• #202: Sour Patch Kids – Gummy Bears Meet Cabbage Patch Kids

  • Apr 23 2025
  • Length: 16 mins
  • Podcast

#202: Sour Patch Kids – Gummy Bears Meet Cabbage Patch Kids

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  • Summary

  • Sour Patch Kids were the result of paying attention to the industry and the wants and delights of the world at large. And delivering what the people wanted. Dave Young: Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I'm Stephen's sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today's episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it's us, but we're highlighting ads we've written and produced for our clients. So, here's one of those. [Waulkie Feet Ad] Dave Young: Welcome to Empire Builders Podcast. Dave Young here, along with Stephen Semple. All Stephen told me for this episode is that he's excited about doing it because it's got a Canadian tie-in, but he didn't whisper the name of the company or anything into my ear as we counted down. Stephen Semple: I forgot to. Dave Young: Yeah. Stephen Semple: Oh, I forgot to. Dave Young: He just stood there looking at me. Stephen Semple: I'll tell you now, Sour Patch Kids. You know the candy? Dave Young: Sour Patch Kids. Oh, gosh. Are they the origin of all the little sour candies that are out now? Stephen Semple: It's always hard to say if they're the exact origin, but they were certainly one of the first ones that went big, for sure. Dave Young: And the candy was after most of my candy-eating days. So let's dive in. Stephen Semple: So you're trying to tell me you eat no candy now? None? Dave Young: Well, that's what the doctor says should be happening. But as a child, I'm just too old to devour a lot of Sour Patch Kids, I think. Tell me when this started. Stephen Semple: So the Sour Patch Kids started basically in the early 1970s, is kind of when they came out. It was a Canadian company, but the other thing is it didn't, first of all, start as Sour Patch Kids. It was actually first called Mars Men. And in 1985, they renamed it Sour Patch. Dave Young: Okay. I was adulting by then. Where did this start? Wait, Mars Men? Stephen Semple: Mars Men. Dave Young: Yeah, that's not a good name. Stephen Semple: No. So today, it's part of a big conglomerate, it's part of the Mondelēz Group, and it's estimated that there's about $248 million worth of Sour Patch Kids sold every year. So that's a lot of little kids. And it was started by a little Canadian company. There was a guy by the name of Frank Galatolie who was working at Jaret International, and he was admiring the American candy revolution, and he was the sales and marketing manager for Jaret. And what Jaret did was they were an importer of food that foreign transplants would like. So they would go out and they would find some sort of food that people from India would like and bring it in or from Poland and they would bring it in. So basically, they really specialized in this whole idea of finding foods that foreign transplants would like. Dave Young: Interesting. I like that idea. Stephen Semple: And he wanted to do a twist on gummy candy. So in 1920, Hans Riegel, in Germany, made the first gummy, and that was like a gummy bear. And they were really popular in Europe, but they weren't super popular here. And he didn't want to do a traditional sweet candy, and Halloween was really growing candy, and candy could now be found in different places, and all of this other stuff going on. And he also started to notice that there was an emergence of a different type of candy, like the Atomic Fireball came out and sour Lemonheads came out. So he was noticing that there was this desire for stuff that was not just sweet, and they were really the first to do this whole idea of sour and sweet. So they combined two acids, so it would be super sour and that super sour would drop off and then would come back as being sweet.
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