After two big posts on Friday and Saturday, I intended to wrap-up my Wonka Weekend with visual timelines on Sunday, but had to stop the presses for last-minute new material. So the timelines are being delivered today, just a day later (and a bit beefier) than planned.
It’s truly satisfying to bring all of this wonderful Wonka material together like this. I hope you enjoy the timeline-y fun.
[Note that the “-v” designates a vending machine bar version wrapper.]
That’s everything. A whole lot of vintage candy goodness, distilled into these two fun visual timelines. See you next time!
About Jason Liebig
A New York City based writer, editor and sometimes actor. After spending much of the 1990′s in the comic book business helping tell the stories of Marvel Comics’ X-Men as series editor, he has since split his time between developing his own entertainment properties while still consulting and working on others.
Having been described as “the Indiana Jones of lost and forgotten candy”, Jason is one of the country’s premier candy collectors and historians with his discoveries appearing in countless blogs, magazines, newspaper articles, and books.
Always happy to share his knowledge and unique perspectives on this colorful part of our popular culture, Jason has consulted with New York’s Museum of Food and Drink and has also been a featured guest on Food Network’s Heavyweights, France’s M6 Capital, and New York’s TheActionRoom.com.
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Once again you’ve put together an incredibly valuable resource! Seeing the packaging in chronological order like this is spectacular. Wonka himself would be proud.
A wonderful visual history for both products. It really captures the graphic,color and wrapper style transitions during their respective runs.
Wow, Jason. I love the Wonka brand, but I didn’t really know a lot about it. So, I’ve loved this Wonka Weekend roundup. It’s great to see the early artwork and ads for this brand. Great job.
Pax
The “Oompas” brand was resurrected in the early 2000s, you know. Except they were multicolored fruit chews, a bit like a softer version of Skittles. God, I miss those days of the Wonka brand…you could actually believe that the mad candymaker was real.
Covered in the previous days’ post, but not part of this product timeline.
What about the Scrumdidilyumptious Bar? (not sure of spelling?) It came out the same time as the Scrunch Bar.
Ron,
I LOVE the Scrumdidilyumptious bar and it’s on a long list of great Wonka products I’ve yet to feature. However, for this particular Wonka Weekend I wanted to shine a light on the two very first offerings in the Wonka line.
In my Wonka Weekend Preview post, I show a trade ad that shows Skrunch and Oompas as the two first products out of the gate: http://www.collectingcandy.com/wordpress/?p=5561 .
As wonderful as Scrumdidilyumptious is, it did come a wee bit later, so was not an initial offering. But I do hope to dedicate a post solely to it, at some point soon.
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I found this site because I did an online search for Choco Lite. I loved that candy bar. It’s one of those ones I’ll ask about and no ones heard of it. I thought, “I wonder if this guy ever heard of Oompas”. You have. I remember the 74 package. They were in my top ten as candy, then they disappeared. I don’t remember them after 74. When Reese’s Pieces came out, I thought this is almost the exact same thing as a Oompa. I wonder if Hershey’s bought the rights for design.