Whoppers

Whoppers
Product type	Confectionery
Owner	Iconic IP Interests, LLC
Produced by	Hershey (1996–present)
Country	United States
Introduced	December 15, 1949; 74 years ago
Markets	Global
Previous owners	Leaf Brands (1949–96)
Tagline	"The Original Malted Milk Balls" (Worldwide)
Website	hersheyland.com/whoppers

Whoppers are malted milk balls with an artificial flavored "chocolatey coating" produced by The Hershey Company. The candy is a round ball about 3⁄4 inch (20 mm).

History

In 1939, the Overland Candy Company introduced the predecessor to Whoppers, a malted milk candy called "Giants". In 1947, Overland merged with Chicago Biscuit Company, Leaf Gum, and Laf Machinery. Two years later, Leaf Brands reintroduced malted milk balls under the name of "Whoppers". All products manufactured by Leaf Brands were purchased by W. R. Grace in the 1960s; however, they were repurchased by Leaf in 1976. Finally, Hershey Foods Corporation acquired the Leaf North America confectionery operations from Huhtamäki Oyj of Espoo, Finland, in 1996. The company has been producing the Whoppers candy to this day.

Whoppers were first sold unwrapped, two pieces for one cent. But after the creation of cellophane wrapping machines, smaller Whoppers were packaged and sold five for one cent, also known as Fivesomes. Leaf soon introduced the first confectionery milk carton package which would become a hallmark of the candy. Sometime between 1950 and 1952 an egg-shaped Whoppers candy called Mini Robin Eggs were introduced for Easter. They differ from the traditional Whoppers in being egg shaped and having a speckled candy shell.^{[citation needed]}

In 2000, Hershey introduced Mini Whoppers. Traditionally chocolate in flavor, a new strawberry milkshake flavored variant became available in 2006. Soon after they also released Reese's Peanut Butter Cups flavored Whoppers (discontinued sometime between 2014 and 2015). For Easter 2009, three new milkshake flavors were released, which were vanilla, blueberry, and orange cream. The vanilla ones were reintroduced in 2016 as a seasonal product.^{[citation needed]}

Ingredients

Listed in decreasing order by weight: sugar, corn syrup, partially hydrogenated palm kernel oil, whey (milk), malted milk (barley malt, wheat flour, milk, salt, sodium bicarbonate), cocoa, 2% or less of: resinous glaze, sorbitan tristearate, soy lecithin, salt, natural and artificial flavors, calcium carbonate, tapioca dextrin.^{[citation needed]}