We don’t know about you, but we are, without a doubt, the type of people that absolutely must have a little something sweet before we go to bed or else we will spiral. With that being said, as we were enjoying a little bit of something sweet and chocolatey the other night, we started thinking about how completely random the names of different candies are, so we present to you, how some of our favorite candies got their names.
Dum Dums
(image via: cnn)
The story behind these is short, simple, and pretty satisfying; according to the candy company, ‘dum dum’ is simply ‘a word any child could say.’ Go ahead, see if your kids can say it!
Jolly Rancher
(image via: candy warehouse)
When William and Dorothy Harmsen made their way to Colorado to start a farm/ranch, they decided to also open up an ice-cream parlor honoring both Western hospitality and The Jolly Miller, a hotel where they’re from back in Minnesota, by naming it The Jolly Rancher. But the story doesn’t end there! During the winter months, their ice cream sales declined, so the couple decided to start offering an assortment of fruit-flavored candies, and well, you can say people took to the candies pretty well.
Airheads
(image via: candy warehouse)
The man behind the name is a Mr. Steve Bruner and as the person in charge of naming these chewy, fruity slabs of deliciousness, he was well aware that unless a candy had a commonly used word as its name, it would take nearly an entire generation before people knew a specific candy as a specific name. With that knowledge in mind, he turned to his kids and asked them: ‘what would you call your friend who did something silly?’ to which they replied with, you guessed it, ‘airhead’.
Mr. Goodbar
(image via: amazon)
Hershey chemists (a dream job) were working on a new chocolate bar that had the added ingredient of peanuts; as they were testing it (did we say dream job?) someone said, “that’s a good bar!” But Milton Hershey misheard it as, “Mr. Goodbar”, and the rest is history.
Hershey’s
(image via: meijer)
Who doesn’t love a smooth, classic Hershey’s bar? Just as good by themselves as they are sandwiched between slightly burnt marshmallows and crispy graham crackers. (https://mva.la) It’s pretty clear where the name Hershey came from, but all of us milk chocolate lovers owe this man a thank you because he was responsible for bringing the European milk chocolate craze to the United States.
Twizzlers
(image via: amazon)
The hard facts behind this candy name are unknown, but speculations have been made that the name came from one of those fun Victorian words, twizzle, which means to twirl, twist, to turn round, to form by twisting.
