We’re halfway through our Halloween Candy theme week! Today’s candy: Baby Ruths!
If there’s one candy bar with a name that’s as legendary as its flavor, it’s the Baby Ruth. But despite what most people think, this chewy, nutty classic wasn’t officially named after the Sultan of Swat himself—at least, that’s what the makers always claimed.
The Curtiss Candy Company introduced the Baby Ruth in 1920, reformulating one of its earlier creations, the “Kandy Kake,” into a chocolate-covered bar packed with peanuts, caramel, and nougat. Along with the new recipe came a new name—Baby Ruth.
Here’s where the story gets sticky. The name sounds an awful lot like Babe Ruth, who just so happened to be skyrocketing to fame in the early 1920s. But the Curtiss Candy Company insisted it was actually named after Ruth Cleveland, the late daughter of President Grover Cleveland. The problem? Ruth Cleveland had passed away in 1904, and her father had left office in 1897—decades before the candy bar’s debut. The company’s Chicago factory was also located on the same street as Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs, where Babe Ruth’s fame was front and center.
Coincidence? Most people didn’t think so. But Curtiss stuck to its story—possibly because acknowledging a Babe Ruth connection might have meant paying royalties to the baseball superstar.
The Babe wasn’t amused. In 1926, he licensed his name to a competing candy called the “Babe Ruth Home Run Bar.” Curtiss promptly sued, claiming their candy had nothing to do with the ballplayer. The courts agreed, and the “Baby Ruth” name officially belonged to Curtiss. Ironically, that same year, sales hit $1 million a month, making it one of the most successful candy bars in America.
A big part of that success came from Otto Schnering, Curtiss’s marketing mastermind. He sold Baby Ruth for just five cents, half the price of most competitors, and promoted it as both an energy bar and a “complete luncheon for 5¢.” His most memorable stunt? Schnering chartered airplanes to drop thousands of Baby Ruth bars—each attached to a tiny parachute—over cities across the U.S. The “Baby Ruth Flying Circus” became a national sensation.
In a twist of fate, one of the boys who rode along during one of these candy-dropping flights was 12-year-old Paul Tibbets. Years later, Tibbets would pilot the Enola Gay—the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945.
Curtiss couldn’t resist having a little fun with its not-so-secret inspiration. After Babe Ruth’s legendary “called shot” at Wrigley Field during the 1932 World Series, the company installed a massive illuminated Baby Ruth sign beyond the center field wall—right where his home run had supposedly landed. That sign stood for nearly forty years.
The Curtiss Candy Company changed hands several times after being sold in 1963, but the Baby Ruth has stayed a pop culture icon. In 1985, Nabisco paid $100,000 to feature the candy in The Goonies, and a few years earlier, it played an unforgettable role in the classic comedy Caddyshack.
More than a century after its debut, Baby Ruth remains a Halloween staple—and one of the sweetest intersections of candy, marketing genius, and baseball lore you’ll ever find.