It's "crispety."
It's "crunchety."
It's full of chocolate and peanut-buttery goodness that sticks to your molars like glue:
it's Butterfinger!
It's one of the most popular candy bars out there, and here's everything you need to know
about it.
“Hey Boy!”
“Sorry man, but nobody better lay a finger on my Butterfinger.”
With all due respect to Hershey, Pennsylvania, if there's one city in the United States that
can be called the "candy capital," it's Chicago.
Iconic sweets ranging from Milky Way to Oh Henry! to Wrigley gum all can trace their
roots to the Windy City, and the same can be said for Butterfinger.
It first hit the market nearly 100 years ago when the Curtiss Candy Company began selling
it in 1923.
The word "butterfinger," is, of course, a sports insult that refers to players who can't
hold onto the ball.
While that might not sound like it has anything to do with a chocolate and peanut butter bar,
one Chicago resident thought it was a good fit.
Back in the 20s, the Curtiss Candy Company held a contest for the public to choose the
name of their new bar and somebody suggested "Butterfinger."
Considering that Curtiss also produced Baby Ruth at the time, Butterfinger made for a
pretty good sports-themed pairing.
“Simpson going deep!”
Nothing gets people to try a new product quite like giving it away for free, and that's just
what the Curtiss Candy Company did in the 1920s.
The company's owner, Otto Schnering, needed to find a way to compete with other candy
companies and drum up publicity for his Butterfinger and Baby Ruth products.
His solution was to attach tiny parachutes to his candy bars and drop them from planes
over New York.
As creative as it was, it also proved to be somewhat irresponsible, because people were
risking life and limb to get the falling candy bars.
A newspaper reporter captured the madness and described it as near chaos with people
on the Coney Island boardwalk nearly trampling each other to get some of the falling treats.
Even though a woman was knocked to the ground and ended up with a broken leg, the candy
company declared the promotional stunt a success.
Schnering would go on to establish the Baby Ruth Flying Circus and hire pilots to drop
his candy bars over dozens of cities across the country.
While it's no longer dropping candy out of planes, the modern-day owners of Butterfinger
are still willing to employ some clever publicity to sell their product.
It's a slightly more subtle approach nowadays, though.
On April Fool's Day of 2012, Butterfinger made industry headlines when it jumped on
the Mayan calendar prophecy bandwagon.
This was based on an apocalyptic interpretation of the Mayan calendar that said the world
was supposed to end on December 21, 2012.
The candy company created a huge crop circle, or crop square to be more precise, of a QR
code in a cornfield in Manhattan, Kansas.
Butterfinger spokesperson Tricia Bowles sent out the message,
"It's no coincidence that a mysterious crop circle appeared on the same day that Butterfinger
bars disappeared from Moscow to Manhattan.
Get your Butterfinger bars now as there's little time left BARmageddon is officially
here!"
The crop square stunt tied in with a $5,000 Facebook contest in which fans were urged
to find the connection between the ancient Mayans, aliens, and Butterfinger.
While it may not have been quite as exciting as parachuting candy bars, it was probably
a lot safer than having the public running into traffic for free Butterfingers.
“Bart’s Butterfinger so butterfingery.”
“Hit a homer dude!”
“Nobody better lay a finger on my Butterfinger!”
Butterfinger was around long before The Simpsons came into existence, but the Springfield residents
helped introduce the candy bar to a new generation of fans.
Although perhaps it's more accurate to say that Butterfinger helped introduce The Simpsons.
At the time of Butterfinger's first Simpsons commercial in 1988, the cartoon family were
merely a segment on The Tracey Ullman Show.
It was a Butterfinger commercial that introduced Bart's nerdy friend Millhouse, and before
Bart was telling folks not to "lay a finger on my Butterfinger," the candy bar was simply
"neato."
"Peanut butter-y Butterfinger."
"It's neato!"
"And it's neato."
By the early 90s, The Simpsons were appearing on the wrappers for Butterfinger, as well
as other Nestle candies.
Butterfinger and The Simpsons eventually parted ways, only to unite once again.
When the brand initially broke its ties with Bart, the show's writers took aim at the candy
with an episode in which Marge tries to completely rid Springfield of sugar.
Thankfully, there was never any real bad blood between the cartoon and the candy, and Nestle
has incorporated The Simpsons into its promotions as recently as 2013.
Fans were asked to help solve the mystery of who stole Bart's Butterfinger with a national
van tour making stops in select cities to help crack the case, and give out free candy,
of course.
If you ever hear an older relative complain about how "They just don't make 'em like they
used to," you might be tempted to respond with something snarky like "Okay, boomer."
But if they're talking about Butterfinger, they may actually have a point.
The candy bar has changed ownership a few times over the years, and during that time
the original Curtiss Candy Company recipe for Butterfinger may have been lost.
How this happened isn't exactly known.
It's believed that between Nabisco's ownership of Butterfinger starting in 1981, to the selling
of the brand to Nestle in 1989, the recipe was misplaced.
One would think that somebody would have a backup recipe somewhere, but alas, some lessons
have to be learned the hard way.
To keep the brand chugging along, Nestle was rumored to have recreated the recipe as best
as possible to match what customers had come to know and love.
There at least don't seem to be any old news reports of people in the late '80s flipping
out over a change to the Butterfinger recipe.
So either Nestle did such a bang-up job mimicking the original taste, or they merely kept the
change under wraps and nobody raised an eyebrow.
The biggest and richest brands in the world put some major bucks on the table every year
for a 30-second Super Bowl commercial.
Considering that Nestle was founded a full century before the first Super Bowl was even
played, it's kind of surprising that they waited until 2014 to make their big game debut.
Nevertheless, the candy company jumped into Super Bowl 48 with an ad for a Butterfinger
spinoff product: the Butterfinger Peanut Butter Cup.
The commercial imagined peanut butter and chocolate as a married couple in counseling
with a therapist suggesting that they "try something different" in the form of a Butterfinger
threesome.
"I'm sorry.
What are we doing here?"
Another version of the commercial had the couple sitting in the therapist's waiting
room while other food couples like cheese and crackers tackled various relationship
problems.
It was certainly just as goofy as it was risqué, which seems to always be hit or miss with
Super Bowl viewers.
Time magazine, for one, gave it a D+ rating.
As for the product itself, Nestle spent more than two years developing the peanut butter
and chocolate cups.
People were initially skeptical about a peanut butter cup that wasn't Reese's.
A taste test by Thrillist, for example, produced mixed reactions.
The Butterfinger cup is still around today, though, so perhaps Nestle was wise to wait
before jumping into the Super Bowl after all.
In 1992, Butterfinger decided to mix things up with its Butterfinger BB's.
The smaller version of a classic candy in chocolate ball format was an instant hit with
90s kids.
While its low melting point made them rather messy, it was hard to find fault with such
a delicious candy.
But then eventually, they were gone.
Just why they went away isn't known, but in 2006 they did indeed vanish off the shelves.
They briefly came back in 2009, but for some reason they just didn't have the same delicious
appeal.
The power of the internet tried to get them to return again with a Facebook call-to-action
page, while pleas on Twitter went unanswered.
A Change.org petition was even started for their revival.
Unfortunately, though, nothing has had much effect and Butterfinger BB's can now only
be found as an entry on lists of forgotten candies we wish would come back.
At least we still have the Butterfinger ice cream bar.
The candy business is a tough one, and even though Butterfinger has been around for nearly
a century, it's struggled to compete with Hershey, the other big name on the candy block.
Declining sales and a conscious mindset to shift to healthier products led Nestle to
sell Butterfinger, Baby Ruth, and other candy brands to Italian candy-making giant Ferrero
in 2018.
Ferrero, who's probably best known for its hazelnut candy and making Nutella, paid Nestle
a staggering $2.8 billion in the deal.
Now, just because Ferrero is an Italian company, the deal didn't mean that Butterfinger was
suddenly going to become an Italian-made candy bar.
It's a little bit confusing, but Ferrero actually owns the Chicago-based Ferrara Candy Company,
which is now in charge of making Butterfinger right here in the United States.
So Butterfinger is still connected to its Chicago roots, but it now also has some Italian
influence calling the shots.
It's understandable that a company that buys a struggling brand is going to want to change
a few things up to bring the money back in.
And that's exactly what Ferrero did once it acquired Butterfinger.
The company put Bart Simpson's warnings aside and did lay a finger on Butterfinger in a
very big way, by changing the recipe.
"Check this out."
"Butterfinger."
"It's a better Butterfinger."
Butterfinger's new owners felt that the brand's quality had deteriorated and was the cause
of the candy bar's double-digit sales decline.
The recipe change started with finding a way to improve upon the key ingredients of peanuts,
cocoa, and milk.
Jumbo U.S.-grown peanuts were used, and the cocoa and milk got an upgrade with the goal
of a smoother chocolate flavor.
Additionally, hydrogenated oil and the preservative TBHQ were also dropped from the recipe.
A lot of fans, alas, were unhappy with the new product.
The "Better Butterfinger" campaign that launched the upgraded candy bar's debut in 2019 was
instantly met with fans calling the new recipe "trash" and "nasty."
The hate on social media was pretty harsh, and there was even a Change.org petition that
demanded "Bring back the original Butterfinger" and garnered more than 7,000 signatures.
Ferrara Candy spokeswoman Sarah Kittel told the Chicago Tribune,
"Any time you touch a product with loyal fans, you risk this type of reaction.
That said ... we're confident that both loyal fans and new fans alike will embrace the Better
Butterfinger for the long term."
As much as some fans despised the new Butterfinger recipe, the change wasn't a failure and sales
of the product actually jumped 17.7 percent.
"Nobody lays a finger on my better Butterfinger."
Constantly coming up with creative ideas to make a 90-something candy bar seem fresh and
exciting has to be tough.
You can't fault a company for trying out new ideas, even when those ideas seem sort of
questionable.
Case in point: Butterfinger Buzz, the first Butterfinger bar that aimed to capitalize
on the energy drink market by adding caffeine to the ingredients list.
Apparently sugar wasn't enough for some people.
At the time of the launch in 2009, Butterfinger spokesperson Tricia Bowles said,
"Butterfinger Buzz has everything our consumers love great Butterfinger taste, but now with
caffeine to keep their energy level high day or night."
The implication seemed to be eating a Butterfinger that doesn't get your energy level amped is
simply the worst.
Butterfinger commanded candy fans to "get your buzz on" just so long as they didn't
happen to be a pregnant woman or small child.
But ultimately it turns out that some candy bars are just too extreme, and in this case,
the buzz of this particular Butterfinger is no longer around.
"The caffeine kick of an energy drink, the sweet taste of Butterfinger.
Supplies are limited.
Get your buzz on!"
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