguists have even linked the name to the Roman phrase loli phaba (“red apple”), supposedly referring to the traditional Roman toffee apple treat. So the famous name originates from a horse, Old English slang, or ancient Rome. Or it could be made-up. Whatever the truth, it’s a unique way of looking at lollipops.

6 Snickers Also Has Strange Name Origins

The Snickers bar has an interesting story behind its name as well. Although the Snickers bar was not the first peanut, caramel, and nougat candy bar, it was one of the most popular and most enduring of its time.

Frank and Ethel Mars, founders of Mars, Inc., had great success with the Milky Way bar and were open to developing new candies. After three years of development, the Snickers bar was released in 1930.

Just months before the release of their new candy bar, Ethel’s favorite horse, Snickers, died. This was a hard loss for her as she adored her horse. So she and her husband named the new candy bar “Snickers” in the horse’s honor.

Interestingly, the farm where Snickers had lived was called the Milky Way Farm, just like their other famous candy bar. Regardless of this name theme, Snickers candy bars live on as one of the best-selling candies in the world.

5 Circus Peanuts Inspired Lucky Charms

Fondly remembered as one of the original penny candies, Circus Peanuts have been around since the 1800s. The banana-flavored marshmallows are notorious for their love-it-or-hate-it reputation.

Maybe that’s why no one has admitted to inventing them, much less tried to brand them. Since we don’t know who the creator is, we also have no idea why these peanut-shaped candies have a banana flavor.

Either way, these little gum stickers are the reason why we have marshmallow cereals. General Mills product developer John Holahan found that the mixture of Cheerios and cut bits of Circus Peanuts was good enough to sell, which led to the development of the ever-popular Lucky Charms cereal.

So maybe, even if you’re not fond of Circus Peanuts, you might want to thank whoever made them if you love marshmallows in cereal.

4 M&M’S Lost A Color In Cancer Panic

Forrest Mars Sr., son of Frank and Ethel Mars of Mars, Inc., was inspired by the candy-shelled chocolates in military rations to make the famous M&M’S candies. Named for Forrest Mars Sr. and Hershey executive William Murrie, these candies were patented and put into production in 1941.

Eventually, they were sold only to the military. But when the war ended, their popularity continued with civilians. The candies were sold in cardboard tubes, and the original colors were brown, red, violet, yellow, and green. However, in 1979, one of these colors faded from the mix due to FDA test results.

The dye called FD&C Red No. 2 was linked to tumors in female rats in a 1971 Russian test. However, this test was later found to have been incorrectly performed. The tested dye wasn’t the food coloring that was used in M&M’S anyway.

But the damage had already been done. Mars had to deal with a public that was panicked over the possible effects of FD&C Red No. 2. Used to color several popular foods like soda, hot dogs, ice cream, and candy, the public demanded that the controversial dye be removed.

Although M&M’S were colored with Red No. 40, Mars replaced red M&M’S with orange M&M’S to ease public anxiety. In 1987, the red color was reintroduced for M&M’S and has been popular ever since.

3 Necco Wafers Were Brought To The South Pole By The Ton

These chalklike candies were invented in 1847 when Oliver Chase made the first lozenge cutter. It became the machine that launched the candy industry, and it wasn’t long before its first creation, Necco Wafers, made it big.

The military commissioned a major portion of Necco Wafers’ production during World War II because the candies were easy to transport without melting. They were also cheap enough during the Great Depression to become a popular civilian treat.

Famous Arctic explorer Donald MacMillan gave out these candies to native Canadians on his journeys, but that was nothing in comparison to Admiral Richard Byrd. For a two-year journey to the South Pole, Byrd packed 2.5 tons of Necco Wafers. That was about 0.5 kilograms (1 lb) of candy per week for every man on the crew for the entire trip.

There is no record as to whether the entire amount was consumed. Still, the eight original flavors that Admiral Byrd carried with him can be enjoyed today. Except for the price, not much about Necco Wafers has changed since they were invented.

2 Dubble Bubble Gum Was An Accident

Ancient people chewed on bits of tree bark tar. The Maya and Aztecs also chewed on chicle from sapodilla trees. Then, in the 1840s, John Curtis used spruce tree resin to make gum to chew on and later created the first chewing gum factory.

It wasn’t until 1928, however, that our modern idea of chewing gum was created. Accountant Walter E. Diemer created it by accident. He liked to experiment in his spare time. After expanding on a failed recipe, he found a way to make chewing gum that was easier to chew and more resistant to breakage in packaging.

Interestingly, the iconic pink color was chosen simply because that was the only color available. After a successful trial run, the new gum was packaged and marketed as Dubble Bubble Gum. Eventually, the packages included comics that featured Dub, Bub, and the iconic Pud.

This only helped the popularity of the new chewing gum. At the beginning of World War II, it was even shipped to the military before the scarcity of products forced the factories to stop production. These factories reopened soon after the war ended and still cater to our bubble-blowing, cud-chewing needs today.

1 PEZ Dispensers Were Created To Attract Smokers

The famous PEZ candies were created in Vienna, Austria, in 1927. Originally, they didn’t have the sweet, fruity flavors that we know today. They used to be peppermint flavored. In fact, their name comes from pfefferminz, the German word for “peppermint.”

Packaged in tins, the candies were popular for a time. They were supposed to be used as an alternative to smoking because their creator, Eduard Haas III, disliked smoking.

In 1949, new PEZ dispensers designed by Oscar Uxa were introduced as a way to hygienically share the candies without touching all of them. The dispensers were also designed to draw in smokers. Flicking open the top of a PEZ dispenser was meant to be like flicking a lighter. For a time, Haas even used the slogan “No Smoking, PEZing Allowed.”

In the transition to American markets, PEZ changed to their iconic fruity flavors, and the dispensers acquired their character tops. Whether PEZ have actually discouraged smoking is debatable. But PEZ still exist today as beloved combinations of candies and toys.

+ US Senate Candy Desk

The US Senate candy desk is an aisle desk on the Republican side of the Senate that is stocked with various candies. However, it is open to Democrats as well.

The senator assigned to the seat is in charge of keeping it stocked, traditionally with sweets from his own state. This is the only seat that is not assigned by seniority. Instead, it is usually offered to those who love candy and sweets.

The tradition started in 1965 with Senator George Murphy, who had a legendary sweet tooth. He stocked his desk drawer full of candies and offered them to senators who were passing by. When he lost his seat in 1970, the next senator to occupy the desk continued the tradition.

It becomes an interesting tidbit when the desk changes owners and even caused an uproar in the Senate when Senator Craig Thomas took over in 2007. There was concern that his home state of Wyoming didn’t have any well-known candy companies such as Hershey’s, which supplied 180 kilograms (400 lb) of candy per year when Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum occupied the desk.

But the fear that Thomas would be unable to keep the desk stocked was overblown. Several Wyoming artisan companies stepped forward to supply the candy desk, and the candy tradition continued without a hitch.

Erin S. Miller is a woman working her way through school and her own ambitions. She enjoys the strange and unknown as much as writing about them.

Candy has a way of bringing people together, and just about everyone can agree that it is one of the good things in life. We may not agree on the best type of candy, but we do know that candy in general is delicious and even necessary at times.

There are types of candies that the majority of people may find very strange or weird, though, but people in some cultures have enjoyed these treats since they were small children. Take pleasure in learning about some of these interesting candies, and you decide if they are absolutely brilliant or just plain strange.

10 Lamb Caramels

In Hokkaido, “Genghis Khan” is a local dish of shredded mutton barbecue. The traditional dish is prepared in a skillet with lamb meat grilled at the top of the pan surrounded by various vegetables. That sounds like it could possibly be a delicious dish, but would it be as good in candy form?

In 2002, the owner of Sapporo Gourmet Foods developed the Genghis Khan Caramel Candy. He originally tried selling it as a sauce, but the product wasn’t performing well. They decided to rebrand the product and began selling it as a flavored treat instead.^[1] The novelty candy is flavored like lamb curry with a hint of sweetness. Each box of this strange candy comes with 18 individually wrapped caramels that make a great (gag) gift for friends and family.

9 Salsagheti

Salsagheti may sound like a fun spin on a traditional spaghetti dish, but it’s actually a Mexican candy made up of spicy candy straws. Unlike spaghetti, Salsagheti is sweet and sour and is meant to be eaten with your hands. These long, tubular watermelon-flavored gummies are covered in chili-tamarind powder and sugar crystals, and the candy comes with a pack of tamarind sauce which acts as a salsa.^[2] When poured on top of the noodle-shaped candy, it creates a spaghetti look.

The crazy candy is popular across Mexico, but it can also be found in other countries as well. The spaghetti-like treat is a favorite at birthday parties and other celebrations. Salsagheti was also featured on Tastemade as part of a crazy watermelon dish. The watermelon was loaded with cucumbers, mango, and assorted Mexican candies, including Salsagheti. Who would have thought spicy watermelon-flavored candy that resembled spaghetti would be such a hit?

8 Kitten Tongue Chocolate

The popular Czech candy Kocici Jazycky means “Kitten Tongues,” which sounds like a terrible idea for a treat. You might expect small, pink, or wet candies, maybe even covered in hairballs? Thankfully, the small treats are actually just sweet, milky chocolate bars in the shape of a kitten tongue.

The kitten tongue-shaped chocolate bars were first produced in 1892 in Vienna. They saw popularity in the 1920s and 1930s in the Czech lands. The box of chocolates features pictures of soft and fuzzy kittens alongside the tongue-like chocolate bars.^[3] The candy may seem like a strange idea, but at least it’s only made of chocolaty goodness. If you like your candies to be cute and cuddly, you need to try this right meow!

7 Botan Rice Candy

Do you love to eat candy, but you’re too lazy to take it out of the wrapper? Botan Rice Candy actually encourages you to eat the wrapper along with the treat. It’s a soft and chewy lemon/orange-flavored candy that comes wrapped in edible rice paper.^[4] Even though the wrapper is edible, you don’t have to feel pressured into devouring it. The jelly-like cubed candy is all you really need to taste.

The candy comes in a movie theater-style box that appeals to children. Each box also comes with a children’s sticker to accompany the individually wrapped pieces of candy. Some of the collectible stickers found in the package include cartoon ninjas, dogs, a bunny using a computer, and even a squirrel on a mushroom. The candy is mostly sweet but slightly mild as well. It can also be a bit sticky, but the true novelty of the candy is its edible wrapper. The strange candy can be found at several online retailers in the United States.

6 Chocolate Bar With Cheese And Onion Crisps

Tayto is an Irish snack company that has been making crisps and other snacks since 1956. The company produces several flavors of crisps and other delicious snacks to chow on. The company boasts that one in every five packs of crisps eaten in Northern Ireland is Tayto Cheese & Onion. A few years back, Tayto decided to reveal a new snack to the world, though—the Tayto milk chocolate bar with cheese and onion crisps.

The limited-edition candy bar featured small chunks of their best-selling crisp. Since the chocolate bar was unique, several reviewers were quick to post their opinions of the strange sweet.^[5] Many reviews of the candy came back negative, stating that the cheese and onion flavor was a bit too much. Why would you mix that combination with chocolate, anyway? If you are hoping to try this weird piece of candy, you’re out of luck. It was only a limited-edition release, meaning you will have to enjoy their cheese and onion crisps instead.

5 Musk Sticks

What looks like bubblegum toothpaste and has a perfume-like flavor? Musk sticks, of course! The strange candy loved by many Australians and New Zealanders may be off-putting to others. Musk sticks are basically pink cylinders made of gelatin and icing sugar with a musk-like essence.^[6]

The candy dissolves slowly in the mouth, and many people associate the taste with a strong cologne. A baker from Australia wrote about a woman in her blog who described the candy as “tasting like the smell of old ladies at the bus stop & yet kind of nice.” It’s weird, and the appeal is hard to understand, but the candy has been going strong for a century in Australia. Woolworths alone sells around 24 million musk sticks per year. If these candies don’t sound appealing, you could always use them as an air freshener instead.

4 Creamy Corn Candy

Corn is known to have various productive uses, and it can be cooked and served in several ways as well. Creamed corn is one of the more popular ways to eat corn, and there are many recipes to spruce up the dish. Victory Creamy Corn Candy is not one of those great ways to enjoy corn, though. Be careful, because this candy is not to be confused with the popular and delicious Candy Corn.

The slogan posted on the candy package may say, “Tastes So Smooth, Tastes So Rich,” but creamed corn in candy form can’t be known to “Taste So Good.” This strange candy from Malaysia claims to have the perfect blend of smoothness and rich taste that has a long-lasting aroma and flavor.^[7] Next time you’re craving a small taste of Thanksgiving, bust open a bag of Creamy Corn Candy!

3 Percy Pig

The next candy is produced by the British company Marks & Spencer. They have created Percy Pig, a gummy candy that is widely popular across the UK. Gummy candy always sounds delicious, but there is a strange twist on these sweets. Percy Pigs look like normal gummy candies, but they are partly made with pork gelatin.^[8]

These gummy piggies are cute but a bit creepy after knowing the ingredients. The raspberry-flavored treats are quite popular, though, and have a large following of lovers. They can only be purchased at the department store Marks & Spencer, and they now come in other flavors and products, including Veggie Percy, Phizzy Pig Tails, Percy Pig and Pals, and Globetrotting Percy. The department store also produces Percy Pig linens, calendars, party supplies, and mugs.

2 Salt Licorice

Not all candy has to be sweet. People in parts of Northern Europe love their salmiakki, which is also known as salmiak or salted black licorice. The sharp, sour flavor of salt licorice is introduced to many children in Finland, Scandinavia, and the Netherlands, and they continue to enjoy the candy into their adulthood. Salmiakki is a soft licorice with ammonium chloride added to give it a distinct salty taste.^[9]

The salt licorice is sold in both hard and soft form, and it is often used as flavoring for things like ice cream, soda, and liquor. There are mild salty flavors for those looking to try the candy for the first time, and other flavors range from salty to extremely potent. Some makers of the product claim the candy is delicious and addictive, but it seems to be more of an acquired taste.

1 Lightning Bug Gummies

If you are looking to try a candy that is flavorful but also fun to eat, then this is your treat. Lightning Bugs are small gummy treats that actually light up! No need to worry, though, because there are not actual lightning bugs inside this gummy treat. The candy is only strange for how it works, not its ingredients.

Each bag contains small gummies shaped like bugs and a small set of tweezers. The tweezers contain a battery and an LED light located on the tip. Place a gummy bug inside the tip of the tweezers and pinch the bug until it lights up.^[10] It works pretty well, and the gummies are flavorful and delicious. This is one of the best and strangest novelty candies on the market, and it is sure to keep kids (and adults) entertained for hours!

“I’m just another bearded guy trying to write my way through life.”
www.MDavidScott.com

In late September, Candystore.com compared the sales of Halloween candy to determine the most popular. The top 10 candies weren’t surprising, but the breakdown of the favorites by state offered some interesting results. For instance, Ohio’s favorite Halloween candy is Blow Pops. In Montana, it’s Dubble Bubble Gum; Georgia’s fav is Swedish Fish and Lemonheads for Louisiana. But none of these four candies made the top 10 for the nation.

Here are those list toppers in order of popularity, least first, with morsels of their sweet—and not-so-sweet —origins mixed in.

Related: 10 Unique Halloween Traditions From Around The World

10 Candy Corn

If you’re scratching your head as to how candy corn made the top 10 in popularity, you are not alone. But the statistics don’t lie. According to the National Confectioners Association (NCA), 35 million pounds of candy corn are sold around Halloween. That’s nine billion kernels of candy corn sold, and if they were laid end-to-end, they’d circle the Earth more than four times.

The popularity of this candy is the most polarizing, most contentious of the confections on this list. People either love it or hate it, with the numbers tilting toward the latter. The secret to its popularity may be because it is also the oldest candy on this list. For most (52%), candy corn is a tradition, and Halloween cannot come and go without a bowl of it—sometimes with peanuts mixed in—sitting out for guests to graze on—followed by the traditional dumping of most of the bowl into the trash at Thanksgiving.

In the late 1800s, there were a number of candies on the market called buttercreams, usually molded into shapes inspired by agriculture or nature, such as clover, chestnuts, or turnips. In a country that was still heavily agrarian, these confections were meant to appeal to farmers and their families. Candy corn, too, was agrarian-inspired but was a novelty, layered in bright colors.

George Renninger, who worked 68 of his 87 years at Philip Wunderle Candy Company, is usually credited with creating the candy corn sometime in the 1880s. Renninger’s recipe called for melting corn syrup, fondant, vanilla, sugar, and marshmallow crème into a candy slurry, dividing and coloring them—yellow, orange, and white—then pouring them into triangular molds one color at a time. Allowing the candy to cool inside the mold melds the three colors in layers. The pouring of the colored slurry into molds had to be done by hand, the so-called stringers walking up and down the line. While now automated, the way to make candy corn has remained largely unchanged.

Lately, there has been a controversy over the right way to eat candy corn. The NCA surveyed consumers of the confection and found that 47% ate the whole thing in a gulp, while 43% ate it layer-by-layer, starting with the white tip. Just a tenth ate it by beginning with the wider yellow end.^[1]

9 Tootsie Pops

There has been a long-standing mystery surrounding Tootsie Pops. No, I’m not talking about the number of licks it takes to reach the Tootsie Roll center, but we’ll get to that. The mystery is why a Native American has appeared on some of the Tootsie Pop wrappers ever since the candy was inaugurated back in 1931. The man (boy?) wears a traditional headdress and points a bow and arrow at a star.

According to Snopes.com, only about 30% of all Tootsie Pops have the icon on its wrapper. Its relative rarity has led to a rumor that these “special” wrappers can be redeemed for a prize. While some candy companies back in the 1930s had promotions where kids could mail in a certain number of wrappers for prizes, the creators of Tootsie Pops—Sweets Company of America and later Tootsie Roll Industries (TRI)—have never been one of those companies.

TRI claims they still get about 150 letters with these special wrappers enclosed from kids hoping to receive a prize. Since 1982 the company has sent them a consolation letter with a short story about a Native-American appearing in the room of the unnamed Tootsie Pop creator, offering him the secret of making a new lollipop shape. When the inventor agrees, the Native-American shoots an arrow at a star, destroying it so that the inventor could be inspired by the moon’s shape to make a round lollipop. While charming, the story is not particularly satisfactory, especially if you were expecting a prize. Nor is the company’s other explanation for the icon: the star is a symbol for luck. That doesn’t explain what the Native-American signifies. A better answer is the mystery itself. It generates plenty of publicity.

TRI, after all, has a history of using mystery to sell Tootsie Pops. Enter a cartoon owl in 1970, sitting on a branch when a boy delivers the question for the ages: “How many licks does it take to reach the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?” Fifty years later, and still, there is no definitive answer, but not for lack of trying.

Engineers at Purdue University built a licking machine with a tongue modeled after that which lolls in a human mouth. They discovered it takes an average of 364 licks. Not to be outdone by a Big Ten rival, an engineering doctorate student at the University of Michigan built his own licking machine and came up with 411 licks. Other studies have discovered it takes anywhere from 144 to 2,500 licks. The commercial’s narrator was right: we may never know.^[2]

8 Snickers

Franklin C. Mars, the creator of Snickers, was stricken as a child with polio and spent hours in his mother’s kitchen learning to make candy and hand-dipped chocolate. By age 21, Frank supported a wife, Ethel, and son, Forrest, by selling wholesale candies, Taylor’s Molasses Chips, to shops around the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. But the market was so oversaturated that Frank’s venture failed. Ethel divorced him in 1910, gaining full custody of Forrest, then promptly sending the 8-year-old to live with her parents in Saskatchewan, Canada. Frank would rarely see his son in the coming years.

Attempting a new start, Frank remarried yet another Ethel and moved to Tacoma, Washington, where he tried manufacturing his own candy. When that failed, he and Ethel moved back to Minneapolis, where Frank started a basket candies business featuring Patricia Chocolates, named after their daughter. Two years later, they were doing well enough to incorporate, producing the Mar-O-Bar.

In 1923, Forrest was a traveling salesman for Camel cigarettes and was arrested in Chicago for posting cigarette ads illegally. Frank bailed his estranged son out of jail, and the two went to a soda shop. While drinking a chocolate malt, Forrest asked his father why he hadn’t produced a chocolate-malted candy bar. Thus was born the Milky Way, and within a year, Frank’s Mar-O-Bar Company’s revenue jumped 10-fold to $800,000 (about $11 million today), and by 1928, their gross was $20 million ($273 million today).

Frank and Ethel indulged themselves with all that money coming in, purchasing a 3,000-acre farm in Tennessee for Ethel to breed horses, naming the farm Milky Way. After three years of experimenting, Frank introduced Snickers in 1930, named after Ethel’s favorite horse (that had recently died). Today, Snickers usually tops the list for the most popular candy bar in America as well as the world. That is until 2020, when it fell behind Hershey bars in sales ($394 million in America versus $381 million). That still translates into 15 million Snicker bars made every day.^[3]

7 Hershey Kisses

Most people believe candy tycoon Milton Hershey invented these little teardrops of chocolate, but his version was actually a copy of a confection called Wilbur Buds released by Henry Oscar Wilbur in 1894. Wilbur Buds, however, were produced by pouring melted chocolate into tear-shaped molds and leaving them to solidify, each with “Wilbur” imprinted on their flat bottoms.

Hershey, the Henry Ford of the candy world, had already automated his production of Hershey Bars (released in 1900), and he found the teardrop shape could be achieved by simply squirting the chocolate onto a flat surface. Soon after its introduction in 1907, Hershey’s confection began outselling Wilbur’s, and the latter tried to sue Hershey to stop production. Unsuccessfully. Wilbur Buds are still available online.

For the first 14 years of production, Kisses were hand wrapped in silver foil. Then in 1921, the process became automated, the tissue paper tag or plume added at the same time. In 1962, Hershey’s Kisses became among the first candies to change their packaging (red and green) for Christmas. No one is sure why Hershey called his creation Kisses, but historians point out that candies packaged in paper with a twist had been called “kisses” since the 1820s, and the 1856 Webster’s Dictionary defines a kiss—aside from the affectionate smooch—as “a small piece of confectionary.” So common is the word that it wasn’t until 2001 that Hershey was able to trademark his “Kisses,” and only after the company surveyed the public to find that most people associated the word with their product.^[4]

6 Sour Patch Kids

If you can get past the fact that you’re eating a human kid-shaped candy, Sour Patch Kids (SPK) will reward you with first a sour, tangy taste, then a sweet one. It does this because the confection is a gummy with a coating that includes tartaric and citric acid. The acids are packed with protons activated by saliva, which the tongue registers as a strong sour taste. But once the coating dissolves, only the sugar-sweet gummy remains. It’s the coating, however, that makes it a target for tampering. In 2015, Florida drug dealers rolled gummies in a layer of Flakka—a synthetic drug that causes hallucinations—to make them pass for SPK.

Created in the early 1970s by Frank Galatolie when he worked for Jaret International of Ontario, Canada, SPK was originally named Mars Men and shaped like Martians. But, in 1985, when the confection was taken south into the U.S., it was renamed Sour Patch Kids to take advantage of the Cabbage Patch Kids craze. The shapes were altered to be more kid-like, and the new packaging sported a blonde boy with his tongue hanging out, based on Galatolie’s son, Scott.

SPK is not the only candy to also come in a cereal, but it may be the only one that makes the milk taste sour. SPK is not the only candy to flavor an ice cream and certainly not the only candy to appear in a video game. But it may well be the only candy to be added to beer. Mob Craft Beer has introduced Sour Catch, a Belgian pale ale flavored with SPK.^[5]

5 Hot Tamales

Hot, spicy candy isn’t for everybody’s tastebuds, but spicy-lovers are very loyal to certain candies, Hot Tamales among them. Introduced in 1950 by Just Born, Inc., Hot Tamales is a cinnamon-flavored candy that became a mainstay at movie theaters. Hot Tamales have been around for better than 80 years, but they are far from the first cinnamon-based candies. Cinnamon has a chemical called cinnamaldehyde, a skin irritant that the tongue registers as hot. Cinnamon is mentioned in the Bible, in Egyptian hieroglyphics, and in Sanskrit writings. Cinnamon flavoring found its way into candy and medicine in the 19th century, and Red Hots, introduced 18 years before Hot Tamales, are still its primary competitor.

Recently the trend is to make candy hotter, painfully hotter, hot enough to register on the Scoville Hotness Scale. The Scoville Scale measures the capsaicin—another chemical irritant—in food, typically peppers. On the scale, a bell pepper has a zero Scoville Heat Unit (SHU), a jalapeno pepper is between 2,500 and 8,000 SHUs, and a U.S. Grade pepper spray reaches as high as 5.3 million SHUs. Since Hot Tamales do not have capsaicin, the Scoville Scale cannot measure them, but one blogger says a Hot Tamales’ heat was equivalent to a Poblano Pepper, about 1,000 to 1,500 SHUs.

The same blogger said the more recent Hot Tamales Fire was equivalent to a Seranno pepper, or 10,000 to 23,000 SHUs. Atomic Fireballs, introduced in 1954, does have capsaicin and registers 3,500 SHUs. The candy touted as the hottest in the world is the Toe of Satan lollipop, which has cinnamon and a chile extract measured at nine million SHUs.^[6]

4 Starburst

In November 1938, Marcus Pfeffer was a Jewish physician operating out of his Vienna, Austria, home when a friend warned him of an impending one-night pogrom, where Hitler’s fanatical paramilitary (the SA) was to attack and destroy synagogues and Jewish property throughout Germany and Austria. Later known as Kristallnacht (“Crystal Night”), hundreds of synagogues and thousands of Jewish businesses were burned and destroyed, while tens of thousands of men were arrested and sent to concentration camps.

Jewish homes—including Pfeffer’s—were ransacked and valuables stolen. In the next two months, Marcus contacted a relative in England to act as guarantor or sponsor for the family. So Dr. Pfeffer packed up his wife Betty and three-year-old son Peter and fled just hours before the good doctor was to be arrested and sent to the Dachau concentration camp. For ten days, the family tensely waited in Zurich, Switzerland, for arrangements to be completed before they could board a plane bound for London. They were still living in London when Germany began bombing the city, destroying their apartment building while they were away on holiday in Bansbury. The Pfeffers decided to stay in Bansbury.

After the war, Peter grew up to be a journalist, eventually moving into advertising. In 1959, Mars, Inc. in England developed little squares of soft fruit-flavored taffy, and they held a contest to come up with a name for them. Peter had changed his name to Phillips and worked as a copywriter for the Masius Wynne-Williams ad agency when he submitted and won the contest.

The new name, Opal Fruits, won him five pounds. The name lasted nearly 30 years in Europe, but when Mars took the candy to America, Mars called it M&M’s Fruit Chewies, followed by Starburst a few years later. In 1998, Europe joined the U.S. in calling them Starburst, although the name Opal Fruits makes a comeback now and then.^[7]

3 M&M’s

We’ve already talked about Frank and Forrest Mars, and after Forrest came up with the idea for Milky Way, Frank began to groom his son to take over the Mars Company. But when father and son fought in 1932, Frank removed Forrest from Mars, Inc., giving him $50,000 and foreign rights to Milky Way. Forrest went to Switzerland to learn chocolate-making and traveled Europe working for chocolate companies. Back home, Frank died of heart problems in 1934, his wife Ethel taking the reins of Mars, Inc., not Frank.

Forrest, by then, had moved to York, England, to work for H.I. Rowntree and Company and was instrumental in introducing their Kit Kat bars. Frank also opened his own factory in Slough, England, producing a sweeter version of the Milky Way called the Mars Bar. He was at Rowntree when the company, in 1937, began to make small beads of chocolate in a hard-shell called Smarties (not to be mistaken for the tart Smarties available today) and put them in the rations of British soldiers sent to fight in the Spanish Civil War. The hard shell kept the chocolate from melting in the summer heat. Forrest knew that sales of chocolate typically dropped during the warm summer months, and he realized the potential of these small, easily portable candies.

Forrest returned to America and filed for a patent of his borrowed idea, receiving the patent in March 1941. Forrest did not turn to his widowed stepmother or the Mars Company, striking out instead to form his own company. World War II broke out in America later that year along with rationing, and Hershey’s Co. had control of all rationed chocolate in the country. So Forrest invited Bruce Murrie, son of Hershey’s president William Murrie, to join him in starting the Mars & Murrie Company, M&M for short. Their product would be made with Hershey’s chocolate. Initially, M&M’s were offered exclusively to the U.S. Armed Forces. But as vets returned home, they brought word of the candy to civilians, and by the end of the war, M&M had an expanding market. Even today, Mars still donates M&M’s to America’s MRE program.

After the war, Bruce Murrie observed something that many would afterward verify: Forrest Mars was difficult to work with. Known for his volcanic temper and tirades, Frank would repeatedly throw his candy at a glass window simply because he found one mis-wrapped. Forrest would humiliate Murrie in front of employees, and eventually, Murrie sold his 20% share for a paltry $1 million. When Murrie tried to return to Hershey’s, he was snubbed because of his partnership with a competitor.

Forrest also tried to gain control of his father’s company, but it wasn’t until his stepmother died in late 1945 which gave Forrest 50% of her stock that he returned to Mars, Inc. He brought with him not just M&Ms, but his Mars Bar (the American version has almonds).^[8]

2 Skittles

Skittles are shaped like M&M’s and even sport a letter (S) just like its chocolate cousin. And it’s currently produced by the William Wrigley Jr. Company, a subsidiary of—you guessed it—M&M’s producer, Mars, Inc. But in taste, the two couldn’t be more different. Even when the two cross into each other’s flavors—such as the Chocolate Mix Skittles in 2007 and the Key Lime Pie M&M’s of the last couple of years—they each retain their distinctive flavors.

No one seems to know who invented Skittles, except that an uncredited British company first produced them in 1974. However, there’s a story circulating the Internet about the inventor, “Mr. Skittles,” looking up in the sky and spying a rainbow, then wondered what a rainbow would taste like. He then experimented for three years to produce a rainbow-flavored candy.

If this seems like the plot to an ad campaign, that’s because it is, originating from the 1994 “Taste the Rainbow” campaign. The name most likely comes from the European lawn or indoor pub bowling game called Skittles. The balls used in Skittles are heavy, usually round, and smaller than a bowling ball, often in different colors. The Yanks first tasted the rainbow in 1979.^[9]

1 Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups

The origins of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups arise from the fertility of its creator, Harry Burnett (H.B.) Reese. H.B. and his wife, Blanche Edna Hyson, had 16 children (that poor woman)—eight boys and eight girls—13 of whom lived to adulthood. For the first two decades of their marriage, H.B searched for a job he’d find fulfilling while supporting his expanding household.

He found working farms, fisheries, and factories unfulfilling but still worked two or three jobs to make ends meet. And those ends rarely met. While working at one of Hershey Chocolate Company’s dairy farms, he noticed how lucrative the candy-making business could be. “If Hershey can sell a trainload of chocolate every day, I can at least make a living making candy,” he later said.

In 1921, Blanche’s father bought a larger home for the Reese family in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and H.B. began working in the Hershey factory. Meanwhile, he made and sold confections from the basement of his home. They started small, making mints, hard candies, and chocolate-covered raisins and nuts sold directly to department and drug stores. H.B. invented a chocolate-covered caramel and coconut candy he dubbed the “Lizzie Bar” after his oldest daughter, Mary Elizabeth. Mary Elizabeth would later remember her father heading for the basement at 3 am to crack open coconuts, then peel and grate them. Her brother Johnny also had a candy bar named after him.

By 1926, H.B.’s candies were making enough money for him to quit his job at Hershey’s and move the operation from his basement to a factory. Two years later, H.B. developed peanut butter cups as part of a package of assorted candies that included coconut (cream, caramel, and honeydew), peppermint cream, chocolate jets, nougat, nuttees, and peanuts and raisin clusters. Mary Elizabeth remembered that she helped hand-coat the Hershey chocolate over the varied centers on marble slabs before letting the chocolate set in little paper cups. H.B. would often set up coating tables in the windows of stores to entice pedestrians to come in the store to taste their confections.

By 1935, the peanut butter cup became so popular, it was sold separately, and by World War II, rationing forced H.B. to produce his Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups exclusively. After H.B. died suddenly of a heart attack in 1956, his sons sold the company to Hershey Company in 1963 for 5% of its stock, worth roughly $23.5 million. Today that stock is worth $1 billion, in part because Reese’s tops many lists as the most favored Halloween candy.^[10]