30 Popular Candies That Are Way Older Than You Think

Got a sweet tooth? It's nothing to be ashamed of. Our taste for sweets is hard-wired: Early humans leaned heavily on honey as a source of then-vital calories. Lack of calories isn't an issue anymore — if anything, we have the opposite problem — but our collective love of sweet things hasn't gone away.

We have lots of them to choose from in the modern world, from fresh fruit to ice cream to cakes and pastries, but candy-making may be the purest expression of our love for sweetness. None of our other sweet treats are dialed in as narrowly on sugar in all its forms, though nuts and chocolate certainly play a role as well.

A surprising number of the candies you see in stores today have a long history, dating back to the 19th and early 20th centuries when the Industrial Revolution finally hit candy-making. In fact, there are so many that we'll restrict this list to the ones that have been around for at least a century, which leaves out relative newcomers like Pez (1927), Reese's (1928), Twizzlers (1929) or Snickers (1930). Here are 30 candies that remain popular, nationally or regionally, 100 years or more after they launched.

In the world of retro candies, you'll see a number of toffees, taffies, and "kisses" sold in wax paper wrappers. Bit-O-Honey is one of the surviving members of that extended family, the kind of thing a century of kids have found in their Halloween treat bags (and maybe resented, just a little).

It's made of honey nougat with almonds, and it's famously the kind of candy that sticks with you for a while. That mattered in the hardscrabble 1930s, providing a cheap way of keeping mouths and bellies happy when food was scarce.

You may love Butterfinger or hate it, but you've almost certainly eaten at least one. Invented originally by the Curtiss Chocolate Company in 1923, its signature flaky, crunchy peanut butter filling is hard to describe. The company leaned into this, inventing made-up words like "crispety" and "crunchety" for marketing purposes.

Over the years, the quirkiness of the candy itself has been matched by the marketing efforts behind it. These range from parachuting Butterfinger bars from airplanes in the 1920s to faking crop circles in this century.

The Mars company (now Mars Wrigley) is one of the giants of candy-making, and this is where the story really starts. Before M&Ms, before Snickers, before 3 Musketeers, there was the Milky Way bar. It was Mars' first success in the candy bar market and paved the way for their other top sellers.

Milky Way candy bars aren't named for the galaxy, but for their malted milk filling (a cheap way to stretch the costlier chocolate). Founder Frank and son Forrest Mars reportedly bonded over shared malted milk drinks, which inspired the candy.

Yup, gummy bears go back that far. Jelly-ish sweets go back centuries, in the form of Turkish delight or "loukhoum", but the 19th and 20th centuries saw entrepreneurs take that idea and spin it in new directions. One of those entrepreneurs was Hans Riegel of Bonn (hence Ha-Ri-Bo), who started making candies in his kitchen, with his wife Gertrud as his first employee.

The colorful candies in the kid-pleasing bear shape launched in 1922 and became a worldwide hit, though admittedly some Haribo products are better than others.

As candy bars go, the Charleston Chew is pretty basic. It's just a long strip of nougat with a chocolatey coating, but it has remained popular for over a century now. Contrary to some stories, it was named for the then-popular flapper-era dance, not the city. Its unusual size may have helped it survive the Depression years; it gave good value for the price.

It was a personal favorite of mine as a kid. Yes, I did freeze it, and yes, I did believe I was the first person to think of doing that.

Technically, the Baby Ruth bar you currently know and love launched a couple of years earlier, but that was under the less-interesting "Kandy Kake" name. It wasn't until it was rechristened Baby Ruth that it really took off.

The oh-so-coincidental resemblance to baseball hero Babe Ruth's name may have helped drive its popularity, and this became an issue when the star wanted to launch his own candy bar. Ruth filed a lawsuit against the Curtiss Candy Co. (yep, them again), but — astoundingly — lost.

The Oh Henry! bar was a staple of candy counters for generations, and mixed stories about the origin of its name lasted just about as long. Some believed it to be a hat-tip to the author O. Henry, while others chalked it up to a flirty gent named Henry chatting up the production workers.

American production of the longtime favorite stopped in 2018, but it's still made (and popular) in Canada. If filling a suitcase with candy bars isn't your thing, you can order a carton of Canadian-made Oh Henry bars from Amazon for delivery to your door (there's a smaller size if you don't want that many).

The Cherry Mash was created by the Chase Candy Co. of St Joseph Missouri in 1918. It's not your basic chocolate-covered cherry, but a pink fondant colored and studded with chopped-up Maraschino cherries and coated in a mix of chocolate and chopped peanuts.

It's a Midwest staple but still turns up in enough other places that it can claim to be "America's favorite cherry chocolate bar" (though we're not sure how many contenders for the title there might be).

Caramel candies are a dime a dozen (at least figuratively), but Caramel Creams stand out; they're round caramels with a distinctive white center (hence the nickname "bullseyes"). They were invented by Melvin Goetze in 1917, as the company he owned diversified from its origins in the chewing gum business.

The transition was successful, and the Goetze Candy company is still around and still family-owned after all these years. In the 80s they successfully turned the basic elements of their Caramel Creams into "Cow Tales," a longer, skinnier version of the treat.

The Clark Bar, invented in Pittsburgh in 1917, was shipped overseas in large numbers to the "doughboys" serving in France. That brought the bar a loyal following, which persisted as the bar, the brand, and the company were bought and sold repeatedly over the years.

The bar disappeared from the market briefly in 2018, as then-owner NECCO folded, but new owners Boyer (the makers of Mallo Cups) bought the rights and resumed production in Pittsburgh in 2020.

Like the Clark Bar, Goldenberg's Peanut Chews were created in 1917 as an energy- and morale-boosting treat for soldiers serving overseas. The iconic pairing of chocolate and peanuts proved to have some staying power (who knew?) and it remains a popular confection in its native Pennsylvania and surrounding states.

The bar is made now by Just Born, the same company responsible for other well-loved treats including marshmallow Peeps and Mike & Ike's. Order them from Amazon if a trip to New Jersey isn't in your immediate future.

These peanut butter kisses aren't entirely unlike Bit-o-Honey, which we've already visited. Both are variations on the theme of paper-wrapped chewy taffy but with nuts. Mary Janes got there first, using molasses and peanut butter instead of the newer candy's honey and almonds.

Both are throwbacks to an earlier style of candy-making, and both still have fans despite their pull-out-your-fillings stickiness.

What do you like in your candy bars? Chocolate? Nuts? Caramel? Nougat? Well, Goo Goo Clusters are credited with being the very first candy bar to combine those varied ingredients into one confection. In its way, the Goo Goo Cluster could be considered the ancestral inspiration for many other popular bars that have come since.

They're largely a regional specialty, made in Nashville since 1912 (and with a longstanding association with the Grand Ole Opry), but their historical status earns them a place on this list. If a visit to Tennessee isn't on your bingo card, you can order them from Amazon.

The iconic ring-shaped candies were invented in 1912, and the hole in the middle was originally just a way to set them apart from conventional mints (other flavors would come along later).

There's an enduring myth that the hole in the middle was intended to provide an airway and prevent anyone from choking on the candy. The real story is that they simply looked like the life preservers on boats, and the fact that the candy launched in 1912 — the year of the Titanic's sinking — probably didn't hurt.

The Tobler family was part of the early rise of Swiss chocolate-making. Family patriarch Jean learned the trade as a young man and then launched his own chocolate business in 1868. It was his sons who would create the now-famous triangular Toblerone Chocolate bar 40 years later, after his death, placing them among the giants.

As for the name, it's a mashup. The Tobler part speaks for itself, but the rest comes from "torrone," the Italian name for the honey and almond nougat that gives the bar its crunchy add-ins.

The iconic Hershey's chocolate kisses weren't the first hit of Milton Hershey's famously late-blooming career (we'll get to his milk chocolate bar shortly), but who knew this holiday favorite had been around for so long?

They were initially hand-wrapped, which limited production, but a few years later Hershey managed to automate the process and that's when they really took off. As for the name, small individual candies were already known as "kisses," so it was logical to use it for single-serve chocolate as well.

England-based Cadbury is another pioneer of the chocolate industry, and their Dairy Milk remains a hugely popular example of a simple, uncomplicated chocolate bar. In fact, it remains one of the company's worldwide best-sellers and one of the best Cadbury bars overall. Well over a century after its 1905 launch, that's a pretty big endorsement.

They're made by Hershey's in the US, under a longstanding licensing agreement. While expat Brits may grumble that "they're just not the same," they're still pretty good.

Milton Hershey's candy business actually began with caramel-making, with the chocolate brand as a subsidiary. Chocolate quickly turned out to be where the money was, though, and the launch of Hershey's Milk Chocolate Bar in 1900 put the company on its path to glory. A Hershey's bar even went to the moon!

A new process developed in the '30s extended the bar's lifespan and heat resistance, though a side effect was an odd flavor note that some Europeans couldn't stand. 

Chiclets weren't the first chewing gum, by any means, but doubling down by wrapping gum in a candy shell was a stroke of genius. Chiclets were created in 1900 and bought a few years later by Thomas Adams' American Chicle Company, the originators of chewing gum as we now know it. Despite their long popularity, Chiclets disappeared for a while in confusing circumstances, but are now available again.

Ironically, given that the Adams company rose from Adams' chance meeting with former Mexican general Santa Anna, they're now owned by Mendelez and made in Mexico.

Chocolate wasn't an easy thing to sell in the days when refrigeration was rare and most deliveries took place at the pace of a walking horse. To be blunt, it melted and made a mess. Tootsie Rolls weren't the first chocolate-flavored candy by any stretch, but they were the first chocolate candy (or at least chocolate-adjacent) that could stand up to summer's heat.

Tootsie Rolls were a hit from the start and only gained additional popularity in 1931 when the company put them inside lollipops to create Tootsie Pops.

Okay, black licorice isn't everybody's thing. It's pretty much a love-or-hate proposition (I'm in the "love" camp, myself). But whether you love them or hate them, you have to respect Good & Plenty for its longevity, and its role as a pioneering candy that helped establish licorice as a player in the world of confectionery.

Very little has changed about the candy since it launched in 1893. The look, the taste, and even the packaging show that they got it right the first time.

William Wrigley's company wasn't the first to sell what we now know as chewing gum; that distinction goes to Thomas Adams' American Chicle Company (see Chiclets, above). But William Wrigley was a marketing genius, and his Chicago-based company rapidly became the top name in the field (literally, if you're a Cubs fan) after the gum's 1893 launch.

What set Wrigley apart was his marketing genius: Aside from his inescapable billboards, he once mailed gum samples to 1.5 million people after getting their names from the phone book.

For such a familiar sweet, there's surprisingly little known about the origins of "circus peanuts." There's a broad consensus that they date from the 1880s, and we know that many companies have produced them over the years, but there are still more questions than answers. Why are they that color? Why are they shaped like peanuts, but taste like bananas? Nobody knows for sure, though theories aren't scarce.

What we do know is that they were a popular example of candies that could be bought in bulk for literal pennies, hence the now-quaint term "penny candy."

Like circus peanuts, candy corn is another longtime favorite with a murky origin story. We know they've been made since sometime in the 1880s, though an exact date is hard to pin down. It hit the big time when the Goetze candy company (see Caramel Creams, above) put out its own version. Fun fact: In those days corn was eaten mostly by chickens, so its original name was "Chicken Feed."

Not everybody loves candy corn (to put it mildly) but those who like it really like it. For the rest of us, well, it's at least a taste of nostalgia.

Taffy has been around since at least the early 19th century, and we know that these colorful pastel taffies were sold on Atlantic City's boardwalk already by the beginning of the 1880s. They reportedly got their current name in 1883, after a storm surge sent seawater through stores on the boardwalk, when the owner of one sodden store is said to have jokingly offered "saltwater taffy" to customers.

The story may be apocryphal but the name stuck, and to this day saltwater taffy remains an Atlantic City mainstay.

Chocolate was not always the meltingly smooth treat we know today. In its early days, chocolate was usually mealy and crumbly. So if you're a chocolate lover, tip your hat to Swiss innovator Rodolphe Lindt. He's the one who discovered a process called "conching," which ground the beans to an unprecedentedly fine texture.

That discovery is attributed to a happy accident, but the result was the smooth, melt-in-your-mouth chocolate that we know today.

The first hero of modern chocolate production was England's Joseph Fry. Before Fry, chocolate was something you drank. He's the genius who first combined the cocoa butter "waste" from his cocoa factory with cocoa and sugar to make chocolate for eating (what a concept!). Fry's Cream Stick was the first mass-manufactured chocolate candy, in 1853, and was then relaunched in modern bar form in 1866 as Fry's Chocolate Cream.

The fondant-filled bar, now owned by Cadbury, is still a popular British candy, and it's readily available in the US if you'd like to taste this milestone in confectionery history.

Jellied candies like Turkish delight go back centuries, but in the 1850s some unsung genius in Boston hit on the idea of "panning" (sugar-coating) small pieces of jelly filling to make them finger-friendly. The idea spread, and another Boston candy maker was sending these novelties to Civil War troops by 1861. By the end of the 19th century, the tiny treats' physical appearance had given rise to the name "jelly bean."

The Goetze company (Caramel Creams, candy corn) is a big player as the owner of the Jelly Belly brand, and famously sent over 3 tons of jelly beans to Washington for Reagan's inauguration.

These oddly chalky pastel wafers aren't everybody's cup of tea. In fact, they were already "old-fashioned" when your great-grandmother was in diapers. They were invented in 1847, followed by the very similar Sweethearts around the time of the Civil War. As candies go they're not great, but they don't melt or get sticky and have their own retro charm.

NECCO folded in 2018, but the wafers have been rescued by Spangler (makers of Dum Dums and Bit-o-Honey) and returned after a two-year hiatus.

Unless you live in New England, you won't know this one. So why is it on the list? Because it's the oldest candy to be sold commercially in the US, that's why. Mary Spencer of Salem began selling these hard lemon and mint candies in 1806, and the company she founded — now Ye Olde Pepper Candy Companie, recognized as America's oldest candy store – still sells those and the molasses-flavored "blackjacks" that followed in the 1830s.

The original store is worth a visit if you find yourself near Massachusetts. Otherwise, you can order directly from their online shop (their candies aren't on Amazon).