For today’s Hot Cinnamon Week post, I wanted to cover a childhood favorite of mine: Stark’s Cinnamon Teddy Bears!
Sold by the Howard Stark candy company in the 70’s and 80’s (and maybe into the 90’s), Teddy Bears were a small hot-cinnamon flavored gummy-type bear.
The odd thing is that when I was enjoying these as a kid, I’d never heard of gummy bears. So the first time I encountered any kind of gummy bear, I saw them as rainbow-colored Cinnamon Teddy Bears.
I have two different Stark Teddy Bear packages in my collection. One dates back to the mid-1970’s, and the other is from a few years later. Here they are:
Stark – Cinnamon Teddy Bears candy box – 1970’s
Stark Candies – Teddy Bears – 1 3/4 oz cinnamon candy package – late 1970’s
Beyond Stark’s Cinnamon Teddy Bears, I also have clear memories of Brach’s Cinnamon Bears, which were like a giant-sized version of Stark’s gummy-sized offerings. Here’s an example that is in a vintage Brach’s salesman display that is part of my collection:
Brach’s Cinnamon Bear from salesman display – 1970’s
Though I don’t recall any other major cinnamon bear candy offerings from my childhood, in my research I’ve found that Heide produced a pretty cool one in the 1970’s:
Heide – Bears – 1 3/4 oz cinnamon candies box – 1978
That one is pretty cool, isn’t it? Based on the box design, I’d speculate that Heide might have produced other flavors of Bears candies, but I can’t be sure.
As time went on, cinnamon bear candies lost favor in the standard candy isle assortments, but continued to be offered in bulk and store-brand packages. I’ve got a pair of these to show as well:
K-Mart – Sathers – Cinnamon Bears – 9 oz candy package – 1980’s
Sathers – Cinnamon Bears – 9 oz candy package – 1988
These days, it’s not easy to find hot cinnamon bears at retail. But they are still out there as I found at least one company that still advertises them as part of their product line.
While they might be considered a bit old-fashioned or old school these days, Hot Cinnamon Bears will always be a childhood favorite I look back on with tremendous fondness.
And that’s all for today’s entry in our Hot Cinnamon Week.
See you next time!
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This post was a part of CollectingCandy.com’s Cinnamon Hot Week!
Sathers’ is still putting out their Cinnamon Bears and they are the only ones that I remember seeing around here. The local Alco (Duckwall) store carries them along with the company’s Cinnamon Discs.
Are these smaller cinnamon bear candies no long made? I prefer the little one vs. the Sather’s larger size, but I can’t seem to locate them anywhere.
As a candy wholesaler in eastern Montana I sold tons of stark teddy bears.