Zero Bars

Have you ever heard of Zero bars?

I didn't remember them, but they were made by the same company that made PayDay bars, which are familiar (and tasty), and are still made today. They also made Milkshake bars, which I vaguely recall as being like Three Musketeers or maybe Milky Way.

Zero bars are coated in white chocolate, over dense nougat made from caramel, peanuts, and almonds. They're very sweet, but the nuttiness comes through. 

Like PayDay bars, they're still made by the Hershey company, but what I found interesting about their history was where they originally came from: They were created in 1920 in Minnesota.

The company's name was the Hollywood Candy Company, and that misleading name seems to point to California.

But there's also a Hollywood in Minnesota, though I have never heard of it before, even though it's within the Twin Cities metro area. It's basically a crossroads west of Lake Minnetonka... essentially the middle of nowhere, especially in the early 20th century.

The company history available online is that an Italian American pasta company-owner needed some additional equipment, so he bought out a defunct candy company that was based in Hollywood, then decided to continue producing candy in the existing factory. Later he bought another candy company in Minneapolis that had invented the way to make nougat, which was then copied by Mars Company for its products, like Milky Way.

I find the elements of the Hollywood Candy Company pretty unlikely: why was there a candy factory in 1912 in a place that had no people nearby to work at it? And an Italian factory owner in Minnesota seems fairly unlikely as well, given how few Italians there were in Minnesota, though of course not impossible. It all seems much more like an East Coast story than one from Minnesota.

But the candy bars are proof of it, it seems. Who knew? Not me.