A Halloween Good-Bye Kiss?

“You’ll miss me when I’m gone.” How many times have we all heard that one? Sometimes it applies to people – and I do miss most (but not all) of them who are no longer around. But it also applies to well-known items that were once familiar in stores.

It now appears that we can add another item to this category. Does everyone remember those peanut-butter-flavored taffy candies that were individually wrapped in orange or black waxed paper wrappers? I knew them as either Mary Janes or Peanut Butter Kisses. It appears that they are no more. Will anyone miss them?

For as long as I can remember, those little black and orange wrapped pieces of peanut butter taffy have been found rolling around the bottom of kids’ trick-or-treat bags after all of the Snickers or Three Musketeers bars have been consumed. As one who levied the Dad Tax on my childrens’ Halloween hauls, I ate my share of them. Because I was a benevolent Dad who would take the items that the kids valued the least. Except for the Smarties. Even the most benevolent Dad has his limits.

For some odd reason I recently found myself on the prowl for some of these to buy. Not to give out at Halloween, though. I am unwilling to become “that guy” – the old man on the street who gives out the cheapest, most awful candy of the kind that kids would have not gone to the bother to ring the doorbell had they known what would be dropped into their bags as a result. See that lady in the picture? “That Guy” is pretty much her opposite. No, dear reader – I was looking for some of them to consume for myself.

Yes, I know it is odd. Perhaps I need to visit the doctor. But ever since I dove into the history of the Bit-O-Honey some time back, I have come to appreciate these old-time taffy candies and was out to renew my acquaintance with them. Perhaps meeting them under other circumstances – on their own terms and not compared with other Halloween mainstays – would improve my appreciation? After all, choosing them fresh in the store instead of taking old ones left behind in a trick-or-treat bucket might put me in a different frame of mind. Although I would surely follow my old compulsion to eat both an orange and a black-wrapped version as a set.

The Charles H. Miller Co. got its start in the candy business in Boston in 1884. In 1914, Charles’ son (Charles N. Miller) invented a molasses taffy that was combined with peanut butter, and called the individually wrapped pieces “Mary Janes”. Although other sources say the candy was introduced by the Robert O. Lord company, which sold out to Miller during the depression. Still others claim that peanut-butter-flavored molasses taffy date back to as early as 1907. Let’s say that the origin story on these candies is not clear.

Also unclear is the source of the candy’s name. Miller claimed that Mary Janes were named after his aunt. However, it is undeniable that the candy came out during the peak years of R. F. Outcault’s Buster Brown comic strip, in which the principal female character was – you guessed it – Mary Jane. Well, actually it was “Mary-Jane”. The comic and that character clearly inspired the famous little girls’ shoe style of the same name, and most likely served as the inspiration for this candy brand too.

What is clear that Mary Janes introduced the larger pieces that were wrapped in black or orange waxed paper – those became known as Mary Janes Peanut Butter Kisses. But it is likely that similar individually-wrapped taffies were made by other companies too.

Mary Janes and the related (non-Hershey) Kisses has ridden the candy roller coaster in recent years. The Howard Stark Co. of Wisconsin bought out the Miller company, which was in turn purchased by Necco (the New England Confectionary Co.) in 1988. All went reasonably well for the next thirty years, but then Necco filed for bankruptcy and closed down in 2018. It was during that process that Necco’s candy brands were auctioned off. But poor Mary Jane was left standing alone with no suiters. There is nothing sadder than a jilted candy.

Spangler bought the rest of Necco during that process but allowed Mary Jane to languish among its inactive brands. Recently, the Texas-based Atkinson Candy Company has re-introduced the classic Mary Jane through a contract with Spangler. Atkinson is known for some other classic brands, including Slo-Poke and Chick-O-Stick. Alas, Mary Jane will not give out with any of her Kisses.

A couple of alternatives to the Mary Jane-branded version were out there, at least until very recently. Melster Candies offered a version, as did Sweet Soul Candies. Both appear to have been manufactured in Mexico and both seem to have been discontinued. A You-Tuber conducted a taste test of these two brands, and concluded that they were quite different from one another, so it was not one recipe sold under different brand names. (1)

So it appears that everyone has kissed off the peanut butter kiss. Which takes a lot of nerve from a company like Melster, being the one that still offers those dreadful Circus Peanuts. Big Candy wins again? Or is it that enough of the old timers who bought these cheap candies from the dollar store have finally answered their last October 31st doorbell?

When he lost his bid for Governor of California in 1962, Richard Nixon famously said to the press that “you won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore.” I imagine that makers of this oft-maligned candy could have said something similar (had they cared enough to announce the discontinuation of the product). But Nixon eventually came back. I wonder if Peanut Butter Kisses in their Halloween wrappings will ever do the same.

(1) Tami Dunn, October, 2023 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJjgMt0Tj9M&ab_channel=TamiDunn

26 thoughts on “A Halloween Good-Bye Kiss?”

  3. I like Halloween kisses too, although I never did decide what they actually tasted like. Peanut butter flavored molasses taffy makes sense.

    Good news for my fellow Canadians, Kerrs molasses kisses are still available here although thankfully Richard Nixon is not.

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    • Hmm, Kerrs are new to me. I looked them up on Amazon and they appear to be available under a re-packaged U.S. brand. But I am not sure I am ready to invest $25 for a two pound bag. Although I might re-think that some cold winter evening when I get a sweet tooth attack and there is nothing in the house.

      And it is finally true – we don’t have Dick Nixon to kick around any more. Although many of us (myself included) certainly try. 🙂

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    • Nixon, DJT, et al, or your favourite Canadian politician(s) in our case. We have several who could be the brunt of our criticism. In any event, Happy Thanksgiving Doug to you and yours this weekend!

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  4. As a Canadian kid – I remember Molasses Kisses as being the least desirable but most plentiful treat in my trick or treat bag. No peanut butter in them, or I would have liked them.

    One of my favourites in the grand children’s haul were Rockets, which I believe are called Smarties in the USA. Rockets are not the candy coated chocolate things that Canadians call Smarties – which would also be highly coveted…

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    • Those things we call Smarties – the little sugary/tart discs in a roll – they were always the lowest of the low in my hierarchy of candy. And the differences in Canadian and U.S. candies are always intriguing to me.

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  5. Sorry, but we are on opposite sides if the candy aisle on this one. I hated them as a kid and offered them to my gullible little brothers as trade items. Or gave them to my folks. Oh, and I love circus peanuts.

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    • How well I remember that you are one of “those people” – the group of perhaps 1,000 souls in the entire world who likes Circus Peanuts. So I do not take offense at your dislike of the discontinued Peanut Butter Kisses. “This is my friend Herb. Be kind to him, he simply doesn’t know better.” 🙂
      Seriously, I am quite sure this was my position too when I got these as a kid. And even now I am not sure I would love them, but with their having been euthanized, I may never find out.

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  6. Well JP, I remember these orange and black peanut butter kisses from when I was a kid, mostly because I was never allowed to eat them! I didn’t even have fillings that might have been pulled out while chomping on one of these sticky candies, but they were off limits to me. What allowance I got couldn’t be used for penny candy as there were no stores near our new sub. I only went out for Halloween one time after we moved to the States when I was 10. The goodies over here were much more extravagant than had been when I would stand with friends and shout “shell out, shell out, the witches are out”. When I emptied my bag, Mom got first dibs on all the apples which she put away to make a pie. 🙂

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    • Wouldn’t it be a great opportunity to go back and ask our parents why they did certain things? I remember my mother taking the apples because there had been a scare going around of “bad men” putting razor blades in them. And I never heard the “shell out” thing.

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      • That razor-blades-in-apples happened here the last year I went out trick-or-treating. In Canada we’d shout the “shell out” rhyme and for our efforts we usually got popcorn balls, tiny boxes of raisins, apples and those peanut butter kisses – we moved here and it was big candy bars, bags of chips or Cracker Jack.

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    • Me too! I have learned that some are still available through Amazon, but I have concerns about their freshness. Really, there will probably be uneaten bags of these around for the next several years.

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  8. Those colored wrappers had me thinking orange and licorice flavors but I’ve probably got an assortment of salt water taffy on the brain instead. At least these conjure up memories of old-time Halloween candy. I wonder if anything wax (ex. lips, liquid-filled bottles) is still out there on the shelves? Today’s front-door offerings seem so much less creative by comparison, including the complete lack of homemade items for obvious reasons.

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  10. I will most certainly miss them. I was looking for them Halloween 2024 and couldn’t find any. I’m a 70’s baby and I value the good stuff too. I was that one that traded the good stuff for those because everyone had sooo many of them to give away. Well, I’ll have to get in the kitchen and try to mimic them. The funny thing is I ran across this story it was written on my birthday and now I’m saddened for life. First, they took away the Jumbo Lemon Cookies now this🙄. Just wanted to share my thoughts. Thanks for the information about them. I really looked for them to eat for myself.

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