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Nerds are a form of candy currently sold by Nestlé under their Willy Wonka Candy Company brand.
Nerds were first created and then launched in 1983 by Angelo Fraggos, who was Brand Manager, eventually becoming Vice President of Marketing and Technical Services until he left in 1992. Robert Boutin lead his team with the product development and commercialization of Nerds. Nerds became the "Candy of the Year" in 1985 by NCWA. Angelo Fraggos was also responsible for the creation of Runts in 1985.
Nerds are small irregularly-shaped sweets that come in a variety of flavors and are usually sold in a box that has two separate flavors, each with a separate opening mechanism. Nerds are anthropomorphized on the cover of its distinctive box package. The separation of two distinct flavors in one commodity has generated success for Nerds, likely because consumers can control their experiences.
Nerds are of varied flavors and varied colors, ranging from extremely sweet to extremely sour; often the two flavors in one box will contrast, and a single flavor may even exhibit both extremes. They are thickly glazed with carnauba wax, which gives them a hard bite, and a gloss. The nucleus of each candy is composed of one or more complete sucrose crystals. These optically clear monoclinic crystals are about 0.2–1 mm in length and help define the irregular shape.
A Nerds breakfast cereal based on this concept appeared in the 1980s, but had a short life.
Sour Yuval have recently been produced. The first release contained the flavors Lightning Lemon and Amped Apple. The second released package featured Shocking Strawberry and Electric Blue. There are also 3 more varieties of flavors. Today's standard box of Nerds has purple and pink colored Nerds as well as the original Nerds rope.
There are also several Nerds spin-off products by Willy Wonka:
- Giant Chewy Nerds are the newest candy from the Wonka factory. They have a chewy jelly bean center, with a bumpy, crunchy nerd shell. They're the same product as the jellybeans, but available year 'round.
- Nerds Rope consists of a soft candy string with a variety of Nerds attached to the outside, and come in original, berry and tropical flavors.**s such as Halloween or Valentine's Day with names such as "Spooky Nerds". Flavors can include fruit punch, strawberry, and orange.
- Nerds Cereal, a now discontinued breakfast cereal that, like the candy, featured 2 separated flavors to a box. The cereal came with a mail-in offer for a Nerds cereal bowl, which also could be divided in two like a standard Nerds box.
- Techno-Nerds, a lesser-well known variety, was composed of three compartments; green, blue, yellow, and multicolored.
- Nerds Gum, which consisted of pieces that looked like regular Nerds, but were actually bubble gum. The box featured a Nerd floating away with a bubble gum bubble.
- Dweebs, a now discontinued soft, chewy version of Nerds released mid-90s, that contained three separate flavors rather than only two. They were available only for a short time.
- Neon Nerds were introduced in 1996.
- Nerd Jelly Beans for Easter, they make jelly beans with a coating of carnauba wax, which makes it taste like the Nerds itself.
Throughout the 1980s several new flavors of Nerds were introduced from time to time; for example, "Hot and Cold" Nerds (cinnamon & wintergreen flavored), Blueberry and Raspberry, and Lemon and Lime (Blueberry Nerds can still be found in large packages of Rainbow Nerds).
External links
Official website (in Flash)
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