Did You Know?

The Baby Ruth candy bar was named for the daughter of President Grover Cleveland, who was born while he was living in the White House. It was not named for Babe Ruth. (When Babe Ruth wanted to bring out a candy bar of his own, he was prevented by a court order).

There is some suspicion that the company was not entirely truthful about the real origin of the name.

As a promotional stunt in 1923, Otto Schnering, founder of Curtiss Candy Co., had Baby Ruth candy bars dropped from airplanes in cities around the country, with tiny parachutes attached to each candy bar.

When Standard Brands Company, owner of Curtiss Candy Company, was acquired by Nabisco in 1981, they realized they had somehow lost the original recipes for the Baby Ruth and Butterfinger candy bars. No one at the old Curtiss factory remembered how to make the candy bars, and Nabisco had to develop new recipes that customers would accept.

Another take on the candy bar.....

Baby Ruth is a candy bar that is made of chocolate-covered peanuts and nougat, though the nougat found in it is more like fudge than is found in many other American candy bars. The bar was a staple of Chicago-based Curtiss Candy Company for some seven decades. After a series of mergers and acquisitions, the candy bar is currently produced by Nestlé.

Origin(s) of the name Although the name of the candy bar sounds nearly identical to the name of the famous baseball player, Babe Ruth, the Curtiss Candy Company has traditionally claimed that it was named after President Grover Cleveland's daughter, Ruth Cleveland. Nonetheless, the bar first appeared in 1920, as Babe Ruth's fame was on the rise and long after Cleveland had left the White House and 16 years after his daughter had died. Moreover, the company had failed to negotiate an endorsement deal with Ruth, and many saw the company's story about the origin of the name of the bar as merely a way to avoid having to pay the baseball player any royalties. Ironically, Curtiss successfully shut down a rival bar that was approved by, and named for, Ruth, on the grounds that the names were too similar in the case of George H. Ruth Candy Co. v. Curtiss Candy Co, 49 F.2d 1033 (1931).

A couple of twists to the story are referenced in the trivia book series Imponderables, by David Feldman:

In the edition called What Are Hyenas Laughing At, Anyway? (1995), p.84, he reports the standard story about the bar being named for Grover Cleveland's daughter, with interesting additional information that ties it to the President: ";The trademark was patterned exactly after the engraved lettering of the name used on a medallion struck for the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, and picturing the President, his wife, and daughter Baby Ruth"

The next edition, How Do Astronauts Scratch an Itch? (1996), p. 288-289, brings out a new and potentially more plausible (and prosaic) explanation. The author was tipped off by a letter writer, referring to another trivia collection, More Misinformation, by Tom Burnam: "Burnam concluded that the candy bar was named... after the granddaughter of Mr. and Mrs. George Williamson, candy makers who developed the original formula and sold it to Curtiss." (Williamson had also sold the "Oh Henry!" formula to Curtiss around that time.) The writeup goes on to note that marketing the product as being named for a company executive's granddaughter would likely have been less successful, hence their "official"story.

As if to tweak their own official denial of the name's origin, after Babe Ruth's Called Shot at Wrigley Field in the 1932 World Series, the Chicago-based Curtiss company installed an illuminated advertising sign for Baby Ruth on the roof of one of the flats across Sheffield Avenue, near where Ruth's home run ball had landed in center field. The sign stood for some four decades before finally being removed.

Being a marketing genius, company founder Otto Schnering chartered a plane in 1923 to drop thousands of Baby Ruth bars over the city of Pittsburgh -- each with its own mini parachute.

Pop Culture In The Goonies, Sloth was the #1 fan of "Baby Ruth" as evidenced by the fact that he ripped through approximately seven inches of chain and knocked a young child off his chair, just to grab a Baby Ruth.

In the 1980 comedy Caddyshack, somebody drops a Baby Ruth candy bar in a country club swimming pool, causing swimmers to evade it in panic thinking it was a fragment of feces. The theme music from the film Jaws plays in the background, heightening the terror. In a later scene, the pool was shown drained and the club groundskeeper Carl, played by Bill Murray, finds the candybar and takes a bite, to the horror of on-lookers.

In one of his old routines, Bill Cosby recalled his kindergarten teacher announcing that it was "time for a snack" The kids began yelling, "I want a Hershey bar!" and "I want a Baby Ruth!" What they got, much to their disappointment, was a graham cracker.

In Stephen Sondheim's Follies, when Ben and Sally meet at a reunion, Ben recalls how Sally used to eat Baby Ruths for breakfast in the song "Don't Look at Me"

In the movie adaptation of Hellboy, Professor Trevor Bruttenholm lures baby Hellboy out of hiding using a "Baby Ruth"

In one book of the children's book series Animorphs it is explained that Marco cannot go to a fellow student's birthday party because at a previous party he threw a Baby Ruth into the pool, much like in Caddyshack.

In the season 8 Friends episode 'The One Where Chandler Takes A Bath', Ross and Rachel decide to call their baby 'Ruth', and celebrate the fact that they are to 'have a little baby Ruth', causing them to change their mind.

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