<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Okay, how many of you are willing to date yourselves by identifying the source of the following tag line, \u201c<\/span>How sweet it is<\/span><\/i>!\u201d? \u00a0 When did it become part of our common culture and to whom do you attribute this phrase?\u00a0 This is a bit of a trick question because most of us of the right age will say it was first widely used in the early 1960s by TV personality Jackie Gleason.\u00a0 Gleason\u2019s TV career spanned so many versions of his variety show from the 1950s to 1970, we will suffice to say he first uttered it on his 1962 -1966 iteration, <\/span>The Jackie Gleason Show:\u00a0 The American Scene Magazine<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0 The phrase itself Gleason lifted from the 1963 film <\/span>Papa\u2019s Delicate Condition.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0We could fill an entire <\/span>FTV <\/span><\/i>with Jackie Gleason\u2019s many catch phrases (<\/span>\u201cAnd away we go\u201d<\/span><\/i> and \u201c<\/span>A little travelin\u2019 music\u2019<\/span><\/i>) and characters.\u00a0 We should probably avoid the less politically correct lines from <\/span>The Honeymooners<\/span><\/i> that Ralph Kramden directed toward his wife Alice (involving trips to the Moon or socks to the kisser). My personal favorite was Joe the Bartender.\u00a0 Joe would pour a beer and jam his fingers in the glass to keep the head from spilling over (which of course it did when he did his finger dipping).\u00a0 Joe would then have a conversation with his unseen patron (\u2018Mr. Dennehy\u2019 – the audience) usually about something he had read in the fictitious <\/span>American Scene Magazine<\/span><\/i> he had on the bar.\u00a0 Oddly enough, any time I heard the \u2018<\/span>How sweet it is<\/span><\/i>\u2019 line, my mind always went to . . . Hershey, Pennsylvania.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0If you weren\u2019t expecting this big build up to take you to Pennsylvania, blame the <\/span>Milwaukee Journal Sentinel <\/span><\/i>who revived these memories.\u00a0 As part of their on-going series (<\/span>USA 250<\/span><\/i>), they did an expansive piece about chocolate (Sunday, June 7 issue) and there isn\u2019t any American brand more iconic than Hershey\u2019s line of chocolate.\u00a0 Writer David P. Willis quoted Amy Harte of Dansville, PA who set the stage by saying, \u201cChocolate makes me feel warm and filled with good memories.\u00a0 We are Pennsylvania folk and when we think, chocolate, we think Hershey.\u201d\u00a0 And yes, Hershey, PA owes both its name and fame to one Milton S. Hershey.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Hershey was born in 1857 and took an interest in confections at an early age.\u00a0 At the age of 14, he began a four year apprenticeship at Royer\u2019s Ice Cream Parlor and Garden in Lancaster, PA.\u00a0 The Hershey Community Archives say that Milton learned the fine art of mixing ingredients and how to \u201cfeel the crack of the candy to know when to take it off of the heat\u201d.\u00a0 He founded his own business in Philadelphia at the age of 18 selling candy, fruit, nuts, and ice cream.\u00a0 Within six years, the business went bust and he declared bankruptcy.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0He traveled to Denver, Colorado and studied caramel making using fresh milk.\u00a0 He took his new found knowledge to New York City but his next business venture fared no better than his first.\u00a0 According to Amy Ziegler, the director of The Hershey Story Museum and the Hershey Community Archives, \u201cHe really had some significant struggles early on.\u201d\u00a0 Returning to Lancaster, Hershey borrowed money from a friend to start a new business, the Lancaster Caramel Company.\u00a0 He began humbly by selling his caramels from a pushcart but his fortunes soon took an upward swing.\u00a0 He was able to convert a large sale in England into the cash he needed to expand the company and obtain more raw materials.\u00a0 By 1893, he was employing 1,500 workers.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Visiting the World\u2019s Columbian Exposition in Chicago that same year, he purchased chocolate-making equipment.\u00a0 This led to the 1894 establishment of the Hershey Chocolate Company as a subsidiary of the Lancaster Caramel Company.\u00a0 Ziegler pointed out that in those days, chocolate was only made in small batches and therefore was quite expensive.\u00a0 She said, \u201cHe really wanted to create a product that everyone would be able to enjoy.\u201d\u00a0 His new venture specialized in novelty pieces such as fancy bars with fancy packaging. \u00a0 He invested many years into experimenting with milk chocolate recipes before selling the Lancaster Caramel Company to his biggest competitor.\u00a0 It was a sale that would be worth $38 million in 2026 dollars.\u00a0 Ziegler continues, \u201cHe decides that caramels are a fad. \u00a0 Chocolate is what is going to be permanent.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Hershey needed fresh milk for his new chocolate recipe so he began buying up surrounding land and dairy farms.\u00a0 European chocolate makers used dried milk in their process but Hershey added sugar to fresh milk and condensed it.\u00a0 He opened his first chocolate factory in 1905 by which time he had perfected his recipe for milk chocolate.\u00a0 Ziegler pointed our that, \u201cHershey was an early adopter of branding, making his product easily recognizable just at a glance.\u201d\u00a0 He packaged his bars in a maroon wrapper with silver lettering.\u00a0 They sold for 5 cents, a price that remained unchanged until the 1960s.\u00a0 Milton developed a way to mass produce his bars and by 1915,\u00a0 he owned the largest chocolate factory in the world.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Hershey was an innovator and his machine for wrapping Hershey Kisses replaced the old by hand method by 1921.\u00a0 His machine even inserted the famous paper streamer familiar to all who know the product today.\u00a0 He wasn\u2019t done by a long shot as 1925 saw the introduction of Mr. Goodbar – Krackel followed in 1938.\u00a0 Hershey produced Ration-D chocolate bars for American soldiers during World War II.\u00a0 The miniature bars sold today began as samples salespeople would distribute on their rounds.\u00a0 The New York Stock Exchange began publicly trading Hershey stock in 1927. \u00a0 A different company owned by a dairy farmer named H.B.Reese began making and selling peanut butter covered in Hershey Chocolate.\u00a0 The inventor of the Reese\u2019s Peanut Butter Cup had six sons who then sold the company to Hershey in 1963.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Those of us living in the shadow of the copper and iron mines of the Upper Peninsula know all about \u2018company towns\u2019.\u00a0 Hershey also built a town around his business that included houses and a bank.\u00a0 During the Great Depression, instead of laying off his work force, he put them to work constructing houses, a theater, hospital, amusement park, and a hotel.\u00a0 In 1923, he told the <\/span>New York Times<\/span><\/i>, \u201cAfter all, what good is money unless you use it for the benefit of the community and of humanity in general?\u201d\u00a0 Our own experiences with company towns were not driven by the same spirit of community well being as Hershey envisioned it.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Take the school he and his first wife, Catherine, established in 1909.\u00a0 They transferred 486 acres of land to the Hershey Industrial School for orphan boys.\u00a0 When his wife died, the childless Milton put the $60 million ownership of the Hershey Company in a trust for the school,\u00a0 The Milton Hershey School not only holds the controlling shareholder interest in the company but also 100 percent of Hershey Entertainment and Resorts.\u00a0 The school has grown from four boys in 1910 into a co-ed K-12 institution of 2,200 students.\u00a0 The students live at the school and all expenses are paid for by the trust including clothing, food, medical and dental care, eye-glasses, and housing.\u00a0 The trust had more than $23 billion in assets in 2024 and in 2025, they celebrated their 12,000th graduate.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The school\u2019s president and a former graduate, Peter Gurt, said Milton had a, \u201cOne Hershey philosophy:\u00a0 All of the entities are designed to both support and strengthen all of its entities and that includes both the company, the town, and the school.\u00a0 Equally important are the opportunities that they provide our students and graduates for meaningful work experience and employability.\u00a0 We want them to hire and provide careers for many of the graduates that leave Milton Hershey School so that they can lead a successful and fulfilling life.\u201d\u00a0 Can you imagine the world of today if more billionaire business owners bought into Milton Hershey\u2019s philosophy instead of writing themselves golden parachute retirement checks?<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Gurt continued saying, \u201cWe have had every one of the Ivy Leagues represented with our graduates, but we have had just as many plumbers and contractors and carpenters.\u201d\u00a0 There are currently three Catherine Hershey Schools for Early Learning in Lancaster County serving children from birth to age 5. \u00a0 There are three more in the planning stage.\u00a0 Nancy Koehn, a historian at the Harvard Business School points out further impacts of the Hershey philosophy beyond educating students:\u00a0 \u201cChocolate is medicine.\u00a0 It has carved a very unique place in consumers\u2019 hearts and minds.\u00a0 Hershey was really the first mover, so Hershey more than any other American company made the market for mass consumed milk chocolate.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t Baker and it wasn\u2019t Mars.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Would one expect a company like Hershey to sit on its laurels?\u00a0 The company began distributing York Peppermint Patties in 1975 before purchasing the company in 1988.\u00a0 The company that manufactures Twizzlers (Y&S Licorice) was bought in 1977 and reached $1 billion in sales by 1979.\u00a0 Leaf, Inc, the makers of Jolly Rancher, Milk Duds, Good & Plenty, and Heath was acquired in 1986,\u00a0 Hershey itself reached $5 billion in yearly sales in 2008.\u00a0 Hershey maintains plants all over the world but it has never abandoned Hershey, PA where it currently runs three manufacturing plants and a 819,000-square-foot fulfillment center.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0They continued their diversity and expansion in 2018 with the acquisition of Amplify Brands, the company responsible for SkinnyPop Popcorn (adding another $1.6 billion brand to their \u2018snacking powerhouse\u2019).\u00a0 Another 2018 expansion added Pirate Booty Brands popcorn with Dot\u2019s Pretzels following in 2021 to the tune of another $1.2 billion in sales.\u00a0 The Hershey Trust seems to have a knack for finding golden eggs at every turn, but there are some deals that did not work out.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The Trust killed a $125 billion take over by the Wm. Wrigley Company in 2002 .\u00a0 Both the community and the PA attorney general opposed the move and the company agreed it might harm the people of Lancaster County.\u00a0 Another $23 billion bid by the makers of Oreo Cookies was similarly turned away in 2016 with another unnamed food giant being rebuffed in 2024.\u00a0 With the economic times being what they are, Hershey was forced to raise their prices in mid-2025 due to the increased cost of ingredients, particularly cocoa.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The latest drama in Candyland erupted in February of this year when H.B.Reese\u2019s grandson Brad accused Hershey of replacing the milk chocolate used in their peanut butter cups with \u2018compound coatings\u2019 and the peanut butter with \u2018peanut butter cremes\u2019.\u00a0 The company responded that the recipe for Reese\u2019s Peanut Butter Cups has not changed;\u00a0 the peanut butter is still made from fresh-roasted peanuts and the coating is still milk chocolate.\u00a0 They did admit to making \u2018recipe adjustments\u2019 so they could experiment with new shapes, sizes, and innovations.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0WOAS-FM has relied on income from a snack vending machine at the Ontonagon Area School for the past thirty years.\u00a0 We were able to make enough profit to support the station\u00a0 without needing to constantly raise our prices.\u00a0 Ten years ago, the profits were definitely lower but we maintained the same price structure so kids and adults had a snack option for those after school activities.\u00a0 When our supplier apologized for raising his prices twice over a couple of years, he explained that he was facing a double jeopardy situation. \u00a0 Manufacturers kept shrinking product sizes and upping the prices to the point where he had to tell his customers they would need to raise their prices, too.\u00a0 We finally had to bite the bullet and get with the times because there is no value for us if we give the products away.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0One thing I have noticed even with the rising prices.\u00a0 Specialty and fancy imported chocolates have not just gone up in price, they have gone through the stratosphere.\u00a0 It reminds me of the people buying vinyl albums for $30 or more a pop when it was not that long ago they were complaining as the prices rose to the $15 range.\u00a0 Did they give up buying albums?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 Will the chocolate loving public give up chocolate?\u00a0 What do you think?<\/span><\/p>\n Top Piece Video:\u00a0 Okay, Sweet didn’t do any songs about chocolate that I am aware of – the name alone got them this Top Piece video honor – that and the song that was blasting out of the juke box at Syl’s when I wandered in to inquire about renting an apartment in August of 1975 was…you guessed it –\u00a0Fox on the Run<\/em> – Sweet and Abba were very popular at Syl’s back then!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Okay, how many of you are willing to date yourselves by identifying the source of the following tag line, \u201cHow sweet it is!\u201d? \u00a0 When did it become part of our common culture and to whom do you attribute this phrase?\u00a0 This is a bit of a trick question because most of us of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,11,8,12,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bands-musicians","category-education","category-from-the-vaults","category-humor","category-woas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3903"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3906,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3903\/revisions\/3906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}