Baby Ruth

Baby Ruth wrapped

Baby Ruth opened

Baby Ruth is a candy bar that is made of chocolate-covered peanuts and nougat, though the nougat found in it is more like fudge than is found in many other American candy bars. The bar was a staple of Chicago-based Curtiss Candy Company for some seven decades. After a series of mergers and acquisitions, the candy bar is currently produced by Nestlé.

Contents

1 Origin(s) of the name
2 Pop Culture
3 Ingredients
4 See also
5 Another Baby Ruth product from Nestlé
6 External links
7 Further reading

Origin(s) of the name

Although the name of the candy bar sounds nearly identical to the name of the famous baseball player, Babe Ruth, the Curtiss Candy Company has traditionally claimed that it was named after President Grover Cleveland's daughter, Ruth Cleveland. Nonetheless, the bar first appeared in 1920, as Babe Ruth's fame was on the rise and long after Cleveland had left the White House and 16 years after his daughter had died. Moreover, the company had failed to negotiate an endorsement deal with Ruth, and many saw the company's story about the origin of the name of the bar as merely a way to avoid having to pay the baseball player any royalties. Ironically, Curtiss successfully shut down a rival bar that was approved by, and named for, Ruth, on the grounds that the names were too similar in the case of George H. Ruth Candy Co. v. Curtiss Candy Co, 49 F.2d 1033 (1931).

A couple of twists to the story are referenced in the trivia book series Imponderables, by David Feldman:

In the edition called What Are Hyenas Laughing At, Anyway? (1995), p.84, he reports the standard story about the bar being named for Grover Cleveland's daughter, with interesting additional information that ties it to the President: "The trademark was patterned exactly after the engraved lettering of the name used on a medallion struck for the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, and picturing the President, his wife, and daughter Baby Ruth."

The next edition, How Do Astronauts Scratch an Itch? (1996), p. 288-289, brings out a new and potentially more plausible (and prosaic) explanation. The author was tipped off by a letter writer, referring to another trivia collection, More Misinformation, by Tom Burnam: "Burnam concluded that the candy bar was named... after the granddaughter of Mr. and Mrs. George Williamson, candy makers who developed the original formula and sold it to Curtiss." (Williamson had also sold the "Oh Henry!" formula to Curtiss around that time.) The writeup goes on to note that marketing the product as being named for a company executive's granddaughter would likely have been less successful, hence their "official" story.

As if to tweak their own official denial of the name's origin, after Babe Ruth's Called Shot at Wrigley Field in the 1932 World Series, the Chicago-based Curtiss company installed an illuminated advertising sign for Baby Ruth on the roof of one of the flats across Sheffield Avenue, near where Ruth's home run ball had landed in center field. The sign stood for some four decades before finally being removed.

Pop Culture

In Goonies, Sloth was the #1 fan of "Baby Ruth," as evidenced by the fact that he ripped through approximately seven inches of chain and knocked a young child off his chair, just to grab a Baby Ruth.

In the 1980 comedy Caddyshack, somebody accidentally drops a Baby Ruth candy bar in a country club swimming pool, causing swimmers to evade it in panic thinking it was a fragment of feces. The theme music from the film Jaws plays in the background, heightening the "terror". In a later scene, the pool was shown drained and the club groundskeeper Carl, played by Bill Murray, finds the candybar and takes a bite, to the horror of on-lookers.

In one of his old routines, Bill Cosby recalled his kindergarten teacher announcing that it was "time for a snack". The kids began yelling, "I want a Hershey bar!" and "I want a Baby Ruth!" What they got, much to their disappointment, was a graham cracker.

In Stephen Sondheim's Follies, when Ben and Sally meet at a reunion, Ben recalls how Sally used to eat Baby Ruths for breakfast in the song "Don't Look at Me."

In the movie adaption of Hellboy, Professor Trevor Bruttenholm lures baby Hellboy out of hiding using a "Baby Ruth."

Ingredients

Original flavor U.S. edition; listed by weight in decreasing order: sugar, roasted peanuts, corn syrup, partially hydrogenated palm kernel and coconut oil, nonfat milk, cocoa, high fructose corn syrup, and less than 1% of glycerin, whey (from milk), dextrose, salt, monoglycerides, soy lecithin, soybean oil, natural and artificial flavors, carrageenan, TBHQ and citric acid (to preserve freshness), caramel color

Another Baby Ruth product from Nestlé

Nestlé also produces a Baby Ruth ice cream bar with a milk chocolate coating, chocolate-covered peanuts, and a vanilla-and-nougat flavored ice cream center.

External links

[Baby Ruth website]
[Snopes.com article] about the Baby Ruth naming controversy