Candy Names
Candy is delicious to eat. But how did some of them get their strange names? Take a peek to find out about the the history of candy names.
Life Savers - In 1912, a man named Clarence Crane realized that the sale of candy in the summer didn’t do very well because the soft chocolate always seemed to melt.
So Clarence Crane invented a better “summer candy” that wouldn’t melt. At this time, ships were starting to use round life preservers, and Crane’s new little mints were round and had holes in them, so he thought a clever name for his new summer candy would be “Crane’s Peppermint Life Savers” His Pep-O-Mint flavor was the first to arrive on the scene. It wasn’t until 1924 that he started making fruit flavored ones, but they were solid discs with no holes in the middle. Finally in 1929, the fruit flavored ones started to have holes and by 1935, the five flavors that we know and love today were added to form the Five Flavor Life Savers Roll.
Pez - It was 1927 in Vienna, Austria when the now famous PEZ candy was born from the mind of a man named Eduard Haas. Haas’s original intent with this candy was to market the mint to adults to help them quit smoking cigarettes. The first and only flavor until 1952 was peppermint. Interestingly, this is how PEZ got its name. The German word for peppermint is pfefferminz. He took the first, middle and last letter to get the name PEZ (PfeffErminZ).
The first PEZ were carried in little pocket tins, not the cool dispensers that we know today. In 1948, the first version of the dispenser was released and was designed to look like a cigarette lighter (it had no head on it). In order to expand into the U.S. market, the PEZ company came up with a clever idea of adding a cartoon head to the dispenser and call it a children’s candy. This became an instant hit in 1952, and launched what is now a huge collecting craze for these little plastic dispensers and the candy they hold. To date there are over 300 different PEZ dispensers to collect!
Milk Duds - When the first Milk Duds were made in 1928, the idea was to make them perfectly round. No matter how hard the manufacturer tried, they couldn’t make them round so they decided to call them duds. The milk part comes from the large amount of milk they use to make this delicious candy.
Tootsie Rolls -The Tootsie Roll was invented by Leo Hirshfield in 1896. He named the candy after his 5 year old daughter whose nickname was Tootsie.
M&M’s - The name comes from the last name of the two founders. Mars and Murrie.
Snickers - Snickers was named after the Mars family’s favorite horse.



















