The color of money is Kit Kat red.

As number 3 in the U.S, number 1 in the U.K, and sold to rapturous fans in over 60 countries world wide, the Kit Kat easily ranks as one of the Godfathers of the candy world. It's been going strong now for 74 years and shows no signs of slowing down. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Kit Kat sold 13.2 billion candy bars, in 1995 alone. 13.2 billion in just one year. Add in the other 73 years and, to paraphrase McDonalds, you get billions and billions of Kit Kat bars. Not bad for a 74 year old.

In short, Kit Kat bars are a cash cow. Kit Kat is a cow that poops wads and wads of freshly minted cash in every conceivable currency. And when it isn't pooping cash, it's pissing cash, or being milked for cash, or, best of all, having a little baby cash cows that can be killed and sold as succulent cash veal (White chocolate Kit Kat, caramel Kit Kat, Arsenic Kit Kat)

Let me get this over with. Hershey's, I'm sorry. I apologize. I've called you unoriginal and uninteresting. I've accused you of buying your most popular candies from someone more talented than yourself. I have, essentially, labeled you as a monstrous corporate candy giant, and I apologize. How can I argue with the inventor and sole owner of one of the most popular candy bars in the world?

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What the F**k?!

Hershey's doesn't own Kit Kats. It never owned Kit Kats. The Rowntree Candy Company of England invented Kit Kats in 1935 when someone dropped a note in the suggestion box asking that they make a "biscuit" that could be easily carried by workers for lunch. This "biscuit bar," as it is still referred to by our eccentric English cousins, was originally called "Rowntree's Chocolate Crisp." The name stayed the same until someone had the balls to admit to Mr. Rowntree that it sucked, prompting the company to rename the bar the Kit Kat in 1937. Rowntree remained the sole owner of the Kit Kat until 1988 when the company was bought out by Nestle.

You may have noticed that there was no mention of Hershey's in the preceding history of Kit Kat ownership. How, then, is Hershey's selling the damn things? Are they flagrantly breaking international copyright laws? Have they somehow paid off every purveyor of justice on the face of the earth, causing them to "look the other way" just this once? Perhaps they've managed to keep the whole enterprise a secret until now and this will be the unbelievable expose that blows the lid off the entire scheme!

The truth is, as usual, not nearly as exciting, though still interesting. You see, before 1969 the Kit Kat wasn't all that popular in the United States. In fact it was entirely possible that most Americans wouldn't have been able to identify it. Aware of the bars success in England, Hershey's decided that they wanted in on the action. So they offered Rowntree a deal they couldn't refuse, buckets of money are a safe guess, and in return Rowntree gave Hershey's a rather incredible licensing agreement. Essentially they said, "Hershey's has the sole license to sell Kit Kat bars within the fifty states and territories of the United States of America, and will have said license forever unless the Hershey's company is sold."

Later, when Nestle bought the Rowntree Company they were forced to honor the licensing agreement. No doubt they were also forced to listen to Hershey's repeat "Gotcha! Losers!" over and over again while fanning himself with hundred dollar bills.

As bad as that makes me feel for Nestle at least Hershey's didn't remain completely unscathed. In 2002 they tried to sell the company for 12 billion dollars, but the sale fell through for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was that anyone who bought the company would instantly lose one of their most popular products.

In the end though, all of this is secondary to the bar itself. It's also much more interesting than the bar itself, but still secondary. After all, all of this hullabaloo is because of the Kit Kat bar.

Now considering its popularity and the gargantuan amounts of money its made, you'd think Kit Kat must be one hell of a candy bar, possibly wrapped in gold foil and filled with pure cocaine from the mountains of Colombia.

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Behold the stupidest photoshopping ever.

The truth is, again, less fun. A Kit Kat is just what Hershey's calls "Crisp Wafers" covered in what Hershey's calls "Milk Chocolate." To Hershey's credit Kit Kat's taste more like cocoa than some other candy bars, but the coating still contains vegetable oil and the increasingly popular food additive PGPR, which also goes by the significantly more imposing name of Polyglycerol Polyricinoleate. I don't know what that is exactly, but according to science it's safe to eat.

But that just ignores the main issue. The problem isn't whether or not PGPR has been tested first, the problem is that it needed to be tested in the first place. Any candy ingredient that needs to be tested to make sure it doesn't kill people, or cause cancer of the genitals, or give crippling strokes to a "small percentage of the adult population," probably shouldn't be used at all. Supposedly, PGPR doesn't do any of these things, but we didn't know that until we tested the shit out of it. I want my chocolate bars to be mae of chocolate - cocoa butter, cocoa nibs and milk fat - not the cheapest food additive on the market.

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Anyway, the Kit Kat tastes slightly chocolaty, but mostly just sweet. The "Crisp Wafer" is in fact crisp and tastes neither terrible nor incredible. It tastes like a good crisp wafer. That is to say, sort of like sweetened powdered milk with a hint of nuttiness. The bar as a whole has a straightforward taste that is delicious but quickly forgotten until the next time you taste it. However the look of the bar, with it's four detachable "fingers" and the clean, embossed polygonal shapes, just begs to be handled and ingested.

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And that's the great lure of the Kit Kat. It's not as bombastically tasty as some other candy bars, nor does it contain any fancy twists or turns. It is, at heart, incredibly plain. Yet in its very plainness there is an allure that calls you back to it again and again.

Perhaps it seems healthier than other choices because it isn't oozing caramel or nougat. Perhaps its roots as a lunchtime snack permeate the candy even after years of changes and alterations. Whatever the attraction might be, we can all agree that the Kit Kat is one of the seminal candy bars of the modern age, laying the ground work for much of the candy we enjoy today.

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Originally sourced from my blog at diabetic-shock.com

Picture Sources:
[1] My photo, originally on my blog diabetic-shock.com
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[4] My photo, originally on my blog diabetic-hock.com