Candy. Everyone loves it, and it should be hard to mess up. But not all sweet treats
can be as popular as Starbursts or Snickers. Here are just a few of the biggest failures
that the candy world has ever seen.
Easter is one of the happiest times of the year for candy lovers, with many brands releasing
coveted limited-time-only offerings for the season. However, few Easter candies sparks
fan obsession quite as much as the Cadbury Creme Egg. Devotion to this seasonal treat
is so strong that even minute changes to the formula can cause an outcry, a lesson that
Cadbury learned the hard way in 2007 when it tried to secretly reduce the size of their
signature treat.
Fans didn't take this attempted subterfuge lightly. Creme Egg aficionado B.J. Novak famously
roasted the brand on "Conan," comparing a new, smaller egg with a larger example he
had saved from 2005 to prove that they had indeed shrunk.
"Look at that!"
"Judge for yourself, America!"
After the "Conan" fiasco, Cadbury updated their website to state,
"Since people's preferences vary from market to market, so do our products."
A very convenient excuse, indeed.
Cadbury further reduced the size of its eggs in 2019. This time, however, they at least
had the decency to admit it, saying they had no other choice thanks to the rising price
of ingredients.
Necco Sweethearts, also known as conversation hearts, are a staple of the Valentine's Day
season. However, the 2018 bankruptcy of manufacturer Necco endangered the future of this classic
treat. Spangler Candy Company, the makers of Dum Dum lollipops, swooped in to acquire
the failing brand, which was at that point the oldest candymaker in America and had been
in business since 1847.
The sale wasn't the end of the problems for Sweethearts, however: when Spangler moved
Necco's antique manufacturing equipment to a new facility, the stamp that printed messages
on Sweethearts broke in transit. Instead of pausing production to sort out the technical
issues, Spangler decided to press forward with mostly blank Sweethearts in order to
meet customer demand. Alyse Thomson, the managing editor of Candy Industry magazine, thought
Spangler made a mistake in being so hasty, telling The Huffington Post,
"It's better if Spangler waits to relaunch Sweethearts until the company has the formulation
and production process just right, rather than rush them to market to meet demand."
Luckily, Spangler quickly got its act together and now prints messages on conversation hearts
once again.
Nutella has an undeniable stranglehold on the chocolate spread market, with the delicious
hazelnut topping bringing in billions of dollars every year. Naturally, it only made sense
for Hershey to try and get in on the action with a spread inspired by their famous Reese's
peanut butter cups. While a peanut butter-chocolate concoction seems easy enough for a multi-billion
dollar company to develop and market, Hershey managed to fail at that simple task.
A Popsugar taste test yielded mixed reviews for the newest Reese's product: some tasters
seemed to enjoy it, but the ones who didn't had strong negative reactions. Adjectives
used to describe the spread included "gritty" and "oily." Many tasters also claimed that
the product failed to deliver the signature Reese's taste advertised by the label.
Reese's Spread landed with a thud and was quickly discontinued. Despite that failure,
the company hasn't totally abandoned the spread market — it still sells regular peanut butter
that has a more positive reputation.
Spicy treats are easily one of the hottest segments of the snack market. A report by
snack industry insider Kalsec showed that 95% of Americans enjoy at least mild levels
of spice in food, and 38% like hot to extremely hot foods. Another survey by market research
firm Mintel reported that two thirds of U.S. consumers find sweet and spicy flavors appealing.
With those numbers in mind, Skittles must have thought they made a sure winner on their
hands when they introduced their Sweet Heat flavor.
Strange flavors and promotional stunts are a big part of Skittles' brand identity. They've
even gone as far as to introduce a flavor that's supposed to taste like rotten zombies.
In contrast to the zombie flavor, however, Sweet Heat Skittles were supposed to actually
taste good.
Some food reviewers praised the spicy Skittles, comparing them favorably to more popular capsaicin
confections like chili chocolates. Despite positive first impressions, the flavor disappeared
from store shelves quickly, as it proved too strange for the average consumer.
When the makers of Ayds diet candy were brainstorming ideas for what to call their new product in
the late 1930s, they had no idea what a headache they would cause in a few decades. While the
idea of diet candy may seem strange to us now, it was actually a hugely popular product
during its peak in the mid 20th century. While early formulations of Ayds contained only
caramel and a proprietary vitamin blend, later versions were filled with a local anesthetic
called benzocaine. Ayds worked on the hypothesis that numbing people's tongues would reduce
their desire to eat.
In the 1980s, the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome — otherwise known as AIDS — began
sweeping through America, killing untold thousands of people. Despite the obviously negative
associations that caused for the branding of the diet candy, the company stubbornly
stuck to their name. Frank DiPrima, an executive at Ayds parent company Jeffrey Martin Incorporated,
was quoted as saying,
"The product has been around for 45 years. Let the disease change its name."
Jeffrey Martin's tasteless and insensitive response to its PR crisis did nothing to reassure
consumers, and sales dwindled throughout the 1980s. The product finally changed its name
to Diet Ayds in 1988, but it was too little, too late for the declining brand, which ceased
production before the beginning of the 21st century.
As the package says: "kids and grown-ups love it so, the happy world of Haribo." The addictive
texture and snackable size of Haribo gummy bears makes it all too easy to eat an entire
bag in one sitting. For those of us who have to watch our sugar intake, Haribo's sugar-free
version of its classic bears appeared at first to be a perfect solution. Unfortunately, no
one could have predicted that these harmless-seeming treats concealed an extremely messy flaw.
Haribo chose to sweeten their bears with Lycasin, a sugar substitute known to have a powerful
laxative effect. Researchers have determined that a mere 40 grams of Lycasin is enough
to cause gastrointestinal distress in adults, with only 25 grams needed to do the same for
kids. A single bag of sugar-free bears contains enough Lycasin to have this effect several
times over.
The bowel-loosening properties of the Lycasin-laced gummies led to an avalanche of bad press for
Haribo online, with reviewers recounting their gummy bear horror stories in hilarious and
terrifying ways. As one reviewer put it,
"The floodgates of hell were opened and the damned, liquified souls of an entire bag's
worth of gummi bears cried as they burned through my sphincter."
Gross!
Toblerone has always had a classier image than most supermarket candy bars. Perhaps
it's because the bar is made of real Swiss chocolate, or maybe it's because its almond
and honey filling has a more mature flavor profile than your average nougat. However,
it's more than likely that the real secret to Toblerone's success is its instantly recognizable
pyramid shape. Toblerone's parent company, Mondelez International, inadvertently sparked
outrage in 2016 when it announced that it would make the triangles in a Toblerone bar
skinnier and further apart, reducing the weight of each one by around 20 percent.
"You know what, Helena? You don't deserve this big Toblerone."
Much like Cadbury's size shenanigans, the change was blamed on rising ingredient prices.
Luckily, Mondelez took the outcry from fans to heart, and the skinnier Toblerones only
lasted two years. The bar returned to its bulkier shape in 2018, and a Mondelez representative
acknowledged that the skinnier Toblerone may have been a mistake after all.
Every year, the coming of autumn brings the same dependable experiences: the leaves turn
orange, the air gets chillier, and brands release an onslaught of pumpkin-flavored foods
and beverages. Starbucks shoulders a large portion of the blame for America's pumpkin
spice overload, with its iconic pumpkin spice latte selling 424 million units in 2019 alone.
The PSL's success has led to a pumpkin arms race, with companies producing products ranging
from gourd-flavored alcohol to pumpkin spice SPAM.
With all that money sitting on the table, it's no wonder the M&M/Mars company decided
to release limited-edition Pumpkin Spice M&M's in 2013. They're now discontinued, so you
can't taste them for yourself, but some would say you aren't missing much: reviewer Adam
at The Impulsive Buy thought that the Pumpkin Spice M&M's mostly tasted like a jumbo version
of standard M&M's with an aftertaste like, quote, "a wimpy version of Cinnamon Red Hots."
This limited-edition flavor only stuck around for a single season, but other pumpkin-inspired
M&M flavors have since had limited-time runs of their own.
The King of Rock and Roll is famous for many things, but in the food world, Elvis' biggest
legacy is undoubtedly the peanut butter, banana, and bacon sandwich. The origins of Elvis'
obsession with this flavor combination are shrouded in myth, but Serious Eats details
the most popular version of the tale. Allegedly, Elvis first tried this decadent snack at the
Colorado Mine Company, a diner in Denver. Their version was truly over-the-top, with
a mess of bacon, bananas, and peanut butter shoved inside an entire loaf of French bread.
The cooks at Colorado Mine Company then took the whole monstrosity and deep-fried it to
order.
Reese's decided to honor The King with a banana creme-filled peanut butter cup in 2007, the
30th anniversary of Elvis' death. Although the review wasn't entirely negative, a writer
at Candy Yum Yum said that the "creme" was chewy and nougat-like, and the overall flavor
of the cups was overly sweet and lacked real banana punch. Although the candy only saw
a short production run, anything Elvis-related turns into a collectible. You can still buy
ancient packages of the banana cream cups on eBay in their original wrapper, but we
definitely don't recommend you eat them after all these years.
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