A Timely Bit On Bit-O-Honey

It seems that I buy most of my candy at the hardware store. Menards is a regional hardware/home center chain that is my little way of avoiding the Lowes/Home Depot duopoly. My choice is partially dictated by the fact that my furnace requires a filter that is an odd size, and Menards is the only one that stocks it. It has also become my modern go-to as a source of the French Burnt Peanuts I love so much (and have written about more than once). A shelf or two away is another variety of candy to which I have taken a shine – Bit-O-Honey.

My taste for Bit-O-Honey has come on a bit late in life, but here I am. As I munch through my latest bag, I started wondering about this confection’s history. There turns out to be more there then I expected.

Bit-O-Honey is on the cusp of celebrating its 100th birthday, having been introduced by the Schutter-Johnson Candy Company of Chicago in 1924. Wikipedia says the year was 1928, but that appears to be an error because its citation to trademark records refers to the name’s first use being 1924. So there, Wikipedia – be more careful next time.

The candy was (and is) basically a taffy that gets its unique flavor from honey and bits of shredded almonds. The texture is much like the Mary Jane, which predated the Bit O Honey by a decade and was made in Boston. The difference is that Mary Janes were/are flavored with a combination of peanut butter and molasses. There is no truth to the rumor that Mary Janes got their flavor from girls’ shoes of the same name. That was not fair, but I will admit that on the Mary Jane vs. Bit-O-Honey controversy, I am on Team B-O-H. What, you didn’t know that there was such a controversy? Well then, it is a good thing you are here.

Bit-O-Honey was originally sold in bar form. Or at least kind of a bar, if a candy bar can be a big piece of taffy that has been segmented into six bite-sized pieces. The original bar may or may not exist today, but the individually-wrapped segments are widely available.

This is another one of those products that has managed to stay afloat despite a daisy-chain of owners. Schutter-Johnson merged with New York’s Ward Candy Company (Chunky, O-Henry, Raisonettes) in 1969. Nestle bought Bit-O-Honey and some other Ward brands in 1984. Pearson Candy Company of Minneapolis (of Nut Roll fame) bought the brand in 2013, and then sold it to Spangler Candy of Bryan, Ohio, in 2020. Spangler seems to have done the first updates to packaging in decades, but its website boasts that the candy still contains real honey and real almonds.

Spangler, by the way, is home to quite a few old brands, including what I understand to be the oldest – Necco wafers. Spangler also makes my personal nemesis, which are those awful orange Circus Peanuts. Oh well, isn’t all of life a balance?

One other thing Spangler has done has been to get fresher product out to the stores. These have a tendency to get quite hard as they age, and some of them were almost brittle when you tried to chew into them. But I suppose one should expect hard candy from a hardware store. I developed the habit of squeezing one inside the package, only buying if they showed a little give. I am happy to report that recent purchases have been quite fresh.

When my kids were young, I got my Halloween candy by imposing what I called “The Dad Tax”. I have lately discovered that some organizations have taken to selling t-shirts that remind kids that Halloween is approaching and that the Dad Tax will be assessed. I am a little rueful that I did not start selling those myself, because I harbor a belief that I invented the concept. But that aside, I was a benevolent dictator who would assess that tax by asking “what don’t you like” and making a choice from there. At least until the pickings got too low.

I don’t recall my children getting many (if any) Bit-O-Honeys, but I would happily assess the Dad Tax on them if any were in my childrens’ Halloween bags. Of course, I don’t expect to get any this year because all of my children are at or approaching the age of thirty, and any trick-or-treating by them is as likely to result in jail as in candy. And maybe now is the time to start making some Granddad Tax t-shirts.

But I digress. Halloween or not, the Bit-O-Honey is a good candy with some history to it. Which makes it my favorite kind, even if there is no chocolate involved.

39 thoughts on “A Timely Bit On Bit-O-Honey”

  1. I mostly know Menard’s from their catchy TV commercial jingle (which for non-Hoosiers is “Save big money at Menard’s!”, but gets sung around our house as “Shave big monkeys at Menard’s!”)

    -Tam

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  2. This stuff is very tasty, but unfortunately falls under the category of Candy too detrimental to a 69 year olds genetically bad teeth, so alas, off my radar, with other brands like Turkish Taffy (when you can find it, a staple from my youth in Chicago), and those handmade caramels that seems to be popping up everywhere next to the cash register. I swear these brands are being kept alive through secret funding from the American Dental Association.

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    • Haha, your theory on surreptitious funding by Big Dentistry makes you wonder. Could you say they are promoting skullduggery? 🙂

      It is very true that the stuff sticks to teeth. I have been fortunate that my own have been able to stand up to sticky taffy, at least so far.

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    • Ahh, the dental thing is more widespread than I had suspected. That can be a problem for a candy that sells on nostalgia – when too many of the intended customers can’t chew the stuff. If it helps, I have discovered that on rare occasions when I can summon the patience, they last nearly forever when you suck on them like with hard candy.

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  5. i agree with you about the bits being fresh/softer nowadays. way back in the 60’s you had to smack a bit-o-honey package just like the B-O-N-O-M-O, oh,oh,oh bonomo turkish taffy ! il.chuck

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    • I have not had Turkish Taffy in a long time! I’m pretty sure that stuff has nothing whatsoever to do with Turkey, but when I think of that country, Turkish Taffy will float into my brain.

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  7. B-O-H was always a bottom of the bag candy for me, the kind you could never trade with your friends after all of the door knocking was done. Ditto Smarties, individually wrapped Chuckles, and mini packs of Necco wafers. But the nostalgia factor is huge here. Thanks for the memories.

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    • I was probably the same way as a kid, although Smarties were always at the very bottom of my candy hierarchy. I wonder what kind of emotional damage I could do to trick-or-treaters if I handed out big chocolate bars to almost everyone in a group, then dropped a handful of Bit-O-Honeys into the bag of just one random kid. I’ll bet there is a sociological experiment in that. And the sad thing is that I might personally prefer the BOHs to the chocolate bar.

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  8. I’ve never heard of them before. Checked Amazon Canada and see I can buy 8 pounds of those small candies for $159C, delivery mid November. The interesting product though, is a 4 ounce box of Bit-O-Honey bars for $45C. Packaged to appeal to a certain type of client, the package says it is low in fat and gluten free.

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    • I had not considered Canadian availability – it amazes me how some food products cross the border while others do not. And the cost you found – yikes! I think I paid maybe $2.99 US for a bag that is probably either 12 oz or 1 lb.

      The gluten-free thing might be a big sell these days.

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  9. My father always grabbed the BoH and Mary Janes every year. I never got to taste them, until the year I went deer hunting. I was handed a small handful to use while I was on stand. Great treat,somewhat filling, no noxious smells, and no noise.
    Dennis the librarian shusher

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    • Haha, fathers know best! I had not considered that they might be great hunting food. I guess you would have to be quiet with the wrappers, though.

      I need to find a bag of Mary Janes and give them a try again – I have not had one in quite a long time. Come to think of it, my last one may have been from the Halloween bag of one of my kids.

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  10. Well, I guess there’s no accounting for some people’s tastes. When I would get these trick-or-treating I would immediately try to trade somebody (anybody) for anything else. Except those brown things that were wrapped in orange or black wax paper.

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  11. These have not crossed my consciousness in years, but I did enjoy them long ago. The fresher ones, that is. I may need to try them again with Halloween rapidly approaching.

    It would make sense you’d find these at Menards. They seem to have nearly everything – except leak-free plumbing supplies.

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    • Uh-oh, it sounds like there is a plumbing story there. I am so happy to have retired from that task. Although my choice has been not been an inexpensive one.

      Their little food store section has always fascinated me – it is not just a few high-volume items, but looks like almost enough that someone with simple tastes could do virtually all grocery shopping there. If you never want any fresh meat or produce, anyway.

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  12. Bit o honey, I recently seen an old friend of mine that has a connection at spangler candy.. less than 20 miles from where I live, We were talking about the candy there and I mentioned bit o honey.. After wife and I left the restaurant where I seen my friend and there were two bags of these delicious treats on the hood of my truck!!! what a real friend !!

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  13. What a coincidence JP – I never heard the expression “Dad Tax” before and yesterday one of the local sheriffs was being interviewed and he gave the annual warning to peruse your kid’s candy and encourage them not to eat it while Trick-or-Treating. He finished by saying he always pulled his personal favorites from his kids’ Halloween stash due to “Dad Tax”. My mom went through my Halloween candy – even back then you’d have the occasional razor blade in an apple or unwrapped-and-possibly-tampered-with candy bar. I was never allowed to have chewy candy as a kid. Mom pulled all those peanut butter kisses wrapped in black and orange wax paper and put them in the garbage. When we moved here and I had allowance, on the way home from school I would go to the Mom and Pop convenience store and buy penny candy like Mary Janes or Squirrels – good thing I never lost a filling from sneaking those treats. On the brink of 100 years old for BOH – that’s amazing to me. I never liked circus peanuts either (not that I was allowed to eat them back in the day).

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    • I remember in maybe 1968 or 69 my mother hearing reports about the razor blades in apples or drugs injected into candy bars, and she checked all of our candy with a fine eye. I have read that there is a guy who claims to have investigated every report of adulterated Halloween candy since 1958. He says that not report holds up at face value, although there are a couple cases like a dad who poisoned a kid to collect on life insurance or a kid who put a needle in a candy bar and claimed a neighbor did it. In 50 years I have certainly never gotten close to such a story.

      Yes, it would have been a bad time for you if one of those pieces of sticky candy had pulled out a filling or something!

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      • Perhaps the stories were fabricated so parents could tame down our candy consumption (cavities and sugar highs). I got braces on my teeth at age 20. They were the full metal braces that wrapped around each tooth and were connected by heavy wires. My orthodontist was a miserable man who had no use for his patients and should have retired years before. I had the misfortune to hook my top and bottom braces together in the back part of my mouth on the first day of a long holiday weekend. My father had to take the tin snips to cut the wires and orthodontic patients always had packets of wax to protect gums and cheeks from new wire placement. I went in on the next business day and he yelled at me for eating caramels or some type of sticky candy and causing such a problem that I had to have the wires “restrung” – he didn’t believe me that it just happened, so I let him rant and rave. 🙂

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  14. Every day of my childhood was scheming for ways to get my next piece of candy. Any kind was OK but some were better than others. Bit-O-Honey was good enough. I had to quit candy cold turkey for a couple of decades as I approached mid-life but now I eat some with more self control since my teeth were rotting out without candy anyway.

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    • Your childhood sounds a bit like mine! I switched my allegiance to beer and cigarettes as a young adult, but partake in all of it far less frequently than before (and quit the cigarettes completely).

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