A Short History of Our Favorite Chocolate Candy Bars (2024)

FAQs

What is the history of candy and chocolate? ›

People in England and in America ate boiled sugar candy in the 17th century. Hard candies, especially sweets like peppermints and lemon drops, started to become popular in the 19th century. The first chocolate candy bars were made by Joseph Fry in 1847 using bittersweet chocolate.

The oldest candy bar brand is Fry's Chocolate Cream, which was first produced in 1866 by J.S. Fry & Sons of England. The oldest candy is probably Good and Plenty, a licorice candy.

Snickers is the top-selling candy bar in the United States and is produced by Mars, Inc. This classic chocolate bar is made with nougat, caramel, and peanuts, and it has been a favourite among Americans since its introduction in 1930.

The bars are made by the American company Mars Inc. The annual global sales of Snickers is over $380 million, and it is widely considered the bestselling candy bar in the world.

The idea of candy began by the caveman who ate honey. The first candy was used by the Ancient Egyptians for cult purposes. In ancient times, Egyptians, Arabs, and Chinese made candies with fruits and nuts that caramelized with honey. The two oldest candy types are licorice and ginger.

In 1847, British chocolatier J.S. Fry and Sons created the first chocolate bar molded from a paste made of sugar, chocolate liquor and cocoa butter.

One hundred years ago, in 1923, the first Milky Way bar was made and sold in Minneapolis. Within a year, sales reached $800,000 — the equivalent of more than $14 million in today's dollars. Not bad for a 5-cent candy bar — which, to be clear, was named after the popular milkshakes of the time, not the galaxy.

Launched in 1866—nineteen years after Fry's created the first moulded, solid chocolate eating bar (in 1847)— Fry's Chocolate Cream is the first mass-produced chocolate bar and is the world's oldest chocolate bar brand.

Invented in York in 1935 as 'Rowntree's Chocolate Crisp', the name 'KitKat' was adopted a couple of years later. The brand has gone on to become a worldwide phenomenon, with 17 billion KitKats eaten across the globe every single year.

100 Grand (originally called the $100,000 Candy Bar and then, from the 1970s through the mid-1980s, as the $100,000 Bar) is a candy bar produced by the Ferrara Candy Company, a subsidiary of Ferrero. The candy bar was created in 1964 by Nestlé.

Who owns M&M's? ›

One of the largest privately owned companies in the country, Mars is responsible for many of the candy, gum, and pet food brands you see at the grocery store, like Wrigley's, M&Ms, Twix, and Pedigree.

Top-selling chocolates and sweets. Reese's Peanut Butter Cups are the No. 1 selling candy brand in the United States, consisting of white fudge, milk, or dark chocolate cups filled with peanut butter. They were invented by H.B. Reese after he founded the H. B. Reese Candy Company in 1923.

Brussels, Belgium

The place is known as the 'Chocolate Capital of the World'. There are many amazing places to buy chocolate in Brussels as the city is famous for its creative chocolates and dotted with chocolate shops.

The first candy was made over 2,000 years ago in ancient Egypt, where they used honey and fruit to create a type of hard candy. The world's largest chocolate bar weighed in at over 12,000 pounds and was created by Lindt & Sprüngli in Italy in November 2014.

Merriam-Webster defines candy as “A confection made with sugar and often flavoring and filling.” All chocolate could be classified as candy using this definition.

1565: The first record of how the cocoa drink is prepared was found in the notes of Benzoni, an explorer working for the Spanish army. The Spanish kept this secret from the rest of the world, with the hope they could keep their monopoly on the cocoa trade.

Chocolate history starts out around 1000BC in Latin America, where cacao trees grow wild. The first people to use chocolate were probably the Olmec of what is today southeast Mexico, and their word, “kakawa,” gave us our word “cacao.” Chocolate beans are the seeds of the cacao tree.