From chocolate to gummies, everyone has a favorite Halloween candy. While some treats are recent inventions, many classic candies have been around for 100 years - or more! Discover the history of these 5 sweets before you snag or hand out Halloween candy this year.
#1: Hershey’s milk chocolate
The first Hershey’s milk chocolate bars were sold in 1900, followed by Hershey’s kisses in 1907. Milton Hershey thought people would buy more chocolate if it was less expensive, so he reduced the amount of expensive cocoa powder in his chocolate and added more inexpensive milk and sugar. Milk chocolate was born, and it was an instant success - in just a few years, Milton built an entire town in Pennsylvania (aptly named Hershey) around his chocolate factory!
#2: Reese’s peanut butter cups
Reese’s peanut butter cups also have a candy-making namesake: Harry Burnett Reese. He worked at the Hershey factory for several years, but in the 1920s, he left the company with his own candy ideas. Using a recipe similar to Hershey's, he invented Reese’s peanut butter cups in his basement! It’s no wonder people loved them - he had 16 children he could count on for taste-testing!
#3: M&Ms
M&Ms were invented in 1941 by Forrest Mars, the son of pioneering candy maker Frank Mars. The chocolate bites were coated with a candy shell so they wouldn’t melt in the pockets of WWII soldiers! One of the “Ms” in “M&Ms” stands for Forrest Mars and the other stands for Bruce Murrie, the son of a Hershey’s executive who helped Forrest mass-produce the candy.
#4: Kit Kats
Unlike most Halloween candies popular in the United States, Kit Kat bars were originally sold in England. This treat has had three names: Rowntree’s Chocolate Crisps, Kit Kat Chocolate Crisps, and Kit Kat bars! This candy’s namesake is thought to be Kit-Cat, an 1800s London literary club named after the owner of a shop where the group met.
#5: Candy corn
Candy corn debuted in the 1880s, when about half of Americans worked on farms. While this candy’s isn’t everyone’s favorite, it was probably better than the other Halloween treat available at that time: hardened mellowcreme (a sugary substance) shaped like pumpkins, chestnuts, and even turnips! This triangular candy wasn't originally named candy corn - back then, corn was fed to livestock, not eaten by people. Instead, it was first named “chicken feed”! After WWI, when food shortages caused many people to begin eating corn, this tricolored treat’s name was switched to “candy corn”. But it still didn’t lose its association with chickens - in the 1920s, packages of candy corn featured a rooster and the motto, “King of the Candy Corn Fields”!
Learning - especially learning about candy - is pretty sweet. (Although eating candy might be a little sweeter.) What's your favorite kind of Halloween treat? Click the blue button below to vote! 👓