Prior to Kisses chocolates, Hershey had a molded product called Sweethearts. It was conical and had an indented heart shape on its base. Hershey’s Kisses Chocolates were first manufactured in 1907 by the Hershey Chocolate Company in Derry, Pennsylvania.
The bite-sized pieces of chocolate have a distinctive conical shape, sometimes described as flat-bottomed teardrops. In early production from 1907 to 1921, Kisses chocolates were hand-wrapped with foil and inside the foil wrapper was included a square of tissue paper that identified it as a Hershey’s product.
The Hershey Company created a machine that could automatically create the teardrop shape with a nozzle. Each Kiss could be plopped, one after the other onto a conveyer belt.
Hershe registering a trademark for the name “HERSHEY’S KISSES” in 1921. To counteract the sizable number of competitors, The Hershey Company (then known as Hershey Chocolate Company) developed wrapping machinery that could insert a visual product marker, a strip of paper called a plume, also called a tag or flag, in August 1921.
In 1924, Milton S. Hershey received a registered design trademark (Reg. 0186828) for "foil wrapped conical configuration with plume" which included the paper plume sticking out from the top of the aluminum foil wrapper.
Kisses Chocolates were in production from 1907 to 1942 and then not produced until 1947 due to rationing of aluminum during World War II. During that nearly six-year period, Hershey retooled its Kisses production equipment in order to produce chocolate D-Rations for the US Military.
In 1962 they began wrapping Kisses in red and green foils for the Christmas holidays. The pink and red Valentine varieties filling supermarkets this month were added in 1986.
The history of Hershey’s Kisses
