candy bar

"Candy bar" is the most popular term in the U.S. for confectionery usually packaged in a bar or log form, often coated with chocolate, and sized as a snack for one person. But within that term, a wide variety of products exist, ranging from solid chocolate bars to multiple layerings or mixtures of ingredients such as nuts, fruit, grains in various forms, coconut, marzipan, marshmallow, caramel, nougat, cookie, toffee, fondant, and fudge. In British English and Canadian English the term chocolate bar is used. The word candy is rare in describing sweets in the United Kingdom.

Up to and including the 19th century, candy of all sorts was typically sold by weight, loose, in small pieces that would be bagged as bought. The introduction of chocolate as something that could be eaten as is, rather than used to make beverages or desserts, resulted in the earliest bar forms, or tablets. At some point, chocolates came to mean any chocolate-covered candies, whether nuts, creams (fondant), caramels, etc. The candy bar evolved from all of these in the late-19th century as a way of packaging and selling candy more conveniently, for both buyer and seller. This "convenience" did not include price, of course, as the buyer had to pay for the packaging. It was considerably cheaper to buy candy loose, or in bulk.

Although chocolate bars and candy bars had their beginnings in the 19th century, it was in the early-20th century that this confectionery commercial venture grew most rapidly. A number of the bars developed then still exist in relatively unchanged form. In the U.S., most candy bars started out priced at a dime, went to a nickel during the Great Depression, and went back to a dime after World War II. This price remained stable until the late 1960s.

During the first half of the century in the U.S., there were literally thousands of different candy bars being manufactured and distributed locally or regionally by small candy companies. Some of these still survive, but a few major manufacturers have taken over the marketplace, buying up smaller companies and reproducing the most popular of their candy bars. Today candy bars are made and consumed all over the world, and manufactured to local tastes and environmental conditions.

Candy bars are one of the many items commonly available from a vending machine.

Additionally, certain brands of candy bars are made for nutritional supplementation purposes. These bars contain protein and various vitamins while still retaining a sweet taste. The PowerBar brand candy bars would fit into this category.

Brands

Manufacturers

• Annabelle Candy Company
• Cadbury-Schweppes
• Dolfin
• Ganong Bros. Limited
• Goldberg Candy Company
• Golden Boronia
• Grandour
• Hansel
• Hershey Foods Corporation
• Idaho Candy Company
• ION
• Kraft Foods
• Lake Champlain Chocolates
• Loacker
• Mars, Incorporated
• Nestlé
• NECCO
• Sifer's Valomilk
• Tootsie Roll Industries

External links

• Name That Candy Bar Cross-Section
• History of Candy Bar Wrappers
• Candy-Bar Freak Testimonies
• CandyBlog.net - current candy reviews

References

• Almond, Steve (2004) Candyfreak, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill ISBN 1-56512-421-9
• Broekel, Ray (1982) The Great American Candy Bar Book, Houghton Mifflin Co. ISBN 0-395-32502-1
• Richardson, Tim (2002) Sweets: A History of Candy, Bloomsbury ISBN 1-58234-307-1