49 Fun Facts About Candy Slogans

Which candy bar's 2010 Betty White ad launched 'You're not you when you're hungry'?

Snickers opened the campaign at the 2010 Super Bowl, where Betty White and Abe Vigoda stand in for footballers too hungry to play like themselves until they eat the bar.

Snickers, first sold in 1930, was named after what?

The maker's favourite horse was called Snickers. British shops sold the bar as Marathon until 1990, reportedly because Snickers sounded too much like knickers.

In the famous 1970 Tootsie Pop commercial, how many licks does Mr. Owl take before biting?

Three licks, then Mr. Owl bites through the Tootsie Pop and the ad signs off 'The world may never know'; Purdue students later built a licking machine to settle it.

Which two candy bars were sold with 'Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't'?

Almond Joy and Mounds are sister coconut bars: Almond Joy has almonds under milk chocolate, Mounds has dark chocolate and no nuts, so one 1970s jingle could sell both.

Which mints are 'The Original Celebrated Curiously Strong'?

Altoids began in the 18th century as lozenges meant to settle the stomach and only later became breath mints; 'curiously strong' points to their heavy dose of peppermint oil.

Which candy was known in 1990s ads as 'The Freshmaker'?

Mentos' campy commercials were parodied by the Foo Fighters, and the mints famously erupt when dropped in Diet Coke.

Which candy has a three-word slogan tracing its flavour from tart to sugary to gone?

Sour Patch Kids' slogan is 'Sour. Sweet. Gone.' because a sour sugar coating dissolves to leave a sweet gummy; creator Frank Galatolie first sold them as Mars Men.

Which cartoon character warned 'Nobody better lay a finger on my Butterfinger' from 1988 to 2001?

Bart Simpson first sold Butterfinger in a 1988 commercial, when The Simpsons was still a set of shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show; the bar's name came from a public contest.

'Get the sensation' has been the tagline of which mint-chocolate candy since the 1970s?

York Peppermint Pattie took the line national in the 1970s; at its York, Pennsylvania plant a pattie that failed to break cleanly in a 'snap test' was set aside as a second.

Which chocolate bar has urged people to 'Have a break' since 1957?

Kit Kat got the line in 1957; the bar began in 1935 as Rowntree's Chocolate Crisp, after a York factory worker asked for a snack 'a man could take to work in his pack'.

Which candy 'melts in your mouth, not in your hand'?

M&M's owe the line to their hard sugar shell: the first big customer was the US Army, which wanted chocolate soldiers could carry in hot climates without it melting.

The two Ms in M&M's stand for Forrest Mars and the son of which chocolate company's president?

Hershey's president William Murrie was the father of Bruce Murrie, the second M; the tie mattered because Hershey controlled rationed wartime chocolate, which the new candy needed.

In a 1995 consumer vote, which colour replaced tan in the M&M's mix?

Blue took the place of tan, which had itself replaced violet in the late 1940s; the Home Shopping Network televised a promotion to introduce the new colour.

Which candy's long-running ads tell people to 'Taste the Rainbow'?

Skittles swapped lime for green apple in 2013, and fans complained for years until the brand brought lime back for good in 2021.

Twix's 2012 'Pick a Side' campaign invented a rivalry between what?

Left and right bars got separate wrappers and a tall tale: feuding brothers Seamus and Earl split the business into a Left Twix factory and a Right Twix factory.

'Two great tastes that taste great together' sold which candy in the 1970s and 80s?

Reese's Peanut Butter Cups ads showed strangers colliding with peanut butter and chocolate; the 1990s line was 'There's no wrong way to eat a Reese's'.

Which bubble gum's Wild West 'Gumfighter' ads promised 'Big bubbles, no troubles'?

Hubba Bubba arrived in 1979 as a gum that stuck less, so a burst bubble peeled cleanly off the skin; that was the 'no troubles' its Gumfighter boasted about.

Which chocolate bar has boasted since 1928 of containing 'a glass and a half'?

Cadbury Dairy Milk has made the 'glass and a half' boast since 1928; its 2007 ad, a gorilla drumming along to Phil Collins, was billed as a Glass and a Half Full Production.

Which fruit chew has been advertised as 'Unexplainably Juicy'?

Starburst began in Britain as Opal Fruits, and British packs kept that name until 1998, decades after Americans knew the chews as Starburst.

Which British bar was sold as 'the sweet you can eat between meals without ruining your appetite'?

Milky Way ran the line for years in Britain, where the bar has a light whipped filling and no caramel: closer to America's 3 Musketeers than to the American bar of the same name.

Hershey's Kisses' longest-running commercial, first aired in 1989, shows the chocolates doing what?

Playing Christmas bells: the Kisses ring out 'We Wish You a Merry Christmas' as a handbell choir. A 2020 remake drew such complaints that the original went straight back on air.

3 Musketeers got its name because the original 1932 pack contained what?

Three flavoured pieces came in the 1932 pack: one chocolate, one vanilla, one strawberry. Rising costs and wartime restrictions later left only the chocolate.

Which sports commentator wrote the slogan 'Opal Fruits, made to make your mouth water'?

Murray Walker owned up to coining it in his other career: he spent his weeks at an advertising agency and his weekends at the microphone, and left advertising only at 59.

Which surrealist painter designed the Chupa Chups logo in 1969?

Salvador Dalí was hired by founder Enric Bernat to design the logo; the name comes from chupar, Spanish for 'to suck', and a later slogan told adults to 'Smoke Chupa Chups' instead of cigarettes.

Werther's Original is named after what?

A town in Germany, not Goethe's lovesick hero: August Storck set up his sweet works in Werther, Westphalia, in 1903, and the caramels were sold at home as Werthers Echte.

Which candy, launched under the Willy Wonka brand, comes in a two-compartment box holding two flavours?

Nerds keep their two flavours apart, each side of the box with its own opening, so they can be eaten singly or mixed; the Wonka name on the early boxes has since been dropped.

Which bubble gum is sold shredded in a pouch?

Big League Chew came from Portland Mavericks pitcher Rob Nelson, and teammate Jim Bouton helped pitch it to Wrigley as a gum that copied the tobacco ballplayers chewed.

Tic Tac mints were named after what?

The sound of their box gave Tic Tac its name in 1970, whether the click of the lid or the rattle of the mints; a year earlier they had launched as plain Refreshing Mints.

According to its maker, the Baby Ruth bar was named after whom?

President Cleveland's daughter Ruth was the maker's story, but she had died in 1904, seventeen years before the bar appeared, just as Babe Ruth was becoming America's biggest sports star.

The letters in PEZ come from which German word?

Pfefferminz, German for peppermint, gave PEZ its letters; the mints were first sold to adults as a stand-in for smoking, and early ads declared 'No smoking, PEZing allowed!'

Which candy brand began in 1949 as an ice-cream shop in Golden, Colorado?

Jolly Rancher was a name Bill and Dorothy Harmsen picked to sound like a friendly Western company; their ice cream sold poorly in the cold months, so candy took over the business.

Toblerone's name blends its creator's surname with the Italian word for what?

Nougat is torrone in Italian, so Tobler plus torrone made Toblerone; Theodor Tobler's sons said its triangles copied a pyramid of dancers in a stage show, not the Matterhorn.

Haribo's name is an abbreviation of what?

Hans Riegel Bonn names the founder and the city where he set up shop; until the firm bought its first car, his wife Gertrud delivered each day's sweets by bicycle.

Which gum, introduced in 1893, is Wrigley's oldest surviving brand?

Juicy Fruit arrived in 1893, after William Wrigley found that the free gum he handed out with his baking powder was more popular than the powder itself.

Which Easter candy is made by Just Born of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania?

Peeps came to Just Born in 1953, when it bought the Rodda Candy Company and its handmade marshmallow chicks; the firm then mechanised the job and now turns out millions a day.

Which candy's ads have used the slogan 'Makes mouths happy'?

Twizzlers date from 1929, though their maker began as Young & Smylie in 1845; they are sold as licorice twists, yet strawberry, not licorice, is the best-selling flavour.

Which chocolate bar's British slogan promised to help you 'work, rest and play'?

Mars bars were first made in Slough in 1932 by Forrest Mars, an American who had fallen out with his father and crossed the Atlantic to start a candy firm of his own.

Which company bought Butterfinger, Baby Ruth and other Nestlé US candy brands for $2.8 billion in 2018?

Ferrero paid $2.8 billion for Nestlé's US candy brands in 2018 and passed them to its Ferrara unit, which relaunched Butterfinger with a new recipe the following year.

What was added to Hershey's Kisses in 1921?

Paper plumes, the little flags sticking out of the foil, were added in 1921 so that buyers could tell a real Hershey's Kiss from the imitations that had sprung up.

Until 2003, British ads asked if you loved anyone enough to give them your last what?

Rolo dropped the line after some twenty years: the maker's research found seven in ten British couples rated humour above romance, so the question was judged too sentimental.

'How do you eat yours' is the question asked in UK and Irish ads for which seasonal treat?

Cadbury Creme Egg ads asked the question for years; in 2015 the recipe for the chocolate shell was changed, and the outcry from fans made the news.

Which sweets are sold as 'The lighter way to enjoy chocolate'?

Maltesers were pitched at women from the start: in the 1930s they were sold as 'energy balls', decades before the 'lighter way' line appeared.

Which Cadbury bar told British shoppers to 'Get that Friday feeling'?

Crunchie is the better-known honeycomb bar, but not the original: Australia's look-alike Violet Crumble is the older sweet, on sale more than a decade before it.

'Four out of five dentists surveyed recommend sugarless gum' was long tied to which brand?

Trident ran the line for decades; it is believed to rest on a survey of dentists from the early 1960s, and the full claim carried a caveat: 'for their patients who chew gum'.

SNL's 'floor wax and a dessert topping' sketch spoofed the 'two mints in one' ads of which brand?

Certs ads had a couple arguing 'breath mint' against 'candy mint'; SNL's 1976 Shimmer sketch gave Gilda Radner and Dan Aykroyd the same row until Chevy Chase ruled it was both.

Which gum has used identical twins in its ads since 1939?

Doublemint's twins play on the 'double' in its name, a campaign so familiar that in 1987 twins Denise and Dian Gallup sent it up in Mel Brooks's Spaceballs.

The long-running jingle 'Kiss a Little Longer' sold which cinnamon gum?

Big Red, launched by Wrigley in 1975, sold cinnamon gum as fresh breath for close quarters: its ads showed couples kissing on and on while the jingle played.

Which 1966 candy was launched with the jingle 'First it's a candy, then it's a gum'?

Razzles launched in 1966 in one flavour, raspberry; the name came from 'razzleberry', a made-up berry meant to set them apart from other fruit sweets.

Which Cadbury bar's long-running jingle called it 'the crumbliest' chocolate?

Flake began as a factory accident: around 1920 a Cadbury worker noticed that chocolate overflowing the moulds set in thin ripples. The jingle was retired in 2010.