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Mr. Goodbar’s history from hard of hearing origins to cannabis copycats.
Mr. Goodbar was launched by The Hershey Company in 1925. It was the company’s first new product since its 1908 Milk Chocolate with Almonds.
Plant chemist Samuel Hinkle, hired in 1924, invented the candy bar by frying Spanish peanuts before mixing them with milk chocolate.
The name’s origin humorously dates back to Milton Hershey’s hearing impairment—he misheard “that’s a good bar” as “Mr. Goodbar.”
In 1925, Hershey developed a marketing strategy for Mr. Goodbar to protect their premium chocolate brand image.
Company executives thought that peanuts were less refined than almonds and that they might tarnish their reputation.
So Hershey created a fictional “Chocolate Sales Corporation” as the manufacturer.
This allowed them to test market reactions without risking the established Hershey name.
Mr. Goodbar’s packaging featured a well-dressed gentleman with a top hat and cane.
The wrapper positioned the chocolate bar as a sophisticated luxury product.
By the Depression era, Hershey’s redesigned the packaging with bold yellow and red colors, abandoning the gentleman.
During the Great Depression, Hershey strategically repositioned its existing Mr. Goodbar as an affordable meal replacement.
When economic hardship hit in the 1930s, the company marketed the candy bar as a “Tasty Lunch,” selling two bars for just 5 cents.
The move helped to boost company profits during the down market.
By 1936, profits reached ten times payroll costs, allowing Hershey to maintain its workforce throughout the Depression.
However, in the coming decades, Hershey shifted its marketing to promote “Quick Energy” as economic conditions improved.
In 1957, Mary Louise Kassouf sued Hershey after finding worms in a Mr. Goodbar. Allegedly the critters caused her gastrointestinal distress leading to chronic ulcerative colitis. The court rejected the defense’s argument that consumers must inspect packaged food, establishing an important product liability precedent.
In 2013, Terrica Brown sued both Walmart and The Hershey Company after consuming a moldy Mr. Goodbar sold nine months past its expiration date, which caused illness requiring medical treatment.
In 2014, The Hershey Company sued several cannabis businesses for trademark infringement after they created products like “Mr. Dankbar” that mimicked its trademarked name, Mr. Goodbar.
Hershey argued these weed products created consumer confusion and potentially attracted children to cannabis edibles.
The disputes ended in settlements requiring defendants to stop using the disputed branding and destroy the remaining inventory.
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