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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class, a

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Speaker 1: show for those who can never know enough about history.

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Speaker 1: I'm Gabe Bluesier, and today we're talking about the origin

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Speaker 1: of gummy bears, including how they went from a niche

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Speaker 1: German product to a global favorite, and why their iconic

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Speaker 1: shape wasn't always as cute and cuddly as it is today. Boo.

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Speaker 1: The day was December thirteenth, nineteen twenty. Hans Reegel founded

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Speaker 1: the Harribo Candy Company in Bonn, Germany. It started as

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Speaker 1: a one man operation in a small backyard kitchen. Armed

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Speaker 1: with nothing but a bag of sugar, a marble slab,

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Speaker 1: a brick oven, a copper kettle, and a rolling pin,

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Speaker 1: Regal set to work making hard candies to sell around town.

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Speaker 1: But the company and its product line grew over time,

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Speaker 1: and today Harribo is the world's leading manufacturer of gummy candy,

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Speaker 1: including its flagship product, the original gummy Bear. Although Regal

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Speaker 1: was the first to make gummy products shaped like bears,

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Speaker 1: gelatin based candies pre date his invention by at least

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Speaker 1: a decade or so. Gelatin is made from a protein

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Speaker 1: called collagen, which is derived from animal products, most commonly

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Speaker 1: pork and cattle bones. In nineteen oh nine, a British

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Speaker 1: candy maker named Charles Gordon Maynard introduced one of the

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Speaker 1: first commercial treats made with gelatin. He called them wine gums,

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Speaker 1: though they didn't contain any alcohol and they came in

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Speaker 1: generic geometric shapes like circles and squares. Wine gums were

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Speaker 1: and still are a popular candy, but there was room

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Speaker 1: for improvement when it came to the presentation, and at

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Speaker 1: the end of the day, a bear is just more

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Speaker 1: fun than a rhombus. Hans Regal was no stranger to

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Speaker 1: sweets when he started Haribo in nineteen twenty He had

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Speaker 1: just left his job at a local candy factory and

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Speaker 1: decided to put his knowledge of confectionery to work at

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Speaker 1: his own company. He called the new venture Harribo, a

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Speaker 1: portmanteau or mashup of Hans Regal and Bond. The first

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Speaker 1: products he made in his home kitchen were colorless hard candies,

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Speaker 1: which he sold at local street fairs. In nineteen twenty one,

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Speaker 1: the company hired its first employee, Hans' wife, Gertrude, who

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Speaker 1: began delivering the sweets to customers on her bicycle. The

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Speaker 1: Regals candy sold well, but there was nothing to set

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Speaker 1: it apart from the competition. That's when Hans hit on

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Speaker 1: the idea of branching into gummy candy, but instead of

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Speaker 1: sticking to basic shapes, he would mold his fruit flavored

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Speaker 1: gelatine into the shape of bears. He called the product

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Speaker 1: the dancing Bear or tons bearn in German. Introduced in

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Speaker 1: nineteen twenty two, the dancing bear was bigger and thinner

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Speaker 1: than modern gummy bears and had a more naturalistic look

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Speaker 1: compared to the pudgier teddy bear shapes were used to today.

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Speaker 1: Kids love animals, so modeling your candy off the shape

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Speaker 1: of one seems like a no brainer. But if you're

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Speaker 1: wondering why Regal chose bears in particular, well, that leads

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Speaker 1: to the sour side of the sweet's history. Beginning in

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Speaker 1: the Middle Ages, trained dancing bears were featured as entertainment

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Speaker 1: at festivals all over Europe. Children and adults alike were

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Speaker 1: delighted to see these ferocious, lumbering beasts dancing in sync

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Speaker 1: with live music, but what they didn't see was the

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Speaker 1: tortuous process by which the bears were trained. Their owners

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Speaker 1: taught captive bears to dance by forcing them to stand

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Speaker 1: on heated metal plates while music was played. As the

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Speaker 1: plates got hotter, the bears would hop from one paw

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Speaker 1: to the other to relieve their suffering. Eventually, the bears

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Speaker 1: began to associate music with discomfort, and they would instinctively

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Speaker 1: lift their feet whenever they heard it, making it appear

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Speaker 1: as if they were dancing. Although the practice is banned

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Speaker 1: in Germany today, in the early twentieth century, real dancing

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Speaker 1: bears were still a fixture of German festivals, and Hans

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Speaker 1: Regal knew his customers would recognize the likeness just like

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Speaker 1: their grim real world counterparts. Harrobou's dancing bears were a

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Speaker 1: huge hit with the public. Their strong sales prompted Regal

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Speaker 1: to buy a company car to keep up with the

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Speaker 1: increasing demand. Then, in nineteen twenty five, Harrobaux expanded its

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Speaker 1: offerings again by introducing black licorice to its lineup. Products

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Speaker 1: included black licorice sticks, wheels, and of course, a black

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Speaker 1: bear or schwarz bar. By nineteen thirty, Harrabo had moved

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Speaker 1: from a home kitchen to its own own factory, and

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Speaker 1: its workforce had grown from just two employees to one

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Speaker 1: hundred and sixty. The company continued to grow throughout the decade,

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Speaker 1: introducing new flavors and shapes to its product line, along

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Speaker 1: with a simple but accurate slogan, Harribo Mocked kinderfro or

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Speaker 1: Haribo makes children Happy. By the start of World War

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Speaker 1: iiO Harribo employed more than four hundred people and was

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Speaker 1: cranking out ten tons of candy each day. But as

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Speaker 1: you might imagine, the war wasn't great for business, and

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Speaker 1: all the gains the company had seen in the nineteen

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Speaker 1: thirties slipped away in an instant. The regal family suffered

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Speaker 1: setbacks as well. Hans's sons, Paul and Hans Junior, fought

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Speaker 1: for the Nazis and were both captured and held as

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Speaker 1: prisoners of war by American forces. Then, in nineteen forty five,

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Speaker 1: Hans himself died at the age of fifty two, leaving

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Speaker 1: Gertrude to run the company herself. The couple's sons were

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Speaker 1: the following year, at which point they relieved their mother

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Speaker 1: and assumed leadership of Harribo, with Paul in charge of

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Speaker 1: production and Hans Junior handling, marketing, and sales. Harribou rebounded

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Speaker 1: with them at the Helm, going from just thirty employees

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Speaker 1: after the war to more than one thousand by nineteen fifty.

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Speaker 1: The brothers spent the next decade shoring up the business

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Speaker 1: at home as Germany licked its wounds. Then in nineteen

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Speaker 1: sixty they took the brand international for the first time,

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Speaker 1: selling Harribou products to the wider European market. They also

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Speaker 1: rebranded their signature dancing bears as gold Bears or gold barn.

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Speaker 1: The look of the bears changed along with the name,

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Speaker 1: as they assumed the now classic shape of a tubby

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Speaker 1: teddy bear sitting on its hind legs. The makeover worked

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Speaker 1: like a charm, and pretty soon Harribou was gobbling up

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Speaker 1: competing candymakers and building new factories all across Europe. In

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Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven, Harrobou changed things up again by manufacturing

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Speaker 1: multi colored gummy bears, rather than only making them in gold.

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Speaker 1: The flavor assigned to each color varies somewhat by region,

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Speaker 1: but in the US the red bears are raspberry, the

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Speaker 1: yellow bears are lemon, the orange ones are orange, the

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Speaker 1: translucent bears are pineapple, and the green ones are strawberry.

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Speaker 1: Of course, Harribo gummy bears weren't available in American markets

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Speaker 1: until the early nineteen eighties, and by that point other

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Speaker 1: companies such as Brox and Trolley had already introduced their

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Speaker 1: own bear shaped gummies in the States. The competition led

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Speaker 1: Harobo to think outside the box and beyond the bear,

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Speaker 1: leading to a slew of new shapes and flavors, everything

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Speaker 1: from happy cherries and dinosaurs to Fizzicola and sour Skeddy.

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Speaker 1: All that innovation paid off, and today, more than a

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Speaker 1: century after its founding, Harribo is more popular than ever.

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Speaker 1: Their gummies are sold in more than one hundred countries worldwide,

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Speaker 1: and one hundred million of their bears are produced every day.

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Speaker 1: I'm Gabeluesier and hopefully you now know a little more

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Speaker 1: about history today than you did yesterday. You can learn

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Speaker 1: even more about history by following us on Twitter, Facebook,

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Speaker 1: and Instagram at TDI HC Show, and if you have

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Speaker 1: any comments or suggestions, you can always send them my

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Speaker 1: way by writing to this day at iHeartMedia dot com.

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Speaker 1: Thanks to Chandler Mays for producing the show, and thank

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Speaker 1: you for listening. I'll see you back here again. Tomorrow

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Speaker 1: for another day in history class,