Hershey's Take 5 standard wrapper 2005-2011
First released in 2005, Hershey’s Take 5 bar was quite a different bar for Hershey. Incorporating a great mix of ingredients, most notably a pretzel base, it’s been a favorite of mine ever since.
Relatively young in terms of collecting it, the Take 5 has nonetheless provided a number of fun variants to catch over the years. I’ll be covering all that I know about them today.
During the mid-2000’s, Hershey was cranking out quite a few flavor variations across their brands under the “Limited Edition” header. Though it was a new bar, Take 5 got the full treatment with four flavors that were only around a short time. Here they are:
Hershey's Take 5 Chocolate Cookie - limited edition - chocolate wrapper - 2005
This next wrapper, the Peanut Butter Take 5, does not indicate a limited edition release. I don’t know if the plan was for this one to be an ongoing release or not, but evidence does point to that as a possibility.
Hershey's Take 5 Peanut Butter - limited edition - chocolate wrapper - 2006
Hershey's Take 5 Marshmallow - limited edition - chocolate wrapper - 2006
The last of the limited edition Take 5’s is a white chocolate variety. I don’t have one of this in my personal collection, but fellow collector Brad Kent does, and this image comes from his files, and his site:
Hershey's Take 5 white chocolate - Image courtesy Brad Kent
That’s all for the limited variants for Take 5. Next up is a representative from the snack-size category. Picked up a few bags of these last Spring, and I’ve been sampling from them since.
Herhsey - Take 5 - snack size bag package - 2010
Herhsey - Take 5 - snack size wrapper - 2010
To wrap up, I’d like to point out that the Take 5 received its first major wrapper redesign, just last fall. I first noticed the incoming design in August or September of 2011. One of the fun aspects of collecting packaging like candy is to note the evolution of design and graphics over the years. It’s why one of my favorite things to do for posts is to create a timeline that covers several versions of wrappers over the years. This is the first change for Take 5 – I wonder how many more it might see in its lifetime?
Hershey - Take 5 - 2-bar pack - chocolate candy bar wrapper - Fall 2011
That’s all for Tuesday’s talk on Take 5. Join us tomorrow for the weekly edition of Wacky Wednesdays.
I was looking at the expiration dates on the different wrappers and all three of the limited edition ones expired in the same year in different months. Nowadays with Hershey candy bars it is a little easier telling the expiration date as they list a month and a year, but a few years ago it was harder. I work at a grocery store and have been ordering the candy for the front end registers for the last few years. A few years ago we had started carrying Bubbleyum Chocolate Gum. We had two boxes on the shelf and after a year I decided to check if they had expired yet. The one thing about some candy & gum is that it can expire anywhere from a few months to over a year from when you receive it. The Bubbleyum Chocolate Gum had the expiration date as a code date, and since it was a Hershey product I called their 800 number to find out how to read the expiration date. The Take 5 wrappers you show use that same code date. Here is how you would read the expiration date on them. The first wrapper you have pictured has a code date of 93EEV0F 4, so the expiration date of this bar was June, 2010 and here is how you get that date. When you look at the code you ignore the last number that is off by itself and look at the last letter of the code and the number before that letter. In the example above the last number and letter are 0F, the number is the last digit of the year which would be 2010 since the bar didn’t exist in 2000 and the letter after the number is the month with the letter corresponding to month in the following way, A=January, B=February and so forth thru the letter L, so F corresponds to June which gives you the expiration date. The limited edition wrappers you picture all expire in 2007 with the Chocolate one expiring in January 2007 and the Peanut Butter & Marshmallow ones both expiring in March 2007, which means all three bars were probably put on the candy rack sometime in 2006.
The original version of the Take 5 was made with real milk chocolate and the wrapper described it as:
pretzels & caramel & peanuts & peanut butter & milk chocolate
http://www.flickr.com/photos/typetive/532840705/
In about 2008 they changed it to:
made with chocolate & pretzels & caramel & peanuts & peanut butter
http://www.flickr.com/photos/typetive/2805214556/
Love, Love, Love Take 5. Great breakdown, I’d never seen the marshmallow or chocolate cookie version.
The peanut butter is good as is the white chocolate, but the original is my favorite.
I like the new design, but I don’t love it.
I loved the marshmallow one! Great post!
I miss the white chocolate Take 5.
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