The spooky season of Halloween brings really fond memories of running pell-mell through my neighborhood to collect all the tasty candy loot. Last year, Leigh and I went head-to-head representing two Halloween classics - Leigh was Team Tootsie and I was Team Candy Corn. This year, I thought I’d recap some history about the trick & treat tradition with some insights into America’s top three Halloween candies - Reese’s Cups, Skittles, and M&M’s.
Trick or Treat?
Did you know that the familiar cry of “Trick or Treat?” originates from Scottish and Irish mumming or guising traditions where children wearing homemade disguises went door-to-door to beg for soul cakes, apples, coins, or a treat?
The earliest known occurrence of guising in North America comes from a 1911 newspaper account from Kingston, Ontario, Canada on groups of children going around guising around the neighborhood. The “trick or treat” phrase only appeared in print for the first time in 1927 in Blackie, Alberta and nationally in the United States in 1939.
Starting in the 1950s, candy manufacturers started producing candy varieties that were more economical than home baking. This trend was followed by a preference through the 1970s and 1980s with pre-manufactured, packaged, pre-wrapped candy as a cachet item for trick-or-treaters.
“There is no wrong way to eat a Reese’s”
America’s favorite Halloween candy was invented in the Hershey, Pennsylvania home of Mr. H.B. Reese in 1928. A former Hershey Company shipping foreman and dairy farmer, Reese invented an assortment of confectionary, but it was the “Penny Cups” made from a combination of peanut butter and chocolate that made his candy a household name.
After his death in 1956, his six sons inherited the H.B. Reese Candy Company and in 1963, they merged with The Hershey Company. By 1969, Reese’s Cups was Hershey’s number one selling product; and it generates over $2 billion in annual sales today.
“Taste the Rainbow”
Boasting five classic fruit flavors - strawberry, orange, lemon, lime, and blackcurrant - Skittles started out as a British confectionery in 1974. There is an apocryphal story that they are named after a historic British lawn game (skittles) that is a progenitor to bowling and for which the word “skittle” is both the name for the pins and the sound made when they fall over.
Either way, Skittles (the candy) was introduced to the United States as an import confectionery in 1979. When domestic production of Skittles began in the United States in 1982 by the Wrigley Company, blackcurrant was dropped in favor of the more familiar “grape” flavor. The bold “S” on their panned candy shell differentiate them from another Mars, Inc. candy- M&Ms.
“Melts in Your Mouth, Not in Your Hand”
Inspired by a hard panning technique used to allow soldiers in the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s to carry chocolate rations without fear of melting, the ubiquitous M&M candy entered the American candy scene by way of Forrest Mars, Sr. of the Mars Company Mars’ in 1941 near Newark, New Jersey. One of the M’s represents Mars while the other represents William F.R. Murrie, then president of the Hershey Company, which controlled rationed chocolate. Their first major customer was the U.S. Army which sought a way to provide soldiers with a confection that could withstand heat. The famous “melts in your mouth…” tagline was introduced in 1949.
The original M&M colors were red, yellow, violet, green, and brown. Tan replaced violet in the late 1940s, and orange replaced red in in 1976 over concerns about the carcinogenic properties of red dyes #2 and #4. Red M&Ms were reintroduced in 1987 utilizing Red Dye #40. In 1995, tan M&Ms were retired and replaced with blue. And on October 2 this year, the new purple M&M made its debut.
P.S. Mars claims there is no truth to the rumors about the green ones being an aphrodisiac ;)
Want More Candy?
Catch all the weird but fascinating history that we found about Tootsie Pops (#9) and Candy Corn (#10) in our 2021 “Halloween” episode:
Tell us about your favorite Halloween candy or treat!
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