Haribo's golden bears turn one hundred years old.
It is difficult to conceive of a more enchanting event.
For a century now, we have lived closely with those colorful miniature plantigrades that are made with jellies of animal origin, the stuff dreams are made of.
Gumdrops , jelly beans in Spain, gummies in Andalusia or Latin America,
wine gums
or
jelly beans
in Anglo-Saxon countries, are the proud proletariat of sweets.
Nothing to do with the aristocratic airs of artisanal toffees and balsamic honey, barley or rhubarb candies.
Nor with that aspirational middle class of which lollipops and other continuators of the lollipop tradition are part.
The gelatin tablet is gobbled up in a heartbeat, leaves no solid trace, forms part of the most everyday routines of early childhood, and becomes a guilty pleasure as soon as one turns ten.
Haribo and its little bears may be the exception: it is a product with rennet, tradition and an iconic image.
They are a piece of history, and that legitimizes us to consume them at all ages, either in its original version or in any of its (always very respectful) contemporary reinventions.
However, they are not the oldest candies that have reached our days.
Indeed, there is a centuries-old candy tradition, from Hershey's milk chocolate bars (on sale since 1900) to Spangler's hard and soft candies (1907) to Toblerone (1908), Good & Plenty licorice (1893) or Mary Jane peanut butter candies (1914).
But none of these Jurassic delicacies has the image and, above all, the power of irradiation at a global level of Haribo and the little bears of it.
The brand has not only survived an ocean of time, but has never stopped growing.
In 1920, the German confectioner Hans Riegel opened a candy store named Haribo, an abbreviation of his own name, surname and city of origin (Bonn).
Hans dispatched and distributed the product with his bicycle and had only one employee, his wife Gertrud, who cooked sugar and molasses in the back room.
As Christian Bahlmann, vice president of corporate communications at Haribo, explains in an interview with Smithsonian magazine, "It is often said that Apple was born in a Californian garage, and the origins of our company were quite similar."
In 1922, Hans Riegel shaped Haribo's soft candy into a bear. milanfoto (Getty Images/iStockphoto)
the bear dance
In their first year as candy retailers, the Riegels struggled to gain significant market share and came close to throwing in the towel.
But in 1922 they finally had the occurrence that would make them go down in history.
Following the example of Fryers, a British company from the county of Lancashire that had been producing soft candy since 1864, they began experimenting with gelatin and corn syrup to create a candy suitable for children with baby teeth.
Hans decided to give them a peculiar shape, based on the popular dancing bears, a tradition from mountainous areas of Western Europe such as the Pyrenees, the Alps or the Black Forest.
Capturing and training brown bears to make them dance in popular celebrations had been a common practice among European fairgrounds since the Middle Ages.
Long before Disney anthropomorphized almost all animal species, there were places, like France's Ariège, where large plantigrades were stars of the show and their cubs were treated like pets.
Although the practice was banned in Germany in 1911, Hans Riegel had the opportunity to see a captive bear cub at the Bonn fair, and was inspired by it to give his new line of sweets a recognizable image.
The first little bears came to be statues of four or five centimeters in height, thicker and taller than the current ones.
Hans depicted them upright and with their forelegs outstretched, as at fairs and in the German heraldic tradition.
They started out in two different flavours, strawberry and raspberry, and two units were sold for a penny.
Before World War II, lemon, orange and pineapple bears were added to the offer, and in 1985 a sixth flavor, apple, was added.
As for the final shape of the product, which is more reminiscent of an endearing teddy bear than a dancing beast, it was established in 1978, after various variations in the design.
In 1920, confectioner Hans Riegel opened his Haribo candy shop, short for his own first name, last name and hometown (Bonn).
spfdigital (Getty Images/iStockphoto)
toys that eat
As Bahlmann explains, Hans Riegel's main intuition was to understand that sweets, more than a food, are an edible toy, and that it is worth giving them a face and a defined personality that makes them more attractive.
He wasn't afraid to jump a conceptual barrier and encourage children to eat this sweet version of their pets and toys.
Candies with faces and eyes, even with a narrative designed to stimulate children's imaginations, would become very popular in later decades.
By 1935, the Riegels were already running a factory with 400 employees that produced ten tons of candy a day.
A budding commercial giant that only entered into crisis during World War II, a period in which the family patriarch suffered from depression.
He contributed to this the absence of his two sons, who were recruited and ended up in a prison camp.
In 1946, one of those recruits, Hans and Gertrud's son, Hans Riegel Junior, inherited the family business.
He was a true intellectual of the confectionery sector, author in 1951 of a doctoral thesis on the evolution of the sugar industry before and after the Second World War.
With Hans Jr.
Neither ravens nor snakes: bears
For Fernando de Córdoba, journalistic disseminator and brand expert, “Haribo's value has to do above all with having created an iconic product, at the level of sweets such as lollipops or marshmallows”.
In Córdoba's opinion, the fact that teddy bears continue to be the company's flagship product a hundred years later is an example of coherence and the key to success: "They have undergone major changes, but they have been identical to themselves, with minor adjustments, from the seventies”.
Today, they are part of the imagination of several generations of earthlings.
“I also find it interesting that the chosen one was a bear, an unusual animal.
But the fact is that, along with the teddy bear (another genius created by chance, in homage to the bear cub that President Roosevelt refused to hunt down), it has ended up becoming an icon of childhood and innocence, something that it has inspired other brands, such as Tous”, adds Córdoba.
It took Disney to create Dumbo and Simba for us to see elephants and lions with different eyes.
Hans Riegel did the same for the less and less abundant ursids.
Córdoba finds it "curious" to note how animal species are "marks in themselves."
The perception we have of them, "from the fear that sharks inspire us to the association of pigeons with peace or panda bears with tenderness", depends on cultural variables, traditions, media and products such as golden bears .
“What would the world be like if Haribo had created ravens or gummy snakes instead of bears?” the expert asks.
Hans depicted the gummy bears upright and with their front paws outstretched, as in the German heraldic tradition.
milanfoto (Getty Images/iStockphoto)
Beyond the back room
Córdoba reminds us that many seemingly idyllic business success stories can also have a dark undertone.
Against Haribo weigh, without going any further, "accusations of having imposed abusive working conditions."
The journalist Michele Hermann makes reference in an article to the main controversies that have affected the company throughout its history.
Perhaps the most damaging was his refusal to join Remembrance, Responsibility and Future, a business association created to compensate individuals (dissidents, prisoners of war, concentration camp prisoners) who were forced to work under conditions of slavery during World War II.
Haribo denied in a statement from the year 2000 having resorted to the use of slave labor,
More recently, in a documentary released in Germany in 2017, it was stated that in the carnauba wax plantations that Haribo had in Brazil, the workers had been reduced to conditions of “virtual slavery”.
The company was then using the wax from these palm leaves to give gumdrops their characteristic shine and consistency.
This time, according to Hermann, the company did react forcefully to the accusations: "They carried out an internal investigation and, although it concluded without evidence of abuse, they finally chose to replace the controversial ingredient with beeswax."
Diego Armando Maradona said, in response to the controversy generated by his personal problems, that "the ball does not stain".
Haribo could make the same claim.
His is a centuries-old tradition, with the occasional mole, but his dancing jelly bears, his great contribution to making the contemporary world a little more colorful and sweet, remain unblemished.
Not bad for a modest candy from the back room of a family business in the provinces.
