Bun Bars are a line of

candy bar A candy bar is a type of portable candy that is in the shape of a bar. The most common type of candy bar is the chocolate bar, including both bars made of solid chocolate and combination candy bars, which are candy bars that combine chocolate wi ...

s manufactured by Pearson's Candy Company of

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, and available in the United States. Despite the name, Bun Bars are not bars at all, but actually round and flat, containing a disc made of maple or vanilla-flavored crème, or caramel, coated in milk chocolate and topped with a roasted peanut-chocolate cluster. The forerunners of Bun Bars were originally created in the 1920s by the Wayne Bun Candy Company in

Fort Wayne, Indiana Fort Wayne is a city in Allen County, Indiana, United States, and its county seat. Located in northeastern Indiana, the city is west of the Ohio border and south of the Michigan border. The city's population was 263,886 at the 2020 census ...

. The Vanilla Cream Bun of 1947 was the first receiving the Bun name. Wayne Candies and their Bun Bars went through a string of corporate owners in the second half of the twentieth century. The first, the Leaf Confectionery subsidiary of W. R. Grace sold Wayne Candies in 1973 to Standard Brands' Curtiss Candy Company. Under Curtiss, they repackaged caramel Bun Bars as the Reggie! Bar in 1978, named for

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball games, bat-and-ball sport played between two team sport, teams of nine players each, taking turns batting (baseball), batting and Fielding (baseball), fielding. The game occurs over the course of several Pitch ...

star Reggie Jackson. When Standard merged with

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in 1981, Wayne Candies was briefly shut down before being sold to German confectioner August Storck KG. Then in 1992 it passed to Pittsburgh Food & Beverage Company. Wayne's sister firm under Pittsburgh Food & Beverage, D. L. Clark Company, marketed another sports-themed caramel variety, the Mario Bun, honoring

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star,

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. Clark also produced a Reggie! Bar, this time with

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filling. Wayne Candies went bankrupt and the Fort Wayne facility making Bun Bars permanently closed in the aftermath of the 1995 fraud-induced collapse of Pittsburgh Food & Beverage. The assets of Wayne Candies and Clark were together purchased by the newly formed Clark Bar America, and production of Bun Bars was moved to Clark's suburban-

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...

facility. Clark sold the brand to Pearson's in 1998. Pearson's acquired Bun Bars partially due to the similarities in manufacturing the Bun and their own Nut Goodie. While the two products are very similar, they still have recipe and ingredient differences that make each unique. Bun Bars have one of three flavored centers (

maple ''Acer'' is a genus of trees and shrubs commonly known as maples. The genus is placed in the soapberry family Sapindaceae.Stevens, P. F. (2001 onwards). Angiosperm Phylogeny Website. Version 9, June 2008 nd more or less continuously updated si ...

vanilla Vanilla is a spice derived from orchids of the genus ''Vanilla (genus), Vanilla'', primarily obtained from pods of the flat-leaved vanilla (''Vanilla planifolia, V. planifolia''). ''Vanilla'' is not Autogamy, autogamous, so pollination ...

, or sea salt caramel) covered in unsalted

peanut The peanut (''Arachis hypogaea''), also known as the groundnut, goober (US), goober pea, pindar (US) or monkey nut (UK), is a legume crop grown mainly for its edible seeds. It is widely grown in the tropics and subtropics by small and large ...

s and

milk chocolate Milk chocolate is a form of solid chocolate containing Chocolate liquor, cocoa, sugar and milk. It is the most consumed types of chocolate, type of chocolate, and is used in a wide diversity of chocolate bar, bars, tablets and other confectione ...

. When first bought by Pearson's in 1998, maple and vanilla flavors were available, and later caramel was added to the line-up. In 2015, the caramel flavor was changed to sea salt caramel.

References

External links

Pearson's Candy CompanyCandy Blog review
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