164 Fun Facts About Candy

What company is known for producing the popular chocolate candies M&M's?

Mars, Inc., and the M's stand for Mars and Murrie: Bruce Murrie, son of the Hershey president, was a partner whose company supplied the chocolate during wartime rationing. Mars bought him out in 1949.

Chocolate comes from a tree whose scientific name, Theobroma, means what in Greek?

Food of the gods: the name joins the Greek theos, 'god', and broma, 'food'. Among the Aztecs the tree's beans were spent as money as well as ground into a ritual drink.

Which candy bar was sold in the UK as 'Marathon' until 1990?

Snickers was sold as Marathon in Britain and Ireland until 1990, when the name changed to match the rest of the world; a retro Marathon edition returned to Morrisons for three months in 2019.

Which American candy, invented in 1912 as a 'summer candy' that would not melt, comes as a roll of rings?

Life Savers, named for the ring-style life preserver they resemble. Clarence Crane, a chocolate maker, invented them because chocolate sales slumped in the heat; his son was the poet Hart Crane.

Under what name was cotton candy sold when it debuted at the 1904 St. Louis Exposition?

Fairy Floss was the name on the boxes at the St. Louis fair, where the new machine-spun treat was a hit; Americans switched to 'cotton candy' in the 1920s, but Australians still call it fairy floss.

Which German city's marzipan has held the EU's protected geographical status since 1996?

Lübeck: a local legend dates marzipan to 1407, when a grain shortage is said to have had the city's bakers make 'bread' from stored almonds. Its best-known maker, Niederegger, has traded there since 1806.

Which Pevensie child betrays the others for the White Witch's enchanted Turkish delight in the Narnia stories?

Edmund: the Witch plies him with the enchanted sweet and persuades him to bring his brother and sisters to her, promising to make him a prince.

Which flavor was among Jelly Belly's original eight gourmet jelly beans?

Very Cherry was one of the eight flavours on sale in 1976, when David Klein first sold the beans from an ice cream parlour in Alhambra, California; Buttered Popcorn did not arrive until 1989.

Pez, whose name is clipped from Pfefferminz, the German for peppermint, was first sold in 1927 in which country?

Austria: Eduard Haas III launched it in Vienna as a breath mint for adults and an alternative to smoking, which is why the first dispensers looked like cigarette lighters. The character heads came later, for American children.

What nut sits whole at the centre of a Ferrero Rocher?

Hazelnut: a whole roasted one sits inside each wafer shell. The nut is the firm's signature because cocoa was scarce in post-war Italy, so its founder stretched his chocolate with local hazelnuts.

Which colour of M&M's vanished from the bag between 1976 and 1987 after a scare over a food dye?

Red M&M's were pulled in 1976 during the panic over Red Dye No. 2, even though the candies never contained it. Orange took their place, and red only came back in 1987.

The Snickers bar was named after what?

The family's favourite horse: the name has nothing to do with laughing. The Mars family took it from one of their own horses when the bar went on sale in 1930.

What three things are inside a Snickers bar under the chocolate?

Nougat, caramel and peanuts make it a filling bar, and the adverts lean on that: a 2010 Super Bowl spot with Betty White launched the line 'You're not you when you're hungry'.

A standard Kit Kat is made of pieces called what?

Fingers, and the snap is the point: a Rowntree's factory worker had asked for 'a chocolate bar that a man could take to work'. In Japan the name sounds like 'kitto katsu', 'surely win', so it is given before exams.

Which chocolate bar's advertising slogan, used since 1958, begins 'Have a break'?

Kit Kat: 'Have a break, have a Kit Kat' has run in British TV adverts since 1958, and the bar's owner later spent ten years in court against Mars trying to trademark just the first three words.

Gummy bears were invented in Germany in 1922 by the founder of which candy company?

Haribo: Hans Riegel founded the company in Bonn in 1920 and launched the Gummibärchen, first sold as the Tanzbär ('dancing bear'), in 1922, inspired by trained bears at fairs.

Cotton candy's spinning machine was co-invented in 1897 by William Morrison, who worked as what?

A dentist: Morrison built the machine with Nashville confectioner John Wharton and showed it off at the 1904 St. Louis fair. The man whose 1920s patent named it 'cotton candy' was a dentist too.

Which ring-shaped mint did Rowntree's launch in 1948?

Polo: 'the mint with the hole' was first made at Rowntree's York factory in 1948, and company legend says the name comes from 'polar', for its cool, fresh taste.

Which British sweet, launched by Rowntree's in 1937, has a sugar shell around milk chocolate?

Smarties are older than their name: Rowntree's of York had sold the same sugar-shelled sweets as 'Chocolate Beans' since the 1880s and renamed them in 1937. The orange ones are orange-flavoured.

In which 1939 film does the Lollipop Guild welcome the heroine with a giant lollipop?

The Wizard of Oz: three Munchkins of the Lollipop Guild greet Dorothy with one. The word is older than the stick: 'lollipop' dates from the 1780s, perhaps from 'lolly', a dialect word for the tongue.

The daisy-shaped Chupa Chups lollipop logo was designed in 1969 by which famous artist?

Salvador Dalí drew the logo for founder Enric Bernat, who had put sweets on sticks because children 'got their hands sticky and ran into trouble with their parents'.

What flavour gives Red Hots candies their heat?

Cinnamon: its bite comes from cinnamaldehyde, the pungent main compound in the bark's oil, and the little red candies have traded on that burn since the 1930s.

Tootsie Rolls are billed as the first penny candy in America to be what?

Individually wrapped: each chewy roll came in its own paper wrapper, and the maker says every batch still includes a little of the previous day's, a step it calls graining.

Which animal in the Tootsie Pop ad bites the lollipop after just three licks?

The owl: Mr. Owl crunches after three licks in the advert, first aired in 1970. Purdue students later built a licking machine to settle the question, and it averaged more than 360 licks.

Candy corn was originally sold under what farm-themed name?

Chicken Feed: the Goelitz company (later Jelly Belly) sold candy corn under that name from about 1898, with a rooster on the box, to a largely rural America.

What is the little paper strip sticking out of the top of a Hershey's Kiss called?

A plume: the paper strip, a registered trademark, was added in 1921 when machine wrapping replaced the hand-wrapping used since the Kiss's 1907 debut.

Which coconut-filled chocolate bar, launched in 1951, has long been advertised as 'the taste of paradise'?

Bounty splits opinion: in 2022 Mars trialled Celebrations tubs with no Bounty bars at all, after 39 percent of the people it polled said they hated them.

The Milky Way bar, first sold in 1923, was named after what?

A malted milkshake, not the galaxy: Frank Mars wanted a bar that tasted like the malted milk drinks popular at the time, which is why its nougat is malt-flavoured.

The 3 Musketeers bar got its name because the original 1932 pack held three pieces in which flavours?

Chocolate, strawberry and vanilla came three to a pack until wartime sugar restrictions and rising costs killed off the strawberry and vanilla pieces, leaving only the chocolate one.

The triangle shape of a Toblerone bar is said to be inspired by which mountain?

The Matterhorn: the peaks are popularly linked to the mountain near Zermatt, though Theodor Tobler's sons said a pyramid of dancers at the Folies Bergère inspired them. Toblerone dates from 1908.

Which fruit-flavoured candy's adverts urge you to 'Taste the rainbow'?

Skittles: the candy takes its name from the bowling game skittles, whose pieces it was thought to resemble, and it was on sale across the United States by 1979.

Why can't Kinder Surprise eggs be sold in the United States?

A law bans toys inside candy: the 1938 Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act forbids sweets with a non-food object embedded in them, so Americans get Kinder Joy, with the toy sealed in a separate half, instead.

Which US president's favourite treat was jelly beans?

Ronald Reagan took to jelly beans when he gave up smoking, and Jelly Belly kept the White House supplied with them throughout his presidency.

What makes Pop Rocks crackle in your mouth?

Trapped bubbles of gas: carbon dioxide is sealed into the hot syrup under pressure and escapes as the candy melts. A false rumour that Pop Rocks with soda could burst a stomach led General Foods to run reassuring newspaper adverts.

What do Americans and Canadians call the sweet that the British know as a gobstopper?

Jawbreaker: both names warn what the sweet does to a mouth, 'gob' being British slang for it. Each one is built up layer upon layer in a rotating pan, a job that can take weeks.

What is the soft filling inside a Cadbury Creme Egg?

Fondant: the white-and-yellow sugar filling mimics an egg's white and yolk. When the shell stopped being made of Dairy Milk chocolate in 2015, the backlash cost Cadbury millions in lost sales.

Which two neighbouring West African countries are the world's biggest growers of cocoa?

Ivory Coast and Ghana: Ivory Coast grows far more than anyone else. Ghana traditionally credits its industry to Tetteh Quarshie, a blacksmith said to have brought seeds home from Fernando Po in the 1870s.

Which usual chocolate ingredient is missing from white chocolate?

The brown solids: white chocolate keeps the cocoa butter but none of the dark cocoa solids, which is why US regulators would not let makers call it chocolate without a special permit until it won a legal standard of its own.

Modern chewing gum began when a Mexican general brought which tree sap to New York in the 1860s?

Chicle: Santa Anna hoped inventor Thomas Adams could turn the sapodilla latex into a rubber substitute. When that failed, Adams cut it into strips and sold it as Adams New York Chewing Gum from 1871.

What was the 5,000-year-old chewing gum found in Finland, complete with tooth marks, made from?

Birch bark tar: the lump turned up at Kierikki in 2007, still carrying a Neolithic chewer's tooth prints. The tar holds antiseptic compounds, so it may have been chewed to treat gum infections.

Peeps, the marshmallow candies made by Just Born, are most associated with which holiday?

Easter is still their main season: Just Born took over the marshmallow chicks in 1953, mechanised their production and has since pushed them into Halloween, Christmas and Valentine's Day as 'Always in Season'.

What flavour are traditional red-and-white candy canes?

Peppermint: a common story credits a Cologne choirmaster in 1670 with handing out sugar sticks, bent like shepherds' crooks, to keep children quiet during the Christmas crib service.

Which crunchy candy from the Willy Wonka brand comes in a box split into two flavours, each with its own spout?

Nerds: the two-chamber box came out of research showing that boys liked to pour the candy straight into their mouths, while girls tipped it into their hands.

A Topps engineer invented Ring Pops to help his daughter stop doing what?

Sucking her thumb: Topps engineer Frank Richards gave his daughter a candy jewel on a plastic ring that works like a wearable pacifier, something sweeter to suck than a thumb. Ring Pops went on sale in the 1970s.

What is printed on the outside of every Laffy Taffy wrapper?

A joke: the question-and-answer gags, such as 'What do you call a cow with no legs? Ground beef', are a mix of ones sent in by fans and puns the makers pick themselves.

What is the shape of the American Smarties candy, which is called Rockets in Canada?

A small flat disc: Edward Dee pressed the first ones in New Jersey in 1949 on machines like those that had made gunpowder pellets in the Second World War.

Peeps maker Just Born puns on founder Sam Born's surname and on his candy being what?

Made fresh daily: Sam Born's 1923 Brooklyn shop sign read 'Just Born', boasting that the candy was as fresh as if born that day, and the pun became the company name.

Salt water taffy became a seaside souvenir in the 1880s on the boardwalk of which New Jersey resort?

Atlantic City: despite the name, the candy has no seawater in it. In the 1920s one man trademarked 'salt water taffy' and demanded royalties from his rivals, but lost because the name was already in common use.

What was the original colour of Peeps, the marshmallow candy made by Just Born?

Yellow: the first Peeps were yellow chicks squeezed out through pastry tubes, 27 hours in the making until Just Born's machines cut that to six minutes. Lavender and blue only arrived in the 1990s.

Which lollipop hides a piece of bubble gum inside its hard candy shell?

Blow Pop: a way of sealing gum inside hard candy was patented in 1969. The brand later passed with its maker, Charms, to Tootsie Roll, a 1988 deal that Tootsie says made it the world's largest lollipop producer.

'Peeps jousting' involves putting two marshmallow chicks armed with sticks into what?

A microwave: the marshmallow swells as it heats, pushing the two chicks and their toothpick lances together until one of them is jabbed.

Which candy bar, mistaken for something far worse, clears the swimming pool in the 1980 comedy Caddyshack?

Baby Ruth: dropped into the country-club pool during a party, the bar is taken for human waste and sends the swimmers scrambling out, one of the film's best-known gags.

In March 2021, Just Born teamed up with PepsiCo to release what?

Peeps marshmallow cola: the limited-edition 'Pepsi x Peeps' mini-cans were given away through a social-media sweepstakes instead of being sold in shops.

Besides Peeps, Just Born makes Hot Tamales and which chewy fruit candy?

Mike and Ike: in 2012 Just Born staged a 'breakup' between the pair, scratching one name or the other off the boxes, to get people talking about a candy on sale since 1940.

Peeps maker Just Born moved in 1932 to which Pennsylvania steel town?

Bethlehem: Just Born left Brooklyn in 1932 for an empty printing factory in the steel town, and has made Peeps there since buying the Rodda Candy Company in 1953.

Which Swiss chocolatier invented the conching machine in 1879?

Rodolphe Lindt: his conche churned gritty chocolate until it turned smooth and melting, and the firm's own story is that he found the trick by leaving a mixer running all weekend, perhaps by mistake.

Toffee is cooked to which named sugar stage, reached at about 150 °C (300 °F)?

Hard crack: by about 150 °C the syrup is 99 percent sugar with almost no water left, which is why toffee sets hard enough to snap instead of chew.

Fudge became popular in the late 19th century at what kind of American institution?

Women's colleges: Vassar student Emelyn Battersby Hartridge made 30 pounds of fudge for a senior auction in 1888, and recipes spread to Wellesley and Smith.

The flavour of black liquorice comes from which part of the liquorice plant?

The root: it holds glycyrrhizin, far sweeter than sugar, and eating too much of it can drop the body's potassium low enough to disturb the heart's rhythm.

Which ingredient gives most gummy bears their springy chew?

Gelatine gives the bounce, which is why vegetarians look for versions made without it. The 1922 originals were softer, set with gum arabic instead.

What were H. B. Reese's peanut butter cups first called, in 1928?

Penny Cups: each one sold for a cent, and those pennies added up. Sales of the cups helped Reese, a father of 16, pay off the mortgages on his house and his factory by 1935.

Which candy lures the alien from hiding in the 1982 film E.T., after the makers of M&M's turned the role down?

Reese's Pieces: Hershey paid no fee for the role but promised $1 million of tie-in advertising, and within two weeks sales of the little-known candy had soared.

Under what name did Rowntree's launch the Kit Kat in 1935?

Chocolate Crisp: the Kit Kat name joined it two years later, and when wartime shortages forced a change of recipe the bar was sold for a time in a blue wrapper instead of its usual red.

Which company acquired Rowntree's in 1988?

Nestlé joined the fight after Swiss rival Jacobs Suchard staged a dawn raid on Rowntree's shares, and won control with an offer worth £2.55 billion.

Which Hershey bar, launched in 1938, mixes crisped rice into milk chocolate?

Krackel: Hershey dropped the full-size bar in 1997, and for 17 years it survived only in bags of Hershey's Miniatures before a full-size comeback in 2014.

Which caramel biscuit bar was sold as Raider across much of mainland Europe until a 1991 name change?

Twix: the German advert for the switch, 'Raider is now called Twix, nothing else changes', became a stock phrase there for any change that is in name only.

The Mars bar of 1932 was modelled after which bar made by Forrest Mars's father?

Milky Way: after squabbling with his father Frank, Forrest Mars left for England and reworked the family's American hit there under his own surname.

The jingle 'Sometimes you feel like a nut' sold Almond Joy alongside which coconut bar?

Mounds: the jingle went on 'Almond Joy's got nuts, Mounds don't'. During the Second World War the US military took about 80 percent of all the Mounds made, for rations.

Which cartoon character warned 'Nobody better lay a finger on my Butterfinger'?

Bart Simpson: the campaign began in 1988, when The Simpsons was still a run of shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show and had no series of its own, and it ran until 2001.

Which chocolate-coated English toffee bar did two Illinois brothers start selling from their sweet shop in 1928?

Heath: Bayard and Everett Heath later sold it through their father's dairy, whose trucks took orders for the bars along with the milk and cottage cheese.

Which slogan did Cadbury introduce in 1928 for Dairy Milk?

Glass and a half: the 1928 slogan boasted of the bar's milk content. Dairy Milk had been devised in 1905 to out-milk the Swiss, who then led the field in milk chocolate.

Which chocolatier launched the Creme Egg in 1963 before it took the Cadbury name?

J. S. Fry's: by then a sister brand of Cadbury, it sold the Fry's Creme Egg from 1963 until the name changed in 1971. Cadbury had been making cream-filled eggs since 1923, so the idea was not new.

Which colour of Smarties was replaced by white until a natural dye could be found?

Blue: its maker matched the other seven colours with natural dyes but not blue, so a white Smartie stood in until a dye from the alga spirulina brought blue back in 2008.

Which Australian bar of 1913 preceded the very similar Crunchie?

Violet Crumble: Abel Hoadley's honeycomb bar came sixteen years before Britain's Crunchie, and in 2018 an Adelaide family firm bought the brand back into Australian hands.

Which Cadbury bar was born in 1920 when a worker noticed excess chocolate spilling from the moulds in thin, folded ripples?

Flake: within a decade Cadbury was selling half-length Flakes made for pushing into a soft ice cream cone, the combination known as a '99'.

Which Australian chocolate did 18-year-old Harry Melbourne propose in place of a planned mouse?

Freddo Frog: Melbourne argued that women and children were afraid of mice, so a mouse would never sell, and he later said he had not earned a cent from the frog.

Which spread began in 1946 as Giandujot, a sliceable loaf made by a Piedmont pastry maker?

Nutella: with cocoa scarce after the war, Pietro Ferrero stretched a little of it with local nuts into a loaf for slicing onto bread; the creamy version got its famous name in 1964.

Toblerone's name combines the founder's surname with which Italian word?

Torrone, meaning nougat: the bar that Theodor Tobler and his cousin Emil Baumann launched in 1908 mixed honey-and-almond nougat into milk chocolate, so the name simply states the recipe.

Toblerone has been made since 1908 in which Swiss city, whose emblem, a bear, was long hidden in its logo?

Bern: when part of production moved to Slovakia in the 2020s, Swiss rules on national symbols meant the packaging could no longer present the bar as a purely Swiss product.

Milka's name is said to blend which two German words?

Milch and Kakao: milk and cocoa, the main ingredients of the milk chocolate Suchard launched in 1901, are the usual account of the name.

Which German chocolate brand has been square since 1932, to fit a jacket pocket without breaking?

Ritter Sport: Clara Ritter proposed a bar shaped to slip into a sports jacket yet weigh the same as a long one, and the 'Sport' in the name records what it was for.

Kinder Bueno combines German and which other language in its name?

Spanish: 'bueno' is Spanish for good and 'Kinder' is German for children, so Ferrero, an Italian firm, gave its bar a name with no Italian in it.

Percy Pig sweets, a British favourite since the 1990s, are sold by which high-street retailer?

M&S: Marks & Spencer has the pink pigs made in Germany by Katjes, and in 2019 it took the pork gelatine out of the whole range so that vegetarians could eat them.

Under what name were Starburst sold in the UK until 1998?

Opal Fruits: the British name was dropped so the sweets would be called the same thing everywhere, and the maker spent £10 million telling shoppers about the change.

Which chewy candy did the firm Malaco create in the late 1950s for North America?

Swedish Fish: Malaco chose the shape because Sweden was known for its fishing industry; at home the same sweets are sold as 'pastellfiskar', pastel fish.

Which licorice-style candy comes from a firm that traces its roots to Young & Smylie, founded in 1845?

Twizzlers: Young & Smylie had been merged into Brooklyn's National Licorice Company long before, so it was National, not the older firm, that first made the twists in the 1920s.

Which butter caramel is named after the German town where Storck began?

Werther's Original: by the company's account a confectioner created the recipe in Werther in 1909, yet it was sold under the town's name only from 1969, sixty years on.

What about a Mentos mainly triggers a Diet Coke geyser?

Pitted surface: the mint is covered in microscopic pits where the dissolved carbon dioxide can form bubbles, so the gas rushes out all at once with no chemical reaction at all.

Why was Walter Diemer's 1928 bubble gum pink?

Only dye available: Diemer, an accountant who tinkered with gum recipes in his spare time, used the one colouring the factory had, and most bubble gum has copied it since.

Which bubble gum did pitcher Rob Nelson dream up in the Portland Mavericks bullpen in 1977?

Big League Chew: Nelson shredded the gum to look like chewing tobacco, and team-mate Jim Bouton, a former Yankee, sold the idea to Wrigley, which launched it in 1980.

Which Wrigley gum went on sale in 1893, the same year as Wrigley's Spearmint?

Juicy Fruit: William Wrigley Jr. had started out selling soap, switched to the baking powder he gave away with it, then to the gum he gave away with the baking powder.

What was Fun Dip originally called?

Lik-M-Aid: the flavoured sugar was sold in plain packets for a good two decades before 1973, when an edible dipping stick was added and the candy was renamed to match.

Under what name was the Sugar Daddy created in 1925?

Papa Sucker: the James O. Welch Company launched the caramel lollipop under that name in 1925 and renamed it in 1932, its maker says, to suggest 'a wealth of sweetness'.

Charleston Chew, launched in the 1920s, was named not for the city but for what?

A popular dance: the Fox-Cross Candy Company brought out its vanilla-nougat bar while the Charleston was sweeping American dance floors, and borrowed the name of the moment.

Which Civil War-era candy vanished from shops in 2018?

Necco Wafers: they disappeared when the New England Confectionery Company went bankrupt and its factory shut, and came back in 2020 after another candy maker bought the brand.

Which candy, created in Nashville in 1912, is billed as the first combination candy bar?

Goo Goo Cluster: its maker long sponsored the Grand Ole Opry, but the name is no acronym of the show's, since the candy is thirteen years older than the broadcast.

Foil-wrapped chocolate coins called gelt are a tradition of which Jewish holiday?

Hanukkah: the chocolate stands in for the real coins once given to children at the holiday, and the foil ones serve as stakes when families spin the dreidel.

See's Candies was founded in 1921 in which city?

Los Angeles: Charles See opened the shop on Western Avenue after moving there with his mother Mary, and sold candy made to her own recipes.

Which future boxed-chocolate maker joined Christian Nelson in 1921 to sell the Eskimo Pie?

Russell Stover: he sold his share of the ice cream business in 1923 and moved to Denver, where he and his wife Clara began making boxed chocolates in the kitchen of their bungalow.

Emil Brach opened his 'Palace of Sweets' in 1904 in which city?

Chicago: Emil Brach sank his savings into the Palace of Sweets and won customers by making caramels cheaply enough to sell at half his rivals' price or less.

By the company's own account, which Austrian immigrant began the Tootsie Roll story in a New York shop in 1896?

Leo Hirschfield named the chewy roll after his five-year-old daughter Clara, nicknamed Tootsie; early adverts, though, carry the name of his employer, Stern & Saalberg, not a shop of his own.

Which country banned the sale of chewing gum in 1992?

Singapore: gum stuck on door sensors had been stopping its new metro trains. In 2004 a trade deal with the United States allowed pharmacists to sell therapeutic gum.

Traders from which country introduced the star-shaped sugar candy konpeitō to Japan in the 1500s?

Portugal: Portuguese traders brought confeito sugar candy to Japan in the mid-1500s; the missionary Luís Fróis is recorded presenting a glass jar of it to the warlord Oda Nobunaga in 1569.

Shanghai's famous milk candy first carried Mickey Mouse on its wrapper; which animal replaced him?

Rabbit: the sweet began in 1943 as ABC Mickey Mouse Sweets, and as White Rabbit it was the gift Premier Zhou Enlai gave President Nixon on his 1972 visit to China.

Mazapán de la Rosa, a crumbly round of ground peanuts and sugar, is a classic candy of which country?

Mexico: a Guadalajara family firm made it as a marzipan of peanuts instead of almonds, and it takes its name from the rose in its logo.

The oldest known traces of cacao use, about 5,300 years old, were found in which present-day country?

Ecuador: residues on pottery from Santa Ana-La Florida, reported in 2018, showed cacao in use there many centuries before it reached the Maya and Aztec lands to the north.

Which cereal maker paid for the 1971 Willy Wonka film to launch a real Wonka Bar?

Quaker Oats: it put up the whole $3 million budget to promote a Wonka chocolate bar, yet the bar itself never took off.

Willy Wonka's Everlasting Gobstopper was made for children with very little what?

Pocket money: the sweet never gets any smaller, so one is all a child need ever buy. A real candy took the name in 1976, a hard sweet built in layers that change colour and flavour.

Italy's Baci chocolates each hide what inside the wrapper?

A love note: 'baci' means kisses, so each one is wrapped with a slip carrying a romantic line in several languages.

When production of Sour Patch Kids began in Ontario in the late 1970s, the sour gummies carried what space-age name?

Mars Men, and the mid-1980s rebrand to Sour Patch Kids rode the Cabbage Patch Kids craze. Frank Galatolie had created the candy in the 1970s.

Which pink-and-white licorice candy was first made in Philadelphia in 1893?

Good & Plenty: one of America's oldest candy brands, it won a new audience in the 1950s when television adverts gave it a mascot, Choo-Choo Charlie, a boy playing at train driver.

In which sitcom does a Junior Mint fall from the observation gallery into a patient mid-surgery, who then recovers?

Seinfeld: in 'The Junior Mint' (1993) Kramer presses the sweet on Jerry in the viewing gallery, Jerry bats it away, and it drops into the open patient below.

Which spicy hard candy did Nello Ferrara create in 1954?

Atomic Fireball: each one is made by hot panning, in which layer after layer of flavour and colour is built up around a sugar core tumbling in a heated, revolving pan.

Which Cadbury assortment did a black-clad stuntman deliver in TV adverts from 1968 to 2003?

Milk Tray: the name dates from 1915, when the chocolates were set out in shops on trays and sold loose; the man in black braved it all 'because the lady loves Milk Tray'.

Which film sent sales of Reese's Pieces soaring after a boy uses the candy to lure an alien?

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial made the candy famous: sales reportedly jumped by as much as 300% once the film opened in 1982. A rival sweet maker had turned the product placement down.

William Morrison, co-inventor of the cotton candy machine in 1897, worked in which profession?

Dentist William Morrison built the machine with confectioner John C. Wharton, and the pair sold 68,655 boxes of their spun treat at the 1904 World's Fair. A second dentist invented a similar machine in 1921.

Milton Hershey paid a deposit for a stateroom on which ocean liner's maiden voyage, then cancelled?

Titanic sailed without the chocolate maker, who pulled out at the last minute over business matters and crossed on the German liner Amerika instead. A copy of his deposit cheque later went on museum display.

Which children's author tested boxes of new Cadbury chocolates as a schoolboy at Repton?

Roald Dahl dreamed of inventing a bar that would win the praise of Mr Cadbury himself, a schoolboy fantasy he later turned into Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Which band was pelted with jelly beans by American fans after one member said he liked Jelly Babies?

The Beatles had George Harrison to thank: once his sweet tooth was reported in 1963, British fans threw Jelly Babies at the stage, and American crowds swapped in the much harder beans.

Which Asian country has banned chewing gum sales since 1992, partly because it jammed subway doors?

Singapore acted after used gum turned up on the door sensors of its trains, inside lock cylinders and on elevator buttons. Since 2004, dental and nicotine gum can be bought from a doctor or pharmacist.

Pilot Gail Halvorsen became the 'Candy Bomber' by parachuting sweets to children in which city?

Berlin children knew his plane because he wiggled its wings before releasing chocolate on miniature parachutes during the airlift. They called him Uncle Wiggly Wings, and his operation dropped over 23 tons of sweets.

Since 1965, which part of the US government has kept a 'candy desk' of sweets for members?

The Senate tradition began when California's George Murphy kept sweets in his desk for colleagues, even though eating is prohibited on the floor. The desk sits near a busy entrance, so everyone passes it.

Which cereal's 'Little Mikey' was falsely rumoured to have died after mixing Pop Rocks with soda?

Life cereal's young face, actor John Gilchrist, was alive and well. The rumour spread so widely that General Foods bought newspaper advertisements in 1979 assuring families the candy was safe.

Salt water taffy was first sold in the 1880s on the boardwalk of which New Jersey resort?

Atlantic City confectioner Joseph Fralinger turned the chew into a souvenir by boxing it for visitors to take home. Despite the name, the recipe contains salt and water but no seawater.

Marzipan, shaped into miniature fruits and rolled out to ice wedding cakes, is a paste of which nut?

Almonds are ground to a meal for the paste, though thriftier versions swap in apricot or peach kernels instead. Rolled thin, the same paste glazes birthday and Christmas cakes.

PEZ, known for cartoon dispensers, was first marketed to adults as an alternative to which habit?

Smoking was the target, so the first dispensers were shaped like cigarette lighters. The character heads only arrived in the 1950s, when the company turned its pitch toward children.

Which compound in cocoa is toxic to dogs because they break it down far more slowly than people do?

Theobromine takes its name from the cacao tree's genus, Theobroma, Greek for 'food of the gods'. Dark chocolate carries far more of it than milk chocolate, so it is the more dangerous treat.

Which chocolate maker, founded by an Italian in Gold Rush California, names a San Francisco square?

Ghirardelli is the third-oldest chocolate company in the United States. In the 1890s it took over a city block for its headquarters, and the site survives as a landmark public square.

In one origin story of the candy cane, a Cologne choirmaster had sugar sticks bent into which shape?

A shepherd's crook, the story goes, reminded noisy children of the shepherds who visited the infant Jesus. It also gave the choirmaster an excuse for handing out sweets during a long Christmas Eve service in 1670.

Chocolate coins in gold foil, known as gelt, are given to children during which Jewish festival?

Hanukkah gelt was real money until candy makers began selling foil-wrapped chocolate versions in the 20th century. In 1958 the Bank of Israel even issued commemorative coins for the custom.

Decorated sugar sweets called calaveras are made as gifts and offerings for which Mexican holiday?

Day of the Dead skulls are pressed in moulds from cane sugar, then dressed with coloured foil, icing, beads and sometimes feathers. Far from frightening, they are a common gift for children.

Which entertainer scored his only US number-one hit in 1972 with a cover of 'The Candy Man'?

Sammy Davis Jr. spent three weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 with a tune first sung by Aubrey Woods as a sweet-shop owner in the 1971 film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. It became his nickname.

In Japan, men repay Valentine's Day chocolate with gifts a month later, on a day known as what?

White Day began as a sweet-makers' promotion: in 1977 a Fukuoka confectioner urged men to give marshmallows on 14 March and called it Marshmallow Day.

The Mozartkugel, a chocolate-coated ball of pistachio and marzipan, was created in which city?

Salzburg confectioner Paul Fürst named his sweet after the city's most famous son, and his descendants still make the originals by hand while rivals turn out factory copies.

The makers of the Baby Ruth bar insisted it was named after the daughter of which US president?

Grover Cleveland had been out of office for more than 20 years, and his daughter Ruth had died in 1904, when the bar got its name. That was just as baseball's Babe Ruth was becoming a household name.

Which Yankees slugger had a candy bar named after him in 1978 that fans hurled onto the field?

Reggie Jackson had boasted that if he played in New York they would name a candy bar after him. At the 1978 home opener he hit a home run, and fans showered the outfield with their free Reggie! bars.

Which chocolate-coated caramel was meant to be perfectly round, a shape its maker never managed?

Milk Duds owe their name to that flop: the misshapen results were called 'duds', and the label stuck when the candy went on sale anyway.

Which eyepatch-wearing character starred from 1954 in tiny comics wrapped with pieces of bubble gum?

Bazooka Joe and his Gang were drawn at first by cartoonist Wesley Morse for the Topps gum that shares the hero's name. The black eyepatch was there simply to give him a distinctive look.

Which brand prints short messages inside the foil wrapper of each of its Promises chocolates?

Dove hides a line inside the foil of every single piece. In Britain the same chocolate has been sold since 1960 under another name, Galaxy.

In playground legend, a Tootsie Pop wrapper showing a child aiming an arrow at what wins a free pop?

A star is the target, and though the maker never made the offer, some shops honoured it anyway. In 1982 the company began mailing a short story, 'The Legend of the Indian Wrapper', to children who sent wrappers in.

In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, what is hidden under the wrappers of just five Wonka bars?

A golden ticket wins each finder a tour of the factory and a lifetime supply of chocolate. Charlie's first two bars turn up nothing, including the one that is his usual birthday present.

Under which name was the Twix bar sold across much of mainland Europe until 1991?

Raider held on until 2000 in the Nordic countries and Turkey, and the old name still comes back on retro editions, as in Germany in 2009 and Switzerland in 2023.

Which chunky British chocolate bar carried the wrapper tagline 'It's not for girls!' in the 2000s?

Yorkie had long been sold on the image of a rough, tough trucker. A pink-wrapped edition aimed at women poked fun at the line in 2006, and the slogan was dropped in 2011.

Which wrapper colour did Cadbury adopt to honour Queen Victoria and later trademark for chocolate?

Purple became Cadbury's house colour early in the 20th century as a tribute to the late queen. The firm registered the shade as a trademark for chocolate in 1995, then spent years in court defending it against Nestlé.

Which animal is hidden in the outline of the mountain on Toblerone packaging?

A bear is traced into the mountainside as a tribute to the bar's birthplace, a city whose coat of arms carries the same animal. Big bars have even had it moulded in relief on the chocolate.

Which animal with a bell round its neck has been the symbol of Milka chocolate since the 1970s?

A cow of the Simmental breed, tinted lilac to match the wrapper, was dreamed up by a Hungarian adman in 1971. Named Lila, she became the face of the brand's advertising the following year.

What is the name of the dog who joined Sailor Jack as a mascot on boxes of Cracker Jack?

Bingo and his young master appeared as early as 1916, drawn by illustrator Andrew Loomis. The boy was modelled on Robert Rueckheim, a grandson of the family behind the brand.

The capital letters of the PEZ logo are drawn in perspective to look as if they are built from what?

Its own candy bricks spell out the name: the logo stacks up 44 of them, 14 in the P and 15 each in the E and the Z. The pressed brick shape came from a later change in how the sweets were made.

Which Japanese sweet maker's 'running man' logo fills a landmark sign above Dotonbori in Osaka?

Glico painted a runner on its first caramels beside the boast '300 Meters in a Single Piece', a claim about the energy in each sweet. The first version of the sign went up in 1935.

Which cocoa brand's tin, showing a nurse carrying the same tin, named a recursive picture effect?

Droste packaging of 1904, designed by Jan Misset, shows a nurse whose tray holds a box bearing the same picture, and so on inward. In practice the loop stops when the image gets too small to print.

Quality Street, the British tin of toffees and chocolates, is named after a play by which author?

J. M. Barrie, better known for Peter Pan, wrote the play whose leads inspired Miss Sweetly and Major Quality, the couple in old-fashioned dress pictured on every tin until 2000.

Which animal on the logo of Belgian chocolate Côte d'Or recalls the African source of its cocoa?

An elephant is said to have been borrowed in 1906 from a stamp of the Gold Coast, the West African colony whose name the brand translates into French. It first stood before a palm tree and three pyramids.

Which animal named Yipes fronted Fruit Stripe gum, whose wrappers doubled as temporary tattoos?

A zebra called Yipes outlasted the rest of the cartoon 'Stripe Family' to become the brand's only mascot. The five-flavour gum itself was discontinued in 2024 after more than six decades on sale.

Dropping Mentos into a bottle of which fizzy drink is the classic recipe for a soda geyser?

Diet Coke is the usual choice. The eruption is purely physical rather than chemical: the sweet simply lets the drink's dissolved carbon dioxide escape all at once.

Which slogan anchored the campy Mentos TV commercials that aired across North America in the 1990s?

The Freshmaker ads and their catchy jingle ran from late 1991 well into 2001, and their relentless cheer was parodied in television shows and music videos.

Which rock band spoofed Mentos commercials in the video for their 1996 single 'Big Me'?

Foo Fighters hawked a fake mint called 'Footos' in the spoof, which won Best Group Video at the 1996 MTV Video Music Awards. Fans took to throwing Mentos at the band whenever the song was played live.

Which physical process, helped by the tiny pits covering each mint, drives the Mentos soda geyser?

Nucleation is quickest on the mint's rough surface, where carbon dioxide can gather into bubbles at great speed. Rock salt or sand will set off the same fizz, though Mentos work better than most.

Which TV science show tested the Mentos soda geyser in 2006 and set a height record using a nozzle?

MythBusters fitted a nozzle to the bottle, which narrowed the jet and sent it past 30 feet. The hosts also tested experts' rival theories of the eruption and found each explained only part of it.

On which late-night host's show did a chemistry teacher first publicly show the Mentos geyser?

David Letterman welcomed teacher Lee Marek and his 'Kid Scientists' to the Late Show in 1999, years before the stunt became an internet sensation.

Mentos were first produced by Van Melle, a confectioner based in which European country?

The Netherlands was home to Van Melle, which worked from the town of Breskens, and new Mentos flavours were often test-marketed there before going worldwide.

Beneath its slightly hard shell, what kind of centre does a classic Mentos mint have?

Soft and chewy inside, each mint is a small flattened ball, the shape geometers call an oblate spheroid. The brand is classed as a scotch mint.

Which confectioner's term for a hard-shelled sweet do some Mentos packs use to describe the mints?

Dragées are bite-sized sweets with a hard outer shell, and in earlier centuries some were made with medicinal ingredients rather than simply eaten as a treat.

Which science educator showed off the Mentos geyser on Denver TV and later sold a 'Geyser Tube' toy?

Steve Spangler performed the trick on KUSA-TV in March 2002. He later signed a licensing deal with the mint's maker for a gadget that makes it easier to drop the sweets into the bottle.

Tire d'érable, a Canadian treat of boiled maple sap, is traditionally poured onto what to set?

Packed snow chills the hot syrup into a chewy ribbon almost at once, ready to be lifted on a wooden stick. In northern New England the same treat is called sugar on snow.