Hollywood Candy Company
The Hollywood Candy Company, or Hollywood Brands, was an American confectionery company formed in Hollywood, Carver County, Minnesota, in 1912[1] by Frank Martoccio.
History
[edit]In 1911, Frank Martoccio's F.A. Martoccio Macaroni Company acquired the defunct Pratt and Langhoft Candy factory. He had initially only wanted to purchase a similar machine to replace one that had burnt out at his own macaroni factory but was talked into acquiring the entire plant and entering the confectionery business.[2] In 1927, he purchased the Pendergast Candy Company of Minneapolis, Minnesota, changing the name of his company to Hollywood Brands in 1933.
In the early 1920s, Pendergast had discovered a method of making a fluffy nougat for candy bars, having added far too many eggs to a batch of German-style dark nougat.[3] They used this for their walnut-flavored Fat Emma bars but the secret was soon out, with Frank and Forrest Mars's Milky Way bars becoming the most successful copycat.[4] Martoccio invented a synthetic coating for his candy bars—particularly the Zero bar—to keep them from melting in warm temperatures, helping their sales in the South before air conditioning became generally available. He used only the very best ingredients—real cocoa butter, eggs, etc. and was still able to sell his milk chocolate bars for 3 cents compared to the 5 cent Hershey bar (1955). That was not continued after the company was sold in 1967.[2]
Hollywood Candy Company moved to Centralia, Illinois, in 1938. During the 1950s, Hollywood owned a Crosley Super Sport, which was painted to look like the Zero candy bar wrapper and employed a midget to impersonate a character called Zero and drive around advertising the candy bar. In 1967, the Martoccio family sold Hollywood Brands to Consolidated Foods, later Sara Lee. The Centralia plant was destroyed in a fire in 1980.
In 1988 Hollywood Brands was acquired by the Leaf Candy Company,[5] then became part of the Hershey Company in 1996.[6]
Products
[edit]Amongst Hollywood's confectionery products were:
- Butter-Nut (1916) with use of the name successfully defended in a court case challenging the name for use in a chocolate bar[7]
- Zero (1920) White coating that did not melt in heat. A silver wrapper with large blue and silver ZERO across the top. Still produced today (2020)
- Milkshake (1927) (similar to a Milky Way bar, but with malt flavor instead of chocolate flavor only)
- Payday (1932) Caramel nougat coated with whole peanuts. Still produced today (2020)
- Hollywood (dark chocolate coating caramel, nougat and peanuts)
- Big Time (a Milkshake bar with peanuts) Purple wrapper with Big Time written across the top
- Red Sails
- Smooth Sailin (dark chocolate coating walnut-flavored nougat) A blue wrapper with silver sailboats
- 747
- Almond
- Swinger
- Buccaneers
- Treasure Bar
- Nut Sundae Bar
- Sno King Candy Bar
- Teddy Bear (peanuts, chocolate, nougat)
- Nut Patti (almonds, chocolate, nougat)
- Tafy Nut / Tofy-Nut
- 3 Big Bears (three chocolate bars in one)
- Top Star (coconut, caramel, nougat)
References
[edit]- ^ "Zero candy bars - Candy you ate as a kid?". Archived from the original on 2009-02-16. Retrieved 2009-02-12.
- ^ a b 2 Archived copy
- ^ Chu, Anita (16 December 2014), Field Guide to Candy: How to Identify and Make Virtually Every Candy Imaginable, Philadelphia: Quirk Books, p. 29, ISBN 978-1-59474-810-3.
- ^ "AmericanHeritage.com / LAND of the CANDY BAR". Archived from the original on 2008-02-05. Retrieved 2009-03-16.
- ^ "PAY DAY JOINS LEAF'S CANDY ROLL". The Chicago Tribune. 1988-10-20. Retrieved 2023-12-19.
- ^ "Hershey Will Buy Candy Unit From Huhtamaki Oy's Leaf". The Wall Street Journal. October 21, 1996. Retrieved December 19, 2023.
- ^ "Banken und Finanzprodukte im Vergleich". BankVergleich.com.