Kisses lay more in technology than romance. Before Kisses, Hershey sold a molded candy called Sweetheart. It was cone-shaped and featured a kiss imprint on its base. No one knows for sure if Sweetheart inspired the Hershey Kiss. According to Pamela C. Whitenack, director of the Hershey Community Archives, and the source for most of our information in this chapter, the word “kiss” was already a common confectionary term for small candies when Hershey first marketed its Kiss in 1907.
The key attribute of the Kiss was its distinctive shape, and the difficulty in its production was developing machinery that could extrude chocolate at the proper temperature, and then cool it quickly so that the whirl on top remained intact. Hershey wasn’t able to figure out how to wrap Kisses by machine at first—every Kiss was individually wrapped by hand, with a small tissue (containing the Hershey trademark) surrounding the chocolate and housed inside the foil exterior. In The Emperors of Chocolate: Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars , Jöel Glenn Brenner points out the problems with this method:
To wrap a single Kiss was a delicate process: the tissues inserted in each one had a tendency to blow away, and were difficult to handle. A proper wrap required picking up the tissue, laying it on a foil, placing the Kiss on top and twisting the whole package together. But this process took too much time. Some workers were known to pick up a Kiss, lick the bottom, dab it on a pile of tissues, then deposit that on the foil and twist.
Another weakness of the early Kisses was that there was no clear indication of the Hershey name on the exterior. Kisses were first sold in bulk at approximately thirty cents per pound. Hershey needed a way to make its confections distinctive and identified with its brand, and the solution came in the form of the little tag, which Hershey calls a “plume.” The plume was made possible by the creation of a suitable wrapping machine in 1921.
Although the single-channel wrapping machine has since given way to a complex wonder that can wrap up to 1,300 Kisses in an hour, even the current machine essentially duplicates the process of the hand wrappers. The foil and the plume material are brought to the wrapping area in continuous rolls, and then threaded separately through the wrapping machine so that the plumes are placed on top of the foil. The two materials are then precision-cut to exact specifications, so that the plume pokes its head out of the foil. Naked pieces of chocolate are centered on the foil-plume combination and the wrappers are twisted before exiting the machine. Then the finished individual Kisses are sent to another station for inspection, weighing (there are ninety-five Kisses to a pound) and bagging. When multiple color foils are used, such as for holiday Kisses, the additional foils are blended together at this stage.
Where did the name “Kiss” come from? No one seems to know. Pam Whitenack told Imponderables that although “kiss” was used to describe bite-sized candies in the nineteenth century, it didn’t stop after the introduction of the Hershey Kiss, either:
I have a page from the Confectioner’s Journal (a trade publication from the turn of the twentieth century) that shows more than two dozen different kinds of confectionary kisses. Jolly Rancher Bites were marketed as “Kisses” prior to the company’s acquisition by Hershey Foods Corporation. The product name was changed to avoid confusion with Hershey’s older and more recognizable product.
It was not until 1923 that Hershey obtained a registered trademark for Kisses, and that wasn’t for the name alone, but for the “basic shape, size, and configuration of Kisses, with its foil wrap.”
Is it a coincidence, corporate espionage, or cosmic fate that in the same year that Hershey Kisses were introduced in the United States, 1907, Perugina launched its line of small
The key attribute of the Kiss was its distinctive shape, and the difficulty in its production was developing machinery that could extrude chocolate at the proper temperature, and then cool it quickly so that the whirl on top remained intact. Hershey wasn’t able to figure out how to wrap Kisses by machine at first—every Kiss was individually wrapped by hand, with a small tissue (containing the Hershey trademark) surrounding the chocolate and housed inside the foil exterior. In The Emperors of Chocolate: Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars , Jöel Glenn Brenner points out the problems with this method:
To wrap a single Kiss was a delicate process: the tissues inserted in each one had a tendency to blow away, and were difficult to handle. A proper wrap required picking up the tissue, laying it on a foil, placing the Kiss on top and twisting the whole package together. But this process took too much time. Some workers were known to pick up a Kiss, lick the bottom, dab it on a pile of tissues, then deposit that on the foil and twist.
Another weakness of the early Kisses was that there was no clear indication of the Hershey name on the exterior. Kisses were first sold in bulk at approximately thirty cents per pound. Hershey needed a way to make its confections distinctive and identified with its brand, and the solution came in the form of the little tag, which Hershey calls a “plume.” The plume was made possible by the creation of a suitable wrapping machine in 1921.
Although the single-channel wrapping machine has since given way to a complex wonder that can wrap up to 1,300 Kisses in an hour, even the current machine essentially duplicates the process of the hand wrappers. The foil and the plume material are brought to the wrapping area in continuous rolls, and then threaded separately through the wrapping machine so that the plumes are placed on top of the foil. The two materials are then precision-cut to exact specifications, so that the plume pokes its head out of the foil. Naked pieces of chocolate are centered on the foil-plume combination and the wrappers are twisted before exiting the machine. Then the finished individual Kisses are sent to another station for inspection, weighing (there are ninety-five Kisses to a pound) and bagging. When multiple color foils are used, such as for holiday Kisses, the additional foils are blended together at this stage.
Where did the name “Kiss” come from? No one seems to know. Pam Whitenack told Imponderables that although “kiss” was used to describe bite-sized candies in the nineteenth century, it didn’t stop after the introduction of the Hershey Kiss, either:
I have a page from the Confectioner’s Journal (a trade publication from the turn of the twentieth century) that shows more than two dozen different kinds of confectionary kisses. Jolly Rancher Bites were marketed as “Kisses” prior to the company’s acquisition by Hershey Foods Corporation. The product name was changed to avoid confusion with Hershey’s older and more recognizable product.
It was not until 1923 that Hershey obtained a registered trademark for Kisses, and that wasn’t for the name alone, but for the “basic shape, size, and configuration of Kisses, with its foil wrap.”
Is it a coincidence, corporate espionage, or cosmic fate that in the same year that Hershey Kisses were introduced in the United States, 1907, Perugina launched its line of small
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