THE GOLDEN AGE OF SNACK FOODS

A Quick, Delicious Snack That Is Always Readily Available

By the twentieth century, chocolate had not only become a reliable and welcome snack food manufactured by companies established to produce chocolate bars, but it also was readily edible as well as delicious. Unlike Walter Baker & Company, Ltd., these competitive companies grew by leaps and bounds. The general public viewed these new chocolate confections as both food and delicacy.

In the twentieth century, especially between the two world wars, family meals became more rare and decidedly less formal, and the amount of snacking between meals increased as life became busier. With well-placed advertising and a wide array of chocolate snacks to choose from, the general public eagerly took to the new products, which combined delicious taste with nourishment and a quick form of energy. As a result, these new confectionary treats were enjoyed daily and were a tremendous success.

Beginning with the Hershey Company, which was founded in 1876 by Milton Snavely Hershey (1857–1945), many of these chocolate companies competed for the public’s patronage of snack bars. After apprenticing as a confectioner in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Hershey had a tumultuous two decades of success and failure until he sold his Lancaster Caramel Company in 1900 and concentrated on making chocolate in a mill in his hometown of Derry Church, which was later renamed, in 1906, Hershey, Pennsylvania, in his honor. Hershey, reputedly with two workers hired from the Walter Baker & Company, Ltd. mills, manufactured milk chocolate so successfully that he saw success almost at once and created a virtual workers’ utopia. His chocolate bars, made as early as 1894 and boldly embossed “Hershey,” were a delicious and inexpensive way to snack. After 1907, they were augmented by a small, flat-bottomed, conically shaped dollop of milk chocolate that he named “Hershey’s Kisses.” So successful were these silver foil– wrapped, one-bite chocolate kisses that they were patented and went on to become one of the most successful and well-known products of the Hershey Chocolate Company. In the following years, the company continued to be an innovative and creative manufacturer of chocolate, introducing new confections that included Sweethearts (1900), almond chocolate bars (1908), Mr. Goodbar (1925), Hershey’s chocolate syrup (1926), chocolate chips (1928) and the Krackel bar (1938).

A pyramidal arrangement of cocoa tins, chocolate bars and glass jars that would be filled with chocolate bonbons was typical of the artistic displays set up by the demonstrators for exhibitions.

The Hershey Chocolate Company supplied the United States military with chocolate bars during World War II. These bars were called Ration D and Tropical bars. Ration D bars were developed as nonmelting, four-ounce chocolate bars with extra calories and vitamins that could be used as emergency provisions for soldiers and sailors. The Tropical bars were designed to not melt in warm weather, but while the attempts to retain the sweetened flavor were somewhat successful, many of the troops found the chocolate tough and unappetizing, and the bars were often said to resemble chocolate-flavored wax. Nevertheless, they were perfect as a quick snack in the field or as barter material. It is estimated that between 1940 and 1945, over 3 billion of the Ration D and Tropical bars were produced and distributed to soldiers throughout the world. In 1939, the Hershey plant was capable of producing an estimated 100,000 ration bars a day. By the end of World War II, the entire Hershey plant was producing ration bars at a rate of 24 million bars a week. The Hershey Chocolate Company was honored by the United States government with five Army-Navy “E” Production Awards for exceeding expectations for quality and quantity in the production of the Ration D and Tropical bars.

The Hershey Company plant in Hershey, Pennsylvania, today covers 2 million square feet of space and is reputedly the largest chocolate factory in the world. Hershey also has plants in Monterrey, Mexico, and in China. However, the success that Milton Hershey enjoyed after 1900, when he introduced his milk chocolate bar, was unprecedented and made his name synonymous with milk chocolate.

Another manufacturer of chocolate snack bars was the Mar-O-Bar Company, which was a candy company opened in 1911 by Franklin Clarence Mars (1883–1934) and Ethel Kissack Mars in Tacoma, Washington. Mars made the first Milky Way bars in 1923; these bars had a nougat center and saw immediate success. So successful was Mars that in 1929 he expanded his candy business by opening a plant in Chicago, Illinois, where, in 1930, he made the first Snickers candy bar, named after a beloved family horse.

Forrest E. Mars Sr. (1904–1999) was the son of the well-known candy makers, and following his graduation from Yale University, he began, in 1932, to make a decidedly different snack bar, which he called the Mars bar. After a rift with his father, he moved to Slough, Berkshire, in the United Kingdom, where he made his new candy bar; the snack was similar to his father’s popular Milky Way, but his Mars bar had nougat and caramel covered in milk chocolate. This new candy bar was marketed throughout the United Kingdom and Europe and was widely successful. While living in England, Mars also bought the rights to Smarties, a popular sugar-coated chocolate candy. He returned to the United States in 1939 and went into partnership with R. Bruce Murrie (1854–1928), son of Hershey Chocolate Company president William F.R. Murrie, and they called their new chocolate company M&M Ltd. Their joint candy venture was located in Newark, New Jersey, and was to produce a small, circular disk of milk chocolate covered in a hard candy shell. They called these M&M’s and marketed them as “melting in your mouth and not in your hand.” It was said that Forrest Mars had visited Spain during its Civil War and saw soldiers eating small disks of chocolate that were protected from melting in their knapsacks or on their fingers by a hard candy shell coating. The new M&M’s became very popular during World War II, when they were packed in cardboard tubes, shipped and included in the kits of soldiers and sailors with their food rations.

After World War II, the now popular M&M’s, which were somewhat larger than they are now, were still sold in tubes and cost a nickel. The candy was originally made in five colors: brown, yellow, red, green and violet; in 1949, red was substituted for violet, but it was discontinued between 1976 and 1987 due to a scare surrounding the dye used for the color. After 1950, the brand name was reinforced by the capital letter M being stamped on each candy shell with a machine specially calibrated not to break the colored shell. M&M Ltd. was later merged with Mars, and the plant is today in McLean, Virginia, where the popular M&M’s, Milky Way bars, Snickers bars and Three Musketeers bars are made.

The Hershey Chocolate Company, the Mar-O-Bar Company (later known as Mars) and M&M Ltd. were three of the many chocolate companies producing snack bars in the twentieth century. Among the other competitors were the Whitman Chocolate Company, which, in 1912, made and boxed what it marketed and sold as “Whitman’s Samplers,” marking the first instance of a company using a drawing on the inside lid to identify each of the different chocolates enclosed in the gift box. Other manufacturers were Otto J. Schoenleber (1858–1927), whose Ambrosia Chocolate Company in 1894 made bulk chocolate for large manufacturers such as Hostess, Pillsbury and Nabisco; Leo Hirschfeld (1869–1924), whose Sweets Company of America in 1896 made the first Tootsie Rolls, which he named after his daughter, Ellen “Tootsie” Hirschfield; L.S. Heath & Sons, Inc., which, in 1914, made the first Heath Bar and, in 1958, the Heath English Toffee Bar; Peter Paul Halijian (1850–1927), founder of the Peter Paul Candy Manufacturing Company, which, in 1921, made the first Mounds Candy Bar and, in 1946, the first Almond Joy Bar; and Harry Burnett Reese (1879–1856), who, in 1922, made the first Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup using Hershey’s milk chocolate; he also made what he called Johnny bars and Lizzy Bars. These snack bars were made in the United States but were among dozens of selections of eating chocolate that appealed to every palate.

Each of these chocolate companies had its ardent competitors and followers, but the chocolate products relied on people’s weakness for sweets and their desire for filling and nutritious snacks.