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The sugar industry has been shaped by candy entrepreneurs who transformed sweet treats into global empires.
Notable figures include Milton Hershey, who pioneered mass production techniques for milk chocolate, and Forrest Mars Sr., who developed iconic candies like M&M's.
John B. Curtis, born in 1827 in Maine, revolutionized the confectionery industry by creating and commercially selling the first chewing gum in 1848.
He started by producing the gum on a Franklin stove in his family home.
Curtis initially struggled to sell his novel invention, spending two days unsuccessfully pitching his product at a Portland market before finally making his first sale on the third day. This led him to become a traveling salesman in 1850.
Gustav Goelitz, a German immigrant who arrived in the United States in 1866, founded what would eventually become the Jelly Belly Candy Company, starting with a small confectionery business in Belleville, Illinois.
His product would eventually become famous via a future President.
President Ronald Reagan's love for Jelly Belly led to a massive surge in their popularity, with over 7,000 pounds of red, white, and blue Jelly Belly beans being served at his presidential inauguration.
Milton S. Hershey, born in 1857, was an American chocolatier who revolutionized the chocolate industry by mass-producing milk chocolate and founding the Hershey Company. It would become one of the world's largest chocolate manufacturers.
In a twist of fate that potentially saved his life, Hershey and his wife canceled their reservations for the ill-fated maiden voyage of the Titanic in 1912 due to last-minute business matters, narrowly avoiding what could have been a tragic end for him and his chocolate empire.
Franklin Clarence Mars, born in 1883, founded Mars, Incorporated and revolutionized the candy industry by creating iconic treats like the Milky Way and Snickers bars.
Mars built a massive 2,800-acre farm called Milky Way Farm, complete with a 25,000 square foot clubhouse and horse racing track, where he was initially buried before his remains were later moved to a private mausoleum in Minneapolis.
Leo Hirschfield, a German-American confectioner, invented the Tootsie Roll in 1907 and named it after his daughter Clara's nickname "Tootsie," creating the first individually wrapped penny candy that could withstand summer heat without melting.
Despite his wealth and business success, Hirschfield died by suicide in 1922, despondent over his long illness and his wife's mental breakdown that had led to her being committed to a sanitarium.
Theodor Tobler, born in 1876 in Bern, Switzerland, was a chocolatier and businessman who co-created the iconic Toblerone chocolate bar in 1908. He named it as a portmanteau of his surname and "torrone," the Italian word for nougat.
This chocolate innovator was also a pacifist and pan-European visionary who helped found the Europa Union in 1934, an organization advocating for European federalism during the rise of Nazism.
George Smith, a candy innovator from New Haven, Connecticut, is credited with creating the modern lollipop in the early 20th century, initially calling them "used candy sticks" before trademarking the name "Lollipop" in 1931.
The term "lollipop" is believed to have originated from a racehorse Smith admired, while its etymology amusingly translates to "tongue slap" in northern English slang.
The production of lollipops was revolutionized in 1912 when Samuel Born invented a machine that could insert sticks into candy at an astounding rate.
Clarence Crane, the father of renowned poet Hart Crane, invented Life Savers candy in 1912 as a "summer candy" that could withstand heat better than chocolate.
Crane sold the rights to his Pep-O-Mint peppermint candy to Edward John Noble for just $2,900 shortly after creating it—missing out on what would become an iconic American candy brand worth millions.
Otto Schnering founded the Curtiss Candy Company in 1916 near Chicago, transforming it from a small startup into a confectionery powerhouse that created iconic American candy bars.
His most notable achievements were the invention of the Baby Ruth bar in 1920, which he cleverly rebranded from "Kandy Kake," and the introduction of Butterfinger in 1926.
H.B. Reese, the inventor of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, started his candy-making career in his basement while working at Hershey's factory. He went on to build a confectionery empire that merged with Hershey's in 1963 for what would now be worth over $4.4 billion.
Incredibly, Reese and his wife had 16 children (8 daughters and 8 sons), and he often had over 20 family members present for dinner, sometimes even more than 40.
Robert W. Welch Jr. founded the Oxford Candy Company in Brooklyn, which went out of business during the Great Depression, but he later joined his brother's successful James O. Welch Company, where he developed popular candies like Sugar Babies, Junior Mints, and Pom Poms.
Welch was admitted to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill at the astonishingly young age of twelve, making him the youngest student ever to enroll there, before eventually retiring as a wealthy man from the candy business in 1956 to pursue his notorious political interests
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