The Famous Clark Bars of the 70’s (that you might not remember.)

The Clark bar and Clark’s Zagnut have been around for decades.  During the late 1970’s, the D.L. Clark company rolled out a few bars in wonderfully-designed wrappers, along with an ad campaign to support them.

Since first seeing images of these wrappers, I’d been hunting for them, and it turns out they were not easy to find.  Because of that, I assume they did not last as long as the Clark company had hoped.  In spite of this, they remain a cool piece of Clark’s confectionery past, and today I’ll share the wrappers that came out of this creative burst.

One that isn’t featured in the above comic book ad, but is a actually a favorite of mine from the period, is the Clark Light bar wrapper.  I’m a big fan of this one:

Clark - Light - candy bar wrapper - mid-1970's

It’s easy to appreciate this era of brand extensions from Clark.

Clark - Crunchy - peanut butter - candy bar wrapper - mid-1970's

Clark - Peanut Butter Log - candy bar wrapper - mid-1970's

Clark - Mint - candy bar wrapper - mid-1970's

This last version was a bit of a Clark company classic, the Clark Coconut.  While the other wrappers in this group had a variety of designs that deviated from the standard Clark look, for the Clark Coconut they kept it pretty close to the original:

Clark - Coconut - candy bar wrapper - mid-1970's

One of my favorite vintage Clark wrappers is actually an earlier version of the Clark Coconut, and it’s a beauty.  A foil wrapper, I did my best to capture the look of this one, but a scan only conveys so much with a foil wrapper:

Clark Coconut - foil candy bar wrapper - 1950's or 1960's

That’s the range of the exotic selection of Clark’s Famous Clark bars of the late 1970’s.  I’ve got one more I wanted to include, as it comes from this same period.  This is Clark’s effort to celebrate America’s Bicentennial, the 1776 bar (a renamed and repackaged Clark Peanut Butter Log):

Clark - 1776 - Bicentennial Bar - peanut butter log - candy bar wrapper - 1976

And that’s all the wrappers I have for you today.  You’ll note that I didn’t include a Zagnut wrapper, as those wrappers were featured in a Zagnut-centric piece previously.  The Clark bar wrapper is a standard, and will be featured in an upcoming in-depth piece on its long history.

[Edit:  CollectingCandy.com reader, artist-extraordinaire, and old pal of mine, Glen Mullaly, has identified the month that the Clark ad ran in Marvel’s comics – December 1977.  Thanks, Glen!  So the question I ask below has been answered.]

Before I sign off today, I’m going to ask for a bit of help.  I’m trying to more precisely date the comic book ad featured at the top of today’s piece.  If any comic book collectors out there can help me, check out the following images, which show a little more of this vintage Clark advertisement. The first is the back of the title piece for today, and is a cut-out.  The back shows us a classic Sea Monkey ad.

Clark - Get Rich and Famous - comic book ad - reverse - Sea Monkeys - late 70's

And here’s a full-page front-and-back.  This one looks to be from a Tarzan comic book, which narrows it down.  So if anyone has a run of 1970’s Tarzan comics (Marvel published, I believe) and wouldn’t mind checking them out and letting me know what month and year this came out – I would appreciate it:

Clark Ad comic alternate front-and-back - Marvel's Tarzan

Thanks for checking out today’s article, and if you can help date the Clark ad, leave your confirmation in the comments.