Skybar Chocolate Bars, With Four Flavors in One, Are Still Flying High

Patricia Winters of San Marcos, Calif., writes: "I am wondering what happened to Skybar chocolate candy bars. They were chocolate-coated, sectioned into four pieces - each section with a different filling.... I used to purchase them during the 1950s at Woolworth's in Pennsylvania."

Skybar, the "candy box in a bar" is four different chocolate-covered candies in one: peanut, fudge, vanilla, and caramel. Made by the Cambridge, Mass.-based New England Confectionary Company, Skybars were invented in 1938. (NECCO also makes the NECCO wafer - the oldest candy bar, which turns 150 next year).

Skybars were introduced into the public conscience via a skywriting ad campaign. Their popularity immediately skyrocketed.

The candy even had its own billboard in Times Square. During World War II the billboard was darkened. But in August 1945, after peace was declared, a New York Times article proclaimed that peace had really returned because the famous NECCO Skybar billboard once again lit up the square.

The four-in-one candy bar's heyday continued throughout the 1940s, but increasing competition bit chunks out of the its popularity. Still, Walter Marshall, vice president of Corporation Planning and Logistics at NECCO, says, "There are still an awful lot of Skybars sold." However, distribution is limited primarily to the Northeast, where the candy bar still enjoys a pretty good following, and the Middle Atlantic States.