A while back, I started looking at when candy bars were invented, and realized that the candy bar world really hasn’t been shaken up much in a long time. The popular candy bars out there are surprisingly old.
Granted, in some cases, there have been modifications to ingredients, but most popular candy bars were introduced many, many decades ago. That is, in all this time, despite the large food industry out there, very few people has been able to make something that tops the incumbents. That boggles my mind.
To put some numbers on this, I’m going to randomly grab this list of 20 candy bars, and then check the date of introduction on Wikipedia.
| Bar | Date of introduction |
|---|---|
| Almond Joy | 1946 |
| Butterfinger | 1923 |
| Heath bar | 1914 |
| Hershey’s Cookies 'n Creme | 1994 |
| Crunch | 1938 |
| Payday | 1932 |
| Oreo Chocolate Candy Bar | 2016 |
| Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Bar | 1900 |
| 100 Grand Bar | 1964 |
| Andes Chocolate Mints | 1950 |
| Mr. Goodbar | 1925 |
| 3 Musketeers | 1932 |
| Take 5 | 2004 |
| Clark Bar | 1917 |
| Caramello | 1968 |
| Snickers | 1930 |
| Twix | 1967 |
| Milky Way | 1924 |
| Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups | 1928 |
| Kit Kat | 1935 |
Of those 20 bars:
-
60% were invented before World War II. These are 85 years old or older.
-
85% were invented at or before 1968.
-
90% were invented at or before 1994, in the last millennium.
-
95% were invented at or before 2004, and are at least 19 years old.