Gone but not forgotten: Photos of candy brands we miss
There was a time when a candy bar was just a candy bar. You unwrapped it without thinking about sugar content or dental damage or what it was going to do to your blood glucose two hours later. You bit into it, and your brain responded the way it was designed to, with a clean hit of pleasure that had no asterisk attached.
That was the deal.
The candy industry has since made the math more complicated, but it has also quietly discontinued some of the best things it ever made. The bars below are gone for reasons ranging from poor sales to corporate mergers to, in one remarkable case, a family’s personal distaste for peanut butter.
Image Credit: Bionic Disco / YouTube.
The Marathon Bar
The Marathon Bar was introduced by Mars in 1973 and immediately stood apart from everything else on the shelf. It was eight inches of braided caramel covered in milk chocolate, and it came with a ruler printed on the back of the bright red wrapper to prove it. The selling point was time: the bar was designed to take a while to eat. Mars discontinued it in 1981, citing shelf space issues and declining sales. It remains one of the most requested discontinued candy bars in American history.
Image credit: Joaquino7997 / Reddit
PB Max
PB Max was introduced by Mars in 1990 and built around a whole-grain cookie base topped with creamy peanut butter and covered in milk chocolate. It sold well immediately and developed a following quickly. Then Mars discontinued it in the early 1990s. The reason that has circulated ever since is that the Mars family personally disliked peanut butter and did not want to be in the peanut butter business, regardless of sales performance. Whether that story is accurate or not, PB Max disappeared.
Image Credit: Amazon.com.
The Reggie! Bar
The Reggie! Bar was launched by Curtiss Candy in 1978 to coincide with Reggie Jackson’s arrival at Yankee Stadium. It was a round, patty-shaped bar of peanuts, caramel, and chocolate, and on opening day at Yankee Stadium in 1978, it was handed out to fans. When Jackson hit a home run, the crowd threw Reggie Bars onto the field, delaying the game for five minutes while the grounds crew cleared them. The bar was discontinued in the early 1980s after corporate mergers changed the licensing arrangements.
Image credit: Jackkandi456 / Reddit
Choco’Lite
Choco’Lite was Nestlé’s answer to a question that turned out to have a large audience: what if chocolate were lighter? The bar was made with aerated milk chocolate filled with crispy chips, producing a texture that was less dense than anything else in the aisle and more interesting than a plain chocolate bar. Nestlé introduced it in the early 1970s and discontinued it sometime in the 1980s. The combination of air pockets and crispy bits has not been replicated in quite the same way since.
Image credit: Beginning-Storm-6437 / Reddit
The Seven Up bar
This bar was produced by Pearson’s Candy Company and had nothing to do with the soda. It was a single chocolate bar divided into seven distinct sections, each with a different filling: mint, nougat, buttercream, fudge, coconut, caramel, and cherry. The concept was a box of chocolates compressed into one candy bar. It was discontinued in 1979, reportedly due to the manufacturing complexity and cost of producing seven different fillings in one product. Anyone who remembers it tends to have a strong opinion about which section was best.
Image credit: brizmaker / iStock
Wrap up
The candy industry keeps moving forward, and the nostalgia market occasionally pulls something back in limited runs. But most of these are gone in the way that things are genuinely gone, present only in the memory of the people who bought them at the right time.
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Related:
- Gone but not forgotten: Photos of classic mall stores we miss
- Gone but not forgotten: Photos of childhood snacks we miss
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