MickeyBar
From Unijuwiki
MickeyBar is a brand of candy bar, invented by Bill Mickey in 1946. They have a gooey citrus inside with a choclate coating on the outside.
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LimeMickey
LimeMickey is the lime flavored variant of the normal lemon flavored MickeyBar. It is much less popular than the lemon version, and has been discontinued and revived several times since it debuted in the 1970s.
History
Origins
While serving in WWII, Mickey had the idea for a lemon flavored candy bar with a chocolate coating. When he returned home, he started work despite everyone telling him it would fail. He eventually succeded, and began selling them at a stand on a street corner in his home town of Sacremento, California during July 1946. They quickly became popular, both for their taste and for the novelty of the candy. Three months after they debuted, he set up the Bill Mickey Citrus Candy Bar Company, which became one of the most successfull companies in the city. In 1952, after having built up a fortune of 6.5 Million dollars, Bill Mickey sold his company too The Hershey Company for another 1 Million dollars.
Hershey Era
Originaly, Hershey planned too continue operating the original factory as is, but when executives took a tour of it and found how out of date and cheaply made the factory was, they decided to gradually move production to their factorys and phase out the original factory. Over a period of 24 months, production was slowly moved to Hershey's main plant. However, complaints about the hit too the economy and loss of jobs from the closing of the factory caused Hershey to plan a new factory on a nearby site that would double the capacity and have room for expansion.
However, with the benefits of consolidating production, Hershey instead just settled with using an expansion of their main plant for Mickey Bars. Although this move was originally met with opposition, such as a full boycott in Sacremento of MickeyBars, sales went up with the bars now being sold throughout the country, and eventually things were back too normal.
Little Mickey
Throughout the 60s, Mickey Bars remained popular despite being entirely unchanged. It was in 1963 that the mascot of the brand, Little Mickey was created. With Cartoon TV shows becoming highly popular, Hershey created Little Mickey to star in a cartoon that would be both entertainment and an advertisement for MickeyBars. Little Mickey was a child who wore red shorts a yellow sweater, and tennis shoes, and fought and evil genius named "Dr. Bad" to save the world, using a treehouse as his base and aided by his dog Lemon.
The show was not very popular, with it's extremly cheesy voice acting and repetitive plots, and an area based on it at Hershey Park was demolished when early in construction. However, with the advent of the internet, has become a cult classic and has gotten DVD releases and is rumored to be revived as a movie in the next few years.
LimeMickey Era
Although it was extremly popular in the 60s, sales began going down in the 70s. Research found that consumers wanted some sort of change, but instead of re-invent the basic formula entirely, they took the simpler and safer route of making a new flavor. With the previous success of lemon, it was decided to make a lime flavored variant. With sales dropping rapidly, resources were taken away from producing the lemon version to develop the lime flavor. This resulted in a shortage, and with many thinking that the product was being cancelled, sales went higher than they ever had before.
This had the side effect of drawing attention away from LimeMickey when it launched, resulting in low sales for the lime flavor with consumers snapping up the lemon flavor before it went away. When supplys of the lemon flavor becae again plentifull, sales dropped back to normal levels, with LimeMickey making up only 10-15% of all sales. However, it was decided to keep LimeMickey to add variety, which executives thought would keep sales up.
80s and 90s
It was in the lates 70s and early 80s that MickeyBars hit the lowest sales point they have yet reached. With the panic of the possibility of MickeyBars going away long over, and LimeMickey taking resources away from the much more popular lemon flavor, and the sub-par ads used to promote the product, sales dropped. At first, Hershey thought that a new flavor would turn the sales problems around, introducing the berry flavored Mickey Berri. However, this only caused lower sales, and too focus on the core product, Hershey discontinued LimeMickey and Mickey Berri. This, along with a new ad campaingn, resulted in higher sales, and in the mid 80s, sales reached the second highst point in the candy's history, behind only a point in the late 60s. At this time, LimeMickey was reintroduced.
In 1992, with Sonic the Hedgehog's popularity reaching higher and higher, Hershey signed a 10 year promotional deal with Sega, and Sonic became the mascot of MickeyBar, and Tails the mascot of LimeMickey. In 1994 and 1995, Mickey Berri returned briefly as a promotion for Sonic & Knuckles, with Knuckles on the wrapper.
Present Day
Sega's sponsership lasted until 2002, with Sonic selling well on Nintendo systems, Sega and Hershey extended the deal until 2012. Recently at C3 (Canadian Candy Convention) 2007, several new flavors were demoed, including Rasberry and Pineapple flavors that are expected to be released in October to cash in on Halloween. Sega has been slipping references and ads for MickeyBar into their games, including the character Silver the Hedgehog frequently eating them and stating that they are his favorite snack in several games.
