The Candy Wrapper Museum

CLARK BAR D L Clark Company Beatrice Foods 1970s

“I want a Clark Bar!”

This was the Clark Bar’s famous slogan for many decades. How many people since 1917 have said this very thing? The Clark Bar was a great innovation in 1917. With its peanut-honeycomb caramel cream center covered with a jacket of molasses, then surrounded with a milk chocolate shell, this was the first successful “combination” candy bar in America. Making a Clark Bar required new technology along with arduous hand labor, but the investment paid off. The Clark Bar was such a huge hit, the D.L. Clark Company was selling over one million Clark Bars a day by the 1920s!

In 1955 the Clark family sold D.L.Clark to Beatrice Foods. Beatrice Foods then sold the company to Leaf in 1983. The company continued to change hands, eventually leading to Necco acquiring its assets in 1999 for $4.1 million. When Necco went bankrupt in 2018, Boyer acquired the Clark Bar and is now making it. Apparently, you can’t keep a good candy bar down!

The Clark Bar wrapper you see here is the one I hold dear to me from my youth in the 1970s. The wrapper didn’t change much from the 1950s on. It’s nothing fancy, but its bold text and colors along with its simplicity makes it an iconic and instantly recognizable classic.


	Clark Home Clark Clark "Valuable Wrapper" Crispy Crunchy Nutcracker Zagnut Return to Classics	“I want a Clark Bar!” This was the Clark Bar’s famous slogan for many decades. How many people since 1917 have said this very thing? The Clark Bar was a great innovation in 1917. With its peanut-honeycomb caramel cream center covered with a jacket of molasses, then surrounded with a milk chocolate shell, this was the first successful “combination” candy bar in America. Making a Clark Bar required new technology along with arduous hand labor, but the investment paid off. The Clark Bar was such a huge hit, the D.L. Clark Company was selling over one million Clark Bars a day by the 1920s! In 1955 the Clark family sold D.L.Clark to Beatrice Foods. Beatrice Foods then sold the company to Leaf in 1983. The company continued to change hands, eventually leading to Necco acquiring its assets in 1999 for $4.1 million. When Necco went bankrupt in 2018, Boyer acquired the Clark Bar and is now making it. Apparently, you can’t keep a good candy bar down! The Clark Bar wrapper you see here is the one I hold dear to me from my youth in the 1970s. The wrapper didn’t change much from the 1950s on. It’s nothing fancy, but its bold text and colors along with its simplicity makes it an iconic and instantly recognizable classic.