Lackadaisy Wisenheimer (Patreon)
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Latest update! Of course, you guys saw part of this earlier this month.
In case you have trouble viewing this here, it's on the web site too.
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Did kind of a ridiculous amount of ad/packaging research for this one. Extra points, I guess, if you recognize any of them (though some actually haven't changed much over the decades and are probably fairly easy to spot).
In the 1920s, most packaged, single serving candies cost 5¢. Among them, Baby Ruth bars were king. It was exceedingly likely the Curtiss Candy Company picked the name to cash in on the popularity of Babe Ruth. However, in the 1930s, when an officially endorsed Babe Ruth candy appeared on the scene, Curtiss contended that the names were too confusingly similar, and claimed their bars were named after the daughter of former president Grover Cleveland. As that "Baby Ruth" was an infant in the 1890s, and had passed away in 1904 as a fairly obscure historical figure, long before the candy bar debuted, it was a pretty feeble cover story. Nevertheless, the company successfully avoided paying any royalties to the Sultan of Swat and legally stamped out his ability to market his own competing candy bar.