SweeTarts (; officially stylized as SweeTARTS) are

sweet Sweetness is a basic taste most commonly perceived when eating foods rich in sugars. Sweet tastes are generally regarded as pleasurable. In addition to sugars like sucrose, many other chemical compounds are sweet, including aldehydes, ketones, ...

and

sour The gustatory system or sense of taste is the sensory system that is partially responsible for the perception of taste. Taste is the perception stimulated when a substance in the mouth biochemistry, reacts chemically with taste receptor cells l ...

candies invented under the direction of

Menlo F. Smith Menlo F. Smith (born January 9, 1927) is a prominent St. Louis businessman. He has also been a leader in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) both in St. Louis and in the Philippines. He is also a benefactor of Brigham Young ...

, CEO of

Sunline Inc. Sunmark Corporation (formerly Sunline Inc.) was a candy confectionery company based in St. Louis, Missouri. The company was founded by Menlo F. Smith in 1952 as an offshoot of the company owned by his father, Joseph Fish Smith. They invented many ...

, in 1962. The candy was created using the same small basic recipe as the already popular

Pixy Stix Pixy Stix are a sweet and sour colored powdered candy usually packaged in a wrapper that resembles a drinking straw. The candy is lightly poured into the mouth from the wrapper, which is made out of either plastic or paper. Pixy Stix contain dext ...

and Lik-M-Aid (Fun Dip) products. Pixy Stix are currently manufactured by

Ferrara Candy Company The Ferrara Candy Company is an American candy manufacturer, based in Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois, Chicago, Illinois, and owned by the Ferrero SpA, Ferrero Group. The company was formed from a 2012 merger of the Illinois-based Ferrara Pan Candy ...

, a division of Ferrero.

History

In 1963, SweeTarts were introduced with the same flavors as the popular Pixy Stix: cherry, grape, lemon, lime, and orange. Taffy products are also produced with the SweeTarts brand. Sunline, Inc., became a division of the Sunmark of St Louis' group of companies, which was later acquired in 1986 by Rowntree Mackintosh of the United Kingdom, which was, in turn, taken over by

Nestlé Nestlé S.A. ( ) is a Swiss multinational food and drink processing conglomerate corporation headquartered in Vevey, Switzerland. It has been the largest publicly held food company in the world, measured by revenue and other metrics, since 20 ...

. The Willy Wonka brand candies were developed by Sunmark in a joint venture with The Quaker Company. Sunmark eventually acquired the rights to Willy Wonka and established a division with that name which produced the Willy Wonka brands. The Wonka symbol was subsequently applied to most Sunmark brands. Nestlé has since sold its confectionery businesses to

Ferrero SpA Ferrero International SpA ( , ), more commonly known as Ferrero Group or simply Ferrero, is an Italian multinational company with headquarters in Alba. Ferrero is a manufacturer of branded chocolate and confectionery products, and the second ...

. In 2022, SweeTarts was sponsored at the TikTok Film Festival in an attempt to reach out to members of

Generation Z Generation Z (often shortened to Gen Z), also known as zoomers, is the demographic cohort succeeding Millennials and preceding Generation Alpha. Researchers and popular media use the mid-to-late 1990s as starting birth years and the early 2 ...

due to its declining popularity.

Related products

SweeTarts also come in a variety of other products including gum. Little Sweet Tarts (often packaged to be handed out as

Halloween Halloween, or Hallowe'en (less commonly known as Allhalloween, All Hallows' Eve, or All Saints' Eve), is a celebration geography of Halloween, observed in many countries on 31 October, the eve of the Western Christianity, Western Christian f ...

trick-or-treat Trick-or-treating is a traditional Halloween custom for children and adults in some countries. During the evening of Halloween, on October 31, people in Halloween costume, costumes travel from house to house, asking for treats with the phrase " ...

candy), SweeTart "hearts" for Valentine's Day, "chicks, ducks and bunnies" shaped SweeTarts for Easter and SweeTarts Jelly Beans (marketed for

Easter Easter, also called Pascha ( Aramaic: פַּסְחָא , ''paskha''; Greek: πάσχα, ''páskha'') or Resurrection Sunday, is a Christian festival and cultural holiday commemorating the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, described in t ...

in some regions of the US), "skulls and bones" for Halloween. In the mid-1960s, Sunline introduced GianTarts, originally packaged as a single large 1/2" thick tablet and changed in the mid-1970s to two thinner discs of the same diameter. In the 1980s, GianTarts were repackaged as three slightly-smaller discs and joined by Chewy Sweetarts, marketed in the same "giant"-sized three-pack. GianTarts were discontinued by the mid-nineties. In the 2000s, Wonka rebranded Chewy SweeTarts as Giant Chewy SweeTarts, repackaged as four slightly-smaller discs. These were re-launched in 2021 with an expanded line of Chewy SweeTarts products, including candy-coated Chewy SweeTarts and Mini Chewy SweeTarts. These twenty-first century Chewy SweeTarts are the same size as standard roll candies. In 2015, SweeTart Ropes Bites, a bite-sized variant of SweeTart Ropes was released. Flavors of these include such as orange, strawberry, green apple, cherry, and punch.

Flavors

* Red: Cherry * Purple: Grape * Blue: Fruit Punch * Orange: Orange (retired as of 2013) * Green: Green Apple (Lime before 2002) * Yellow: Lemon (retired in 2009, returned in 2013)

References

External links

* * Products introduced in 1962 Candy Brand name confectionery The Willy Wonka Candy Company brands {{Willy Wonka Candy Company products

History

Related products

Flavors

See also

References

External links