While other candy bars adopted sweet and silly names (Jujubes, Peanut Chews), Chicken Dinner went the counter-intuitive route with a name was pretty out-of-left-field, even by 1920s standards. Sperry also seemed to understand the value of standing out in a crowded marketplace. Ads for Milky Way, which came out the same year as Chicken Dinner, drew a comparison with malted milk drinks, while ads for Mounds and Almond Joy showed the bars spilling out of a coconut. By naming its bar after a meal, Sperry was one-upping other manufacturers who had linked their candy bars with wholesome ingredients. Customers may have been tempted to simply stare at the succulent image of the roasted chicken rather than fork over the 10 cents.īut Chicken Dinner’s popularity was all about marketing. “An expensive, high-grade candy” was how a 1924 Sperry ad described Chicken Dinner, giving it a puzzling air of exclusivity considering it didn’t contain any actual chicken (it was filled with nuts instead, and was coated in chocolate), and kids were the target market. Introduced in 1923 by the Sperry Candy Company of Milwaukee, the oddly named bar sold for 10 cents and featured a roasted chicken on each package. Yes, you read that right: a candy bar called Chicken Dinner. As with the film industry and the lottery, many have tried, and very few succeed.Īll of which makes the success of Chicken Dinner quite remarkable. Candy historian Ray Broekel estimates that between the first and second World Wars alone, more than 30,000 candy bars came out. The short-lived Sal-le-Dande bar was named after a stripper, while the Vegetable Sandwich bar was an unfortunate combination of celery, peppers, and dried cabbage coated in chocolate. For every Milky Way and Hershey bar that found lasting success, there are hundreds if not thousands of Fat Emmas, Baby Lobsters, Coffee Dans, Dipsy Doodles, Prairie Schooners, and Choco’Lites. The history of candy bars is a graveyard of odd and outlandish ideas.
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