History of the Gummy Bear

The gummy bear was first created in the 1920’s by Hans Riegel. His idea came from the original “Dancing Bear”, a fruit-gum mascot. Kids of the twenties loved to meet him at fairs, which made Riegel think of his idea.

In the 1920’s he started making hard candies at his home. His wife would then help him sell them by transporting them to people on her bike. But the hard candy idea wasn’t working out very well, he decided to make it gummy candy. Since the children loved bears, he decided to make it in that shape to attract the children into wanting them. He started a company named Haribo which started manufactured the first gummy candy in the U.S.

Riegel then died in WW2 and his son took over the Haribo business and had 18 factories all over Europe. Haribo comes in five flavours in the U.S, rasberry, orange, strawberry, pineapple, and lemon. After people saw the success of the gummy bear, it had influenced many other companies to create other gummy things such as worms, frogs, snakes, hamburgers, and more. Gummy bears have become so popular that mothers would buy gummy bear vitamins for their children so they would enjoy eating them. Other people have even changed the size of the gummy bear, currently the largest gummy bear is 26 pounds.