Who invented airheads candy

To compete, Van Melle had to produce 10, cases of Airheads for focus group testing and limited-offer sales. Well, when the dust settled, Van Melle lost. Source: Candy Favorites. Van Melle still had a production facility in Kansas, the machinery all powered down, the warehouse silent. In s America, rice paper was not edgy, avant garde, or awesome — rice paper was weird.

After many tests, they found that Mylar you know, the stuff those metallic, helium filled balloons are made of did not stick to the candy.

Steve Bruner knew, thanks to his marketing background, that for a name to stick around and do so quickly, it has to be familiar sounding. Airheads is now one of the largest non-chocolate confections in North America. Source: Candy Crate. Airheads come in flat bars, soft filled bites, big bars, bites, Xtremes belts, Xtremes bites, and pops. They come in flavors like cherry, grape, watermelon, green apple, white mystery, rainbowberry, and bluest raspberry to name a few.

We wanted the consumer to decide if they liked the red flavor. I had learned years earlier that the east coast preferred strawberry and the center of the country wanted cherry. I agree there is a difference, however, kids see red and grab it. We later changed and went to other flavors as it made sense for line extensions.

On wrapper, I used play on words, a new high in fruity flavors. Coming out of the hippie generation the words high could be used in many different ways. I thought it was apropos of a balloon graphic and it worked. Pricing was a real sales driver for Airheads. We began with just one flavor that was supposed to sell for 10 cents.

The distributors and brokers noticed it was a very large piece of candy having a cent SRP. This helped as many of them introduced it as a cent item instead with a very large profit margin for retailers.

Actually, during the initial presentations many accounts turned it down. We had to put it in several distribution houses with the promise to pick it up if it did not sell.

Ultimately, the young consumers knew a lot more then many of the buyers. We aggressively gained distribution in New York and Los Angelis and word of mouth spread. We started getting fan mail and we knew things were headed in the right direction. The 10 case orders became 25 and then 50 and then cases from the same customer. Today they sell truckloads and many millions of dollars expanding the product line into all types of items. In , a new BerryHot flavor was introduced that claims to "heat up in your mouth.

It comes in 8 different flavors: blue raspberry, cherry, watermelon, orange, green apple, pink lemonade, grape, and strawberry. Other frozen treats like ice cream sandwiches and sundae cups are included as well. Airheads are made by creating long strips, similar to the method used to manufacture Play-Doh. The main ingredient is sugar. AirHeads prides itself for being one of the few candy that uses taffy, allowing it to be shaped in various ways.

It is run on a conveyor belt style, where the taffy goes through sugars and sweeteners leading up to the thinning, forming, and eventual packaging process. The machines stir about 3, pounds of taffy.