The history of Danish Candy Brand BonBon
It all began in a candy factory in the Danish town of Holme-Olstrup a minor village close to Næstved on Zealand. Here the founder, danish candy entrepreneur Michael Spangsberg, started to make the hard candy “Hold Kæft” bolcher meaning “Shut Up”. It was a large piece of hard candy, which would fill up ones mouth so much that it would be very hard to speak – thereof came the name. Later when Michael Spangsberg was producing and testing out a new type of hard candy with a brown color, his son spontaneously yelled out “Ew they are disgusting! They look like dog farts”. This was an eureka moment for Michael Spangsberg, it was from that moment the idea came to life for BonBon to start making Danish candy with funny, silly and vulgar names – such as “Hundeprutter” – dog farts, “Store babser” – big titties, “Tisse-bleer” – pee diapers, “Mågeklatter” – Seagull poop, “Kloakslam” – Sewage slime and so on.
The success of BonBon grew rapidly
The creativity and edginess of the BonBon candy names as well as the great taste made BonBon candy a huge success from day one and sales sky rocketed. The candy was so well received that people started to send in their own funny ideas for new candy names. Competitions were therefore made where the funniest names could win the right to be the name of new candy bags from BonBon. The popularity grew so much that they decided to make an amusement park named after the famous candy. Holme-Olstrup quickly became famous as the city with the crazy and funny rides. The amusement park became an enormous success people travelled from every corner of Scandinavia and Europe to visit and experience the famous BonBon candy amusement park. Due to the rapid increase in popularity the park has now grown to be the size of 130.000 m2 and is still one of Scandinavia’s most popular amusement parks.
Learning about Candy
Due to the success, especially with the younger crowd and school kids Michael Spangsberg candy factory got flooded with requests from schools and institutions that would like to have informative and educational tours about the candy production process of making the famous BonBon candy. Unfortunately that was not possible due to the high quality of hygiene of the factory. Therefore Michael Spangsberg decided to add a candy workshop to the amusement park, where everyone, of all ages, could learn about the candy making process. It was even possible to try out and make ones own candy, such as hard candy, lollypops and so on.
To much Success
Due to the huge success of BonBon the enormous Danish candy company Toms A/S ultimately bought them in 2001. However, because of the creative and edgy candy names Toms felt it necessary to remove some of the more vulgar names of the candy bags to accommodate a younger crowd in a more kids friendly way. This however led to a significant decrease in sales of the candy bags. A decrease BonBon never really has recuperated from. It went so far that in 2008 Toms A/S announced they would halt the production of BonBon candy forever. Only due to an uproar and large pressure put on from the public the cancellation was stopped, but with a huge reduction in the variations of the BonBon candy bags diversity. Before they had as many as 70 different variants – today only a few have survived such as “Mågeklatter”, “Andemad”, “Lossepladsen”, “Rådne Fisk” og “Kloakslam”. They are still a huge favorite for many, young and old. You can find a great selection of BonBon at NORDIC EXPAT SHOP. With quick worldwide delivery fear not, you will still be able to enjoy Scandinavian candy and Danish candy wherever you may be in the world. Order today and we will take care of the rest.
