Easter Sweets

Easter Sweets

As easter recently passed it left many wondering, why chocolate bunnies? Well The rabbit was chosen as the Easter animal since it symbolizes fertility and new life. The chocolate Easter bunny was started in 1842 in a small chocolate store but didn't actually become popular until the early 1900's. The small chocolate maker was cadbury, a very popular chocolate maker in England.  It became a small tradition producing a couple hundred thousand chocolate bunnies a year. Now more than 9 million chocolate bunnies are made every year. Since the chocolate bunny became so popular, they started adding anything to the insides of them to make them more appealing. This did not work as well since many prefered eating just a plain chocolate bunny. 

Easter is a great holiday for the candy industry since it is the second holiday to sell the most candy before Halloween. The chocolate bunny is a go to for most candy makers now and brings in the majority of profit during easter. The other big seller for Easter are the chocolate eggs. Eggs represent the rebirth of Jesus. Chocolate eggs became a very popular Easter chocolate but soon became popular year round when Cadbury started making their Cadbury eggs. This popular chocolate became one of the most popular chocolates to date. These candies are now so popular that they are no longer made by hand but by machine. 

Despite the chocolate egg and bunny's popularity, the most popular non-chocolate easter candy for the past decade has been the peeps. They have been very successful in rebranding themselves as not only a marshmallow candy, but as a multi-flavor sweet for many to enjoy. These peeps are an american made candy that was started in the early 1950's but later grew and became one of the most popular candies in the world. 

Easter candy is a 2.6 billion dollar industry with millions upon millions of Peeps being produced and enough jelly beans to surround the globe. Attached is a link to the history channel website Link. In that link they spoke all about the easter candy and how their success has grown over the years. In that link they mentioned some very interesting facts about easter candy that you probably did not know! One being that over 75% of chocolate bunny eaters eat the ears first. You may not have thought about it but most people do! Also did you know that over 1.5 million cadbury eggs are produced every day?

What is the difference between different holiday candies? Well the answer is simple. There really is not one. With each holiday candy makers find some small unique flavor to add to their candy to make them seem more appealing but in reality they are not really changing anything about their candy besides the shape. Recently Pez released their easter inspired pez dispensers with a limited edition flavor. The exciting new flavor was vanilla cupcake which many strongly disliked.  If any of you are wondering I was very curious and tried the new flavor and ended up throwing it away after my first bite.


Cites Used
https://www.shutterstock.com/search/did+you+know
https://twitter.com/hashtag/pe%C5%BC
https://www.history.com/topics/holidays/easter-symbols
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/17597617
https://thestir.cafemom.com/food_party/211196/peeps-worst-easter-candy
https://allergyawesomeness.com/allergy-friendly-easter-candy-store-bought-top-8-free/