#26: Bonomo’s Vanilla Turkish Taffy
The Bonomo Turkish Vanilla Taffy was a nostalgic treat, bursting with sweet flavors that debuted as a pocket-friendly nickel bar in the post-World War II era around 1949. It made history as one of the earliest candies to grace television advertisements. Bonomo even created a marketing mascot, a clown, long before the horror character ‘It’ sparked fear globally.
The origins of this sugary delight trace back not to Bonomo but to H. Schwarz & Son, marking Turkish Taffy as the firm’s flagship product. In the 1930s, the Bonomo family acquired the company, and it wasn’t until a decade later that they introduced the iconic rebrand. The journey of the taffy took a twist when Bonomo was eventually acquired by Tootsie Roll, leading to the discontinuation of the beloved Taffy in 1989.