Eponymous Foods: Full Bars

This installment of the eponymous foods series covers candy bars, including Snickers, Mars Bars, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, and some side mentions of other candies.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 08

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• 0:42Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 1:15Holly Frey?

  We've all tumbled down an internet rabbit hole trying to self-diagnose, and it leaves us more anxious than informed. Our feeds are full of wellness trends, but how do we know what's real, what's exaggerated, and what's just wrong? Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association breaks it all down. Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends, not to cancel them, but to understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. So listen to Health vs. Hype wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:47Tracy V. Wilson?

  The Old Gays are back with Silver Linings, their lovable podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with Vive Healthcare. Robert, Mick, Bill, and Jessa strut back down memory lane for season two, sharing lessons on life, love, and loss. These are the kind of insights that only come from experience. So tune into Silver Linings with The Old Gays on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 2:14Speaker 11

  Attention Chicken Nugget fans. Burger King heard that a lot of you didn't like the old Chicken Nuggets, so they got to work and reinvented them. These new Chicken Nuggets are their tastiest, crispiest, juiciest nuggets ever. And because better Chicken Nuggets deserve better sauces, they've reinvented several of their sauces, and they created a brand new one. The new special savory sauce, which is only available for a limited time at participating US restaurants, don't wait around. You gotta try the new Burger King Chicken Nuggets today.

• 2:44Holly Frey?

  Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 2:55Holly Frey?

  Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frey. And I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Oh, it's Halloween time. We're doing a Halloween edition of Eponymous Foods. And what that means is candy bars. Yeah. This one is a little bit caveated because most candy bars are named for the person who invented them and ran the company that produced them. So it's not that thrilling. Not a lot of surprises, although there are stories about them are often very interesting. There is one little surpriser in the mix that just tickles me to no end. But just know, you're going to recognize almost all of these names. And two of today's eponymous candy bars are very closely related.

• 3:37Holly Frey?

  That is a family story, which also includes some other candies that are going to be familiar to listeners. And I guess if you really wanted to bend the rules, you could say there is also an eponymous one in there. Really, the whole episode, though, is about family stories. It's kind of like two different family stories. One features two candy bars that are eponymous, and one features another, saving my very favorite for the last one. And to be frank, there were several candy companies all getting their start in the early part of the 20th century that still dominate the industry. So this is, in some ways, also an origin story of the US candy trade.

• 4:19Tracy V. Wilson?

  We'll start with Franklin Clarence Mars, who was born on September 24th, 1883, in Glenwood, Minnesota. Some accounts say he was born in Hancock, Minnesota. That's a little more than 27 miles west of Glenwood. And then others say that it was in nearby Newport, Minnesota. You might even see other neighboring towns cited as well. It's just a little fuzzy. His parents were farmers, and as a child, Frank had polio, which kept him indoors instead of outside, helping to run the farm. While he was inside with polio, his mother taught him to make candy,

• 5:01Tracy V. Wilson?

  specifically hand-dipped chocolate, but also other confections. And this often comes up as what really ignited Frank's interest in candy.

• 5:11Holly Frey?

  And at the age of 19, Frank Mars took over a candy distribution company in Minnesota. That was a wholesale operation that was called Taylor's Molasses Chips, and it provided candy stock to shops in Minneapolis. Also in that same year, which was 1902, Frank got married to a schoolteacher named Ethel G. Kissick. And the couple had a son named Forrest Edward Mars in March of 1904.

• 5:38Tracy V. Wilson?

  Ethel and Frank did not stay married. It's not clear when they divorced, but it was sometime before 1910, or maybe in early 1910. Their son Forrest went to Canada to live with his grandparents after the divorce. That year, Frank married his second wife, another Ethel. This time, it was Ethel Veronica Healy. They're believed to have gotten married in Washington State, but this is another instance where there's just not a specific available. The two of them were mentioned as having eloped in 1910 in one of Frank's obituaries.

• 6:14Holly Frey?

  We do know that whether it was before or after the marriage, Frank Mars moved to Tacoma, Washington. There, in 1911, he started making buttercream candy in his kitchen and selling it. Just in case you don't know what that is, that's kind of like the, it's not a nougat, but it's a similar texture, like a little buttery and confectioner sugar, and usually additives that flavor it inside of a candy shell. You've had these, if you had any, like, samplers of candies. Really, though, Ethel was kind of the driving force behind how this little business worked. And when we say driving, I mean that kind of literally, because she managed to acquire a car to drive around selling candy

• 6:59Holly Frey?

  while Frank stayed home and kept up production. And that was actually pretty significant, because there were an estimated 93,863,000 people in the US in 1911, and only 619,500 of them had registered vehicles. So that was about 0.66% of the population. So Ethel being able to get a car and travel around Tacoma to distribute all of their candies would have been a very significant factor in their reach, and thus their success. And in a very short period of time, the candy was in pretty high demand. However, Frank was not especially good at managing the business, and eventually, he went bankrupt.

• 7:44Tracy V. Wilson?

  In 1920, Frank moved back to Minnesota, specifically to Minneapolis, to start a candy company there called The Nougat House. Even though this was a company, it was still a really small operation. The starting capital was just $400, and the factory was just one room. One of The Nougat House's products was the Patricia Bar, named for his daughter with his second wife. And then, over time, the company name changed to Maro Bar.

• 8:14Holly Frey?

  In 1923, Frank Mars and his son Forrest had a discussion that involved the idea of a malted milk candy bar. So according to Forrest's version of the story, they were having malted milks at a drugstore counter when Forrest said, "Why don't you put a chocolate malted drink in a candy bar?" Forrest was as surprised as anyone when Frank did just that. The idea manifested as The Milky Way. The Milky Way was so successful that the company needed to expand by hiring a sales staff just to handle the huge demand from retailers. It made a reported $800,000 in the first year,

• 8:57Holly Frey?

  so that was a pretty wild success for 1923.

• 9:01Tracy V. Wilson?

  Six years after the launch of The Milky Way, Frank's company, which had been rebranded and reorged as Mars Incorporated, moved to Chicago, Illinois. As part of this move, Forrest also officially joined the company. Chicago made a lot of sense for a growing company, as there were more shipping options for distribution, thanks to the railroad access in the city. This was a really astute move for Mars, and the company's success rapidly expanded as they reached markets all through the United States.

• 9:33Holly Frey?

  The year after the move to Illinois, so 1930, the first of our eponymous foods for today was launched, and that was the Snickers Bar. Snickers is an eponymous food because it was named after Frank and Ethel's favorite horse. But here's the thing, we don't know much about that horse. Even the official Snickers website says the candy was, quote, "allegedly named after a horse." And that site shows a photo of a horse that is captioned, "Snickers Horse and Caretaker," but there's no additional context. One of the other things I saw was that Snickers, the horse, actually died before the candy hit the market.

• 10:12Holly Frey?

  Again, there's no way to verify it.

• 10:15Tracy V. Wilson?

  1930 seems like a wild time to be launching a new product, because that was during the Great Depression. But candy is one of those products that often survives economic downturns, because it's an inexpensive treat. The Snickers Bar was $0.05, and because it offered this combination of nougat, caramel, chocolate, and peanuts, it was, like the advertising continues to mention, pretty satisfying. And that made it really popular with pretty much everybody. One of the advertising taglines for it in the early days was "Candy at its Best." That first year, Mars Incorporated made a reported $26 million in sales.

• 10:59Holly Frey?

  Yeah, I kept looking that up in as many places as I could, and they all cited the same thing, so they may have been pulling from the same source. But that's just such a huge number during a depression for a $0.05 candy bar. But people really love Snickers, apparently. Coming up, we are going to talk about more candy and more eponymous candies specifically. But first, we are going to pause for a sponsor break.

• 11:26Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by YouTube Premium.

• 11:29Speaker 08

  Samantha, you know I watch a lot of YouTube. I watch a lot of it for fun, but I also watch a lot of it for research for this show. And I also put on a lot of stuff in the background, videos in background to set a mood. I find it very relaxing or sometimes kind of hype, you know? If you're looking to get ready to go out.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I use it too. And YouTube Premium takes something you already love, YouTube, and makes it even better. The content, the creators, the feeling of finding exactly what you're into for every mood and moment of your day. Premium transforms that experience into a more supercharged, enhanced way to enjoy YouTube.

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• 12:26Speaker 01

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  First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?

• 12:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  Hey, everybody. It's Tracy from Stuff You Missed in History Class. That's Alan Goya, a planning engineer at AT&T. He's talking about Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, where every seat, screen, phone, and transaction is connected with AT&T fiber and 5G, defining the fan's experience. And Alan's master plan made it all possible.

• 12:56Speaker 05

  It was going to rival anything that was already built. And that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.

• 13:03Tracy V. Wilson?

  That includes field services manager, Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day.

• 13:10Speaker 07

  Through what Alan's whole crew designed, we connected the event visitors to the world.

• 13:16Tracy V. Wilson?

  And after years of hard work and collaboration, it was opening night.

• 13:19Speaker 07

  To actually see the whole stadium light up and data is flowing is a beautiful thing. With the fans experience, it's incredible.

• 13:26Speaker 05

  It gave me a lot of pride.

• 13:27Tracy V. Wilson?

  AT&T, connecting fans to what they love. Connecting changes everything. AT&T. So you're considering getting a home security system, but you want something that fits your space. Well, with ADT Blue, it's easy to customize a system that's right for you and set it up yourself. Just pick the kit and monitoring plan that makes sense for your home. Let's say you're worried about package theft. The ADT Plus app can walk you through setting up a new doorbell camera kit. Once it's installed, ADT Pros can help you keep tabs on it 24/7, or you can manage it yourself from the ADT Plus app. There are no long-term contracts, so you can change your monitoring plan whenever you want. The flexibility doesn't end there. You can add to your system as you need to with things like extra cameras or motion

• 14:12Tracy V. Wilson?

  sensors. Some life decisions are hard, but thanks to ADT Blue, you can DIY trusted ADT home security in a snap. Head to ADT.com/BLU to build your system today. And to hear more about home protection and other grown up topics, check out new episodes of Grown Up Stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 14:40Holly Frey?

  We've all done it, tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health Versus Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeart Media's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends.

• 15:22Holly Frey?

  Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health Versus Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 15:43Tracy V. Wilson?

  Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jessa have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy

• 16:28Tracy V. Wilson?

  only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 16:48Holly Frey?

  Following the Snickers, Mars Incorporated launched the Three Musketeers Bar, which was also hugely successful. Incidentally, it initially came as three pieces of candy, each with a different flavor, kind of like a Neapolitan ice cream. One was vanilla, one was chocolate, and one was strawberry. Thus the name Three Musketeers. I really yearn to go back in time and have a strawberry Three Musketeers.

• 17:15Tracy V. Wilson?

  The ongoing success of the candy business enabled Frank Mars to acquire a lot of wealth at a time when a lot of people were really struggling financially. And one of the ways he spent his money was in the acquisition of property in Pulaski, Tennessee, to set up his own horse farm and cattle ranch. He named that Milky Way farm. His purchases of adjoining land to the original plot were significant enough that they were reported in the papers. And in just a few years, he had put together a large scale operation. In May of 1933, the Lexington Star reported, quote, "The Milky Way Farm is one of the most elaborate estates in the South.

• 17:56Tracy V. Wilson?

  In addition to thoroughbreds and trotters, Mr. Mars maintains a great stable of show horses, breeds saddle horses on an extensive scale, and breeds and feeds beef cattle. He has one of the largest and strongest herds of shorthorn cattle to be found in the country, headed by three prize winner bulls imported last summer from the leading herds of England." This write-up goes on to say that the Mars racing horses will start running on tracks in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Illinois as soon as they're ready.

• 18:29Holly Frey?

  As Frank and Ethel were building their farm dreams during the early 1930s, there was tension between Frank Mars and his son Forrest. Forrest had not actually ever envisioned a life in the confectionery business. He had first studied mining at the University of California, during which time he worked in the school cafeteria. And apparently, he streamlined the menu to achieve a significant cost savings. And he did so much work in the cafeteria that he ended up dropping many of his classes so that he could focus on administrative work there. In the summer, he worked for Camel Cigarettes. He actually got arrested for papering all of downtown Chicago with Camel cigarette posters one night.

• 19:12Holly Frey?

  That was part of a PR stunt, and Frank had to bail him out of jail. One account places that discussion we mentioned earlier that led to the Milky Way, where they had malted milk together, as happening right after that bailout. Forrest later went on to Yale to get an industrial engineering degree.

• 19:33Tracy V. Wilson?

  Armed with the knowledge that he gained from this education, Forrest saw a lot of ways that his father Frank could improve the business. The candy bars were good, but they didn't always turn out consistently. That was something Forrest thought needed to be fixed. He also felt that there wasn't enough structure to the way the workers were managed and things tended to slip through the cracks. And he quickly saw that there were still problems with how his father managed the finances. He had stayed in the black thanks to market appeal and high sales, but he was not being very smart about ensuring long-term fiscal stability for the company. Eventually Forrest just started making changes without his father's approval, and everything

• 20:18Tracy V. Wilson?

  at Mars Incorporated quickly became chaotic. Forrest wanted Frank to give him a third of the company and let him expand into foreign markets, but Frank refused. And in 1932, his son left. He did not leave empty handed, though. He got $50,000 and the rights to produce the Milky Way bar abroad. This ultimately led to Forrest leaving for Europe.

• 20:44Holly Frey?

  While most accounts say that Forrest went to Britain, which he did, he did not go straight there. He actually went first to Switzerland and he worked for Nestle. There, he learned about European confectionery, specifically chocolate. But what he really wanted to do was build something of his own. And that is why he moved to England, to the industrial town of Slough, which is just west of London. There, he developed a candy bar that was based on the Milky Way, but a little bit sweeter. Forrest also concentrated on using the very best ingredients to appeal to European palates. And the flagship product that came out of this is our second deponymous food, the Mars Bar.

• 21:28Tracy V. Wilson?

  While Forrest was gaining success abroad, his father was on the opposite trajectory. According to the Frank C. Mars entry in the Candy Hall of Fame website, quote, "Frank died in 1933 after collapsing on the floor of his Chicago factory."

• 21:47Tracy V. Wilson?

  That's a story that gets repeated a lot, but it doesn't appear to be wholly accurate. At the end of 1933, Frank C. Mars did experience a serious health decline, and that may have started with an incident on the factory floor, although that isn't anything that's clearly documented. On April 8th, 1934, Frank died in Baltimore at Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he had been a patient for 10 days. His cause of death was attributed to a heart attack and kidney disease. His close friend, William Flavin, told papers that Frank had been ill for about five months before his death. Frank's body was taken to his Pulaski, Tennessee estate for burial.

• 22:30Tracy V. Wilson?

  The funeral was held at Milky Way Farm. Roughly 11 years later, when the farm was sold, Frank was exhumed and moved to a family mausoleum in Minneapolis.

• 22:42Holly Frey?

  In the wake of Frank's death, his wife Ethel and her brother ran the company. This continued the adversarial relationship that Forrest had with his father, as he believed he had a right to a stake in the company, and the family did not agree. Incidentally, Ethel also continued running the horse farm and its breeding program, and their horse Galahadion won the Kentucky Derby in 1940. Forrest Mars was still in England when his father died, but he returned to the US in 1939. And by that time, he had grown his British-based company enormously. Not only had the Mars Bar taken off and led to additional candy offerings,

• 23:24Holly Frey?

  but he had also diversified the business by establishing a pet food division.

• 23:29Tracy V. Wilson?

  But in the US, he wanted to develop an idea based on something he had seen in Europe. From the summer of 1936 to early 1939, the Spanish Civil War was playing out. And during that conflict, Forrest was traveling in Spain, and he had met Spanish soldiers. Those soldiers were carrying small pellets of chocolate with a candy coating so that the chocolate would not melt in the heat. Forrest Mars envisioned a version of this in the United States, and that led to the development of the M&M, which was sort of an eponymous food, at least if you count initials. Forrest's partner in this venture was R. Bruce Murray,

• 24:11Tracy V. Wilson?

  whose father was William F. R. Murray, the president of Hershey. So the M's in M&M stand for Mars and Murray. Initially, just as the candies that had inspired them, M&M's were made for the military, but soon that expanded into the supermarket.

• 24:30Holly Frey?

  During the same time that Forrest was offering M&M's to the military, Snickers became a part of US soldiers' ration kits. The same things that made it a good deal in the recession meant that it was also good for this usage. And because it was shipping overseas with deployed troops during World War II, it also got introduced to new places. Whether it was just happenstance that both Snickers and M&M's were sold to the military, or whether it was a competitive move by one or the other or both companies is a little unclear, but that did occur to me while I was doing this research.

• 25:06Tracy V. Wilson?

  With the success of M&M's, Forrest's business holdings easily surpassed anything his father had built. After his return to the United States, he continued to have incredible success in the US and Europe for more than two decades before he managed to acquire the thing he wanted the most, and that was his father's company. After 30 years of back and forth with his stepmother's family, and after Ethel had been dead for some time, Forrest finally convinced them to sell, at which point his company merged with the one his father had started. He completely revamped the way that things ran. In a matter of days after the purchase, he stripped out many of the executive amenities

• 25:51Tracy V. Wilson?

  that he felt cost more than they were worth. He established a core set of values for the company that focused on quality, efficiency, and mutuality. He worked long hours, and he expected the same of his employees. But he also increased their pay significantly, and everybody got profit share.

• 26:11Holly Frey?

  Yeah, he is reportedly a person that was kind of hard to work for because he just thought, of course, people would be fine with working 10 and 12-hour days sometimes. But also, he did try to take care of people. One of the first things he did was get rid of the executive dining room and fired all of the expensive chefs that they had. He was like, we don't need this. We'll eat in the cafeteria with everybody else, which I just think is kind of interesting.

• 26:36Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, I feel bad for the chefs that lost their job, but also I don't think they needed to have special chefs for the executives. Right. That was, I think that was probably his take as well.

• 26:47Holly Frey?

  Today, Mars Incorporated continues to be a private company with members of the Mars family involved in the board of directors, although my understanding is that none of them are in the, like, very active running the company positions. Its headquarters are in McLean, Virginia, with various divisions having their own primary offices in other locations. According to Forbes, the Mars family is worth $129 billion as of the summer of 2026, making them the third richest family in America, per the magazine.

• 27:19Tracy V. Wilson?

  We have one more eponymous candy to talk about, but first, we will hear from the sponsors that keep the show going.

• 27:29Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by YouTube Premium.

• 27:32Speaker 08

  Samantha, you know I watch a lot of YouTube. I watch a lot of it for fun, but I also watch a lot of it for research for this show. And I also put on a lot of stuff in the background, videos in the background to set a mood. I find it very relaxing, or sometimes kind of hype, you know? If you're looking to get ready to go out.

• 27:52Speaker 01

  I use it too. And YouTube Premium takes something you already love, YouTube, and makes it even better. The content, the creators, the feeling of finding exactly what you're into for every mood and moment of your day. Premium transforms that experience into a more supercharged, enhanced way to enjoy YouTube.

• 28:11Speaker 08

  Yes, a YouTube Premium subscription gives you access to exclusive YouTube features and benefits, including but not limited to being ad-free, so uninterrupted videos, background play, so that lets you keep listening with your screen locked, and offline downloads, so you can download your videos to watch anywhere.

• 28:29Speaker 01

  So if you like YouTube, you'll love Premium. Sign up now for your free trial. Terms and conditions apply.

• 28:36Holly Frey?

  We've all done it, tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self-diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends.

• 29:18Holly Frey?

  Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 29:39Tracy V. Wilson?

  Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jess A. have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends

• 30:23Tracy V. Wilson?

  proving that queer joy only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 30:38Speaker 04

  Okay, chicken nugget fans, I've got huge news. The new Burger King Chicken Nuggets just dropped, and they are the crispiest, the juiciest, and the tastiest chicken nuggets ever at Burger King. Burger King heard that a lot of you didn't like the old chicken nuggets, so they got to work and reinvented them. To go along with the new chicken nuggets, a lot of the sauces were reinvented too, because better chicken nuggets deserve better sauces. We're talking new buffalo sauce, honey mustard. Sweet and sour, and even a whole new option, too. The new special savory sauce, which is only available for a limited time at participating US restaurants. I mean, you need to taste it all for yourself.

• 31:21Speaker 04

  This new chicken nugget, reinvented based on real feedback, is made with 100% white meat chicken and is now better than ever. You gotta try the new Burger King Chicken Nuggets and Sauces today.

• 31:34Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 32:18Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 32:50Holly Frey?

  Harry Burnett Reese was born on May 24th, 1879. His father, Aquila Asbury Reese Jr., and mother Annie Belinda Manifold Reese, lived in York County, Pennsylvania. And Harry, who went by HB, was born at home at Frosty Hill Farm. He was an only child, and his early life was fairly typical of a kid in a farming family. He mostly helped his father with the crops and with the cows.

• 33:18Tracy V. Wilson?

  One of the things HB did as a kid that was not very typical of children was building a frog pond. At first, I thought, that sounds fine to me. If I was a kid, I might build a frog pond. No, this was a for-real thing. He was breeding the frogs in that pond. And then when they matured, he would sell them to restaurants in the Baltimore area. So this is sort of an indication of how he just had a knack for entrepreneurialism, even as a child.

• 33:49Holly Frey?

  And then at the age of 21, Reese married a young woman named Blanche Edna Heisen, who was from a much wealthier family than his. For the next several years, HB worked multiple jobs, sometimes several at once, in an effort to make a living that could support Blanche and a family. He continued to work in farming and at various factory jobs when he could get shifts. And then for several years, he moved to Virginia to work as a manager in his father-in-law's cannery. All of these income streams became really increasingly important as he and Blanche started having kids, because they seemed to be unstoppable about it. They had 16 children, 13 of which lived to adulthood.

• 34:33Holly Frey?

  That is a huge amount of kids. But in addition to that, Reese's mother and his two aunts moved in with them. So this was a very busy home. I read one account that said, family meals were typically 20 people, and then they would just invite people over. So often, it was 40 people having dinner together every night.

• 34:53Tracy V. Wilson?

  Wow. That was like the size of our family Thanksgivings when I was younger and everyone was there. But that was a thing that happens not on a regular basis. And it's overwhelming. Yeah, it really was.

• 35:10Tracy V. Wilson?

  A little more than 15 years after he married Blanche, HB got a job that shifted the trajectory of his life. He was hired by Milton Hershey. Because Reese had a dairy background from his childhood family farm and had worked in a dairy in the years that he was moving from job to job, he was put in charge of running the dairies that produced the milk that Hershey was using to make chocolate bars. We're not counting Milton Hershey and the Hershey Bar as one of today's eponymous foods. Milton Hershey is a whole thing. He is on the shortlist for a full episode at some point. Reese worked for Hershey for four years before he was laid off with other workers when some

• 35:54Tracy V. Wilson?

  of the dairy facilities closed. Those facilities were considered highly experimental at the time. They used milking machines instead of milking the cows by hand.

• 36:04Holly Frey?

  Yeah, they just decided that was not worthwhile after a while, which makes me chuckle, because they had just held on a little while longer. They could have been at the forefront of dairy technology. But after that layoff, Reese started his own candy company, which was R&R Candy. And this was something that Milton Hershey supported. The two men had become friends while they worked together. Reese's candies were mostly chocolate-covered nuts and dried fruits. R&R, which operated out of a former cannery, struggled early on because Reese wasn't able to make candy in large enough batches for distribution to retailers. So it was like, your candy's good, but unless you can get us this much, we really can't place an order.

• 36:47Holly Frey?

  So he decided he was going to reorg the company with the name Superior Chocolate and Confectionery and sell stock to generate enough money to purchase machinery to address those production issues. But that was too late, and the company soon folded. Soon, HB Reese was back to taking whatever jobs he could find, mostly mill and factory work.

• 37:11Tracy V. Wilson?

  But in 1921, Hershey hired him again. This time, he was not working in a dairy, but in the company's shipping division. He wasn't working with candy at this job at all, but he was working with it in his spare time as he kept experimenting with the ideas that had started to take shape with his own failed company. He came up with two candy bars that he named after his oldest son and daughter, Johnny and Lizzie. He sold these bars, and they were moderately successful, but not so much that he could leave his job at Hershey. But he did really feel like he had something worthwhile. Before long, Reese was convinced that he needed to try starting another candy company.

• 37:55Tracy V. Wilson?

  He discussed this idea with Hershey, and Hershey gave his blessing. The two of them agreed that Reese would purchase his chocolate from Hershey. So this was probably a mutually advantageous deal.

• 38:10Holly Frey?

  Yeah, I often see it categorized like it's Hershey's way to control things and make sure he's still getting the benefit. And he was, but at the same time, that meant Reese didn't have to find a supplier of chocolate. He knew the quality of the chocolate he was getting. Like, there were some benefits on both sides of that. And this new company that he started was called the HB Reese Candy Company, and it opened in 1923, with the first offerings being sampler boxes of chocolate assortments. These were made in the Reese's basement, and they were sold at department stores and other retailers, and they did really well. Soon, he had to move his operation out of the family home, and he moved it into the basement of an Italian restaurant that was willing to rent space to him.

• 38:54Holly Frey?

  And he did well enough there that in 1926, he needed to build a dedicated production factory. And he also built a home for his very large family right next door to that factory.

• 39:06Tracy V. Wilson?

  The most popular chocolates from the assortments were chocolate-covered peanut butter candies. So Reese started to think about how he could expand that specific style's success. He wanted to elevate it in some way. So he started roasting his own peanuts and making peanut butter there at the factory. He created one that was roasted a little longer. It had a distinctive, deeper flavor than other peanut butters. And then he coated that with chocolate in a fluted cup shape. And the peanut butter cup was born, and customers loved it, unsurprisingly, because it's great.

• 39:45Tracy V. Wilson?

  He was only offered, though, as part of a candy assortment, not just the cups. It was still mixed in with other stuff at that point.

• 39:54Holly Frey?

  However, we mentioned earlier that Frank Mars launched the Snickers in 1930 and had great success. Reese had a little bit of a harder time with the Depression. He was still in debt for the construction of that factory and his home, and he was a little tight on money. Things allegedly got tight enough at the factory that sometimes he paid his workers in candy, which sounds fun if you're an eight-year-old, but for an adult with bills, less so. One of his salesmen, though, made the suggestion that ultimately kept the company afloat. Since the peanut butter cups were the most popular candy in their assortment boxes, that salesman suggested, why don't we just sell these on their own?

• 40:38Holly Frey?

  And Reese liked the idea, and they went to market with individual cups for a penny each. This early version was even called a penny cup. I saw one display of them, and it slightly horrified me because none of them are wrapped. Oh, no. It was just like open candy stock, which I know still happens for things like jelly beans and whatnot. Oh, yeah. Something about open candy stock for chocolate items really wigs me out.

• 41:05Tracy V. Wilson?

  The penny cup was so popular that HB Reese started offering them in three sizes, at which point they were all branded as Reese's Cups. You could get them at the one-cent size still, or a two-cent or five-cent version. Once the Reese's Cup was on the market, the company got on stable financial footing, and so did HB Reese.

• 41:28Holly Frey?

  I kind of like that you can still get them in multiple sizes, even though I don't think it's a one-to-one of how that worked initially.

• 41:37Holly Frey?

  But the explosive popularity of the peanut butter cup led to imitators, unsurprisingly. And this led also to a lot of litigious back and forth, including Reese trying to use his product's name recognition to demand the stores not sell any of his competitors peanut butter cups. But that actually led to Reese being sued by one of those competitors. He didn't win. And while he couldn't prevent other companies from making similar products, or prevent stores from stocking those similar products, what he could do was print the word original on all of his packaging, which he did. And despite there being other peanut butter cups on the market, Reese's sales stayed steady and they actually even increased.

• 42:21Tracy V. Wilson?

  Up to the point that the US became involved in the war, the HB Reese Company still made a variety of other candies. But the sugar rationing that happened during the war made only one candy still viable for manufacture, and that was the peanut butter filled Reese's cup. Peanuts were not rationed, and the whole thing required less sugar than other candies did. Additionally, at a time when a lot of the workforce was away at war, Reese was able to automate production of the Reese's cups so that they could continue to be produced with a reduced workforce. This was definitely a temporary situation at the time the company

• 43:02Tracy V. Wilson?

  really prided itself on the candies being hand coated. So after the war, they went back to this hands on method of production. For a while during the war, Reese's cups were the only things that the company made.

• 43:16Holly Frey?

  Things were going so well for Reese after World War II, that in the early 1950s, he decided he needed to expand into a second, brand new manufacturing facility that he planned to have custom built. The land that Reese purchased for this project was bought from none other than Milton Hershey. And HB envisioned what he called his dream plant. He was involved in the planning of it right alongside the architects and the industrial designers. And it was going to be thrice the size of their existing factory with a design that would allow the company to expand it again in the future if they needed to, without interrupting production. It was also designed with the very latest temperature control system so

• 44:01Holly Frey?

  that both humans and confections would stay at a consistent temp.

• 44:06Tracy V. Wilson?

  HB Reese did not get to see his second factory completed. While he was vacationing in West Palm Beach, Florida in May of 1956, he had a heart attack. After several days at the hospital, he died on May 16. While Reese left his property to his sons and daughters, the company was left only to his sons.

• 44:27Holly Frey?

  And things at the company initially seemed okay. In November 1957, newspapers ran stories about the new factory finally opening, and how it was the culmination of their father's dream. A write up in the Patriot News of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, featured a large photo that was subtitled, "The Reese Family Team," and it showed the Reese sons and it listed out all of their titles. Among other design features of this new factory, the write up touted, quote, "The convenience and welfare of the HB Reese Co. employees were considered in the overall planning. There is a spacious cafeteria and locker rooms with

• 45:06Holly Frey?

  showers. Polished hardwood floors add to the appearance as well as comfort of the manufacturing areas. The offices are designed to offer the best working conditions." This was all really a pretty huge achievement in factory design. But while everything looked great, and in the papers, it seemed great, the power structure within the family was getting pretty tense.

• 45:31Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, the brothers just could not agree on how to carry on their father's legacy. The factory itself was running well, and it was bringing in more than $15 million a year. But not all of Reese's sons wanted to keep the business in the family. After a lot of internal debate, in 1963, the HB Reese Candy Company was purchased by Hershey. The brothers got $24 million worth of Hershey's stock in the deal, and several of the Reese siblings served on Hershey's board. By 1969, the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup was the best selling candy on the Hershey roster, and it remains one of the best selling candies in the US.

• 46:15Holly Frey?

  Of course, there is also the baby sibling of the Reese's cup that also bears HB's name. That was Reese's Pieces, of course. So he has multiple things that are eponymous, all super delicious.

• 46:28Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah. So happy Halloween, everybody. Probably early Halloween, if you're listening to this promptly. Stay safe out there with your candy and your trick or treating.

• 46:38Holly Frey?

  Yeah. I hope everybody gets full bars when they go trick or treating. We are a full bar house at my house, so. I have a story about full bars when we, when we do Friday's chitter chatter.

• 46:51Tracy V. Wilson?

  Do you have listener mail?

• 46:52Holly Frey?

  I do. This is from our listener slash viewer, Bill, who writes, "Hi Holly and Tracy, I just finished listening slash watching your history podcast on Netflix. It was focused on Robert Moses, but you mentioned that only one pavilion at the New York World's Fair had a 24 hour presence, and that was the Vatican Pavilion. But you are not going to go down that rabbit hole. I'm going to take you down it. As a young teenager, I visited that World's Fair. The Vatican sent the original Pieta by Michelangelo pre-vandalism to that fair. I bet it had 24 hour protection." I feel foolish because I didn't connect the dots on this. We talked about that whole thing when we did an episode in 2016, I think

• 47:34Holly Frey?

  in February, about the many Pietas that Michelangelo made, including that one specifically. And I, we talked about it going to the World's Fair, but listen, that was 10 years ago.

• 47:44Tracy V. Wilson?

  I was gonna say, a decade ago, I, I don't remember things from last week on the show.

• 47:51Holly Frey?

  Just in case, nobody wants to go look that up. That was a super duper cool whole thing that happened. And I think this might be why I wasn't thinking about it being at the World's Fair. I was so fixated on all of the shipping stuff that they did.

• 48:05Tracy V. Wilson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 48:06Holly Frey?

  Like, they made a custom shipping container. They had to x-ray it beforehand because it had had some damage to one of Mary's hands, and they wanted to make sure that was not something that was going to get exacerbated if they shipped it. It had like a little wire fixative that was connecting the two. Like, Eastman Kodak actually did the radiology on that. Like, it was a very big deal for the Vatican and the World's Fair. And then there were three nesting cases that were made for it, so that while it was on a ship, it was not gonna like, it could move with the ship without the actual statue being rocked too much around. And of course, it's probably never going to leave Vatican again. So, dear,

• 48:50Holly Frey?

  dear listener, you really got the lucky one, because Bill, nobody else is going to see in the US again.

• 48:57Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 48:59Holly Frey?

  I have seen it twice in Italy. Cried like a baby both times.

• 49:04Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, I, we walked into it, into where it was, and it was there. And I almost just screamed across the room at you, like, Holly, it's the Pieta, which would not have been appropriate, and also was not necessary. You knew it was there already.

• 49:21Holly Frey?

  I did. I love it. It's not, I think I said it during that episode 10 years ago, it is not my favorite of his Pietas. The one that is my favorite is actually argued over whether or not he did it, which is Pieta Palestrini, which is in Accademia in Florence. I don't know what it is about that statue. It's unfinished. It's a little bit raw. There's something very moving about it to me. It also makes me laugh because people, both times I have been to the cathedral and seen the Pieta, there's always me and one other person really losing their minds. And both times, it's been like, a clearly very devout 14 year old girl who is probably on track to be a nun. And I'm like, I feel you and I understand.

• 50:06Holly Frey?

  Oh, I love it. I'm here for the art. But it's very moving. It's very beautiful. There's almost nothing like it on earth. So bummed that it, I mean, on the one hand, I'm not really bummed that it's not getting shipped around the world. That's inherently dangerous. Right. Bummed that it's in a place where that makes it harder for more people to see it. But if you can go, I highly recommend it. It's worth getting through the crowd.

• 50:28Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 50:29Holly Frey?

  Because it's amazing. If you would like to write to us about cool art things you have seen, or World's Fairs you've been to, or anything you've done, or if you just want to say hi, you can do that at [email protected]. If you want to see the resources we use to make this episode and others, you can see the show notes for any of our episodes at missedinhistory.com. And if you would like to subscribe to the show, it is so easy. It's easier than eating a piece of candy. You could do it on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows.

• 51:10Tracy V. Wilson?

  Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 51:24Holly Frey?

  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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