Candy bars have been in existence for a long time—easily more than 150 years! Although certain candy bars come and go, some popular varieties have surprisingly been around since the early days. Here are the 24 oldest candy bars still available.

There are a lot of chocolate bars on this list, but PayDay isn’t one of them—at least not the original version. (A chocolate-covered PayDay was introduced in 2020.) The OG PayDay is a caramel stick covered in peanuts that first appeared in 1932 courtesy of the Hollywood Candy Company, but—in a pattern, you’ll get used to—it is now made by The Hershey Company. Chocolate Coin Machine

Ever wonder where the 3 Musketeers gets its name? It’s an obvious reference to the 1844 novel “The Three Musketeers” by Alexandre Dumas, but the name was selected because the first 3 Musketeers bars, introduced in 1932, included three flavors of nougat: chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry. The other flavors were phased out in favor of chocolate, the most popular, but different varieties—like mint, cherry, orange, and mocha—have been introduced more recently.

You might think that Franklin Clarence Mars’ first candy bar would be the eponymous Mars Bar, but that’s incorrect—in fact, that particular candy is predated by numerous Mars varieties! The Mars bar—a caramel-and-nougat-filled treat primarily sold in the United Kingdom—is still pretty old, as it was introduced in 1932.

Snickers is yet another entry from Mars, but it’s not the oldest! (It is, however, the most popular.) This peanut-packed chocolate bar, which also contains caramel and nougat, was introduced in 1930 and named after the Mars Family’s horse. Until 1990, it had an entirely different name in the U.K., where it was known as a Marathon bar.

Americans have been snacking on the Zagnut bar—a combination of peanut butter and coconut—since 1930. Although it is now made by Hershey, the creation originally came from the D. L. Clark Company, a confectioner known best for an even older candy bar later in this list.

In 1928, brothers Bayard and Everett Heath began selling a chocolate-covered confection called “Heath English Toffee,” which is now known as a Heath Bar. The company was sold in 1989 and then again in 1996, when it was purchased by its current owner, Hershey.

The name “Charleston Chew” always sounded old to us because we associated it with the dance from the 1920s and not the coastal city in South Carolina. As it turns out, the chocolate-covered nougat candy bar was, in fact, named after the dance when it was first rolled out by the Fox-Cross Candy Company in 1925…a time when the Charleston was all the rage.

Mr. Goodbar is just a Hershey bar with peanuts, which is why this simple combination candy bar has been around for nearly a century. It debuted in 1925 and was said to be made by the "Chocolate Sales Corporation," a fictitious company used for the Mr. Goodbar brand because Milton Hershey initially did not want Hershey to be associated with a bar containing peanuts.

Here it is, the oldest offering from Mars, Inc.—well, the oldest surviving offering. The Milky Way was created by Frank Mars in 1923 and named after a popular milkshake flavor at the time. Due to the caramel-filled chocolate bar’s popularity, Mars started producing two different versions: one with vanilla nougat and one with chocolate nougat. The latter is now one of the most popular candy bars in the world, but a version of the former survives, too, under the name “Milky Way Midnight Dark.”

Bart Simpson helped Butterfinger gain popularity in the 1990s, but the crispy peanut butter candy bar predates “The Simpsons” by several decades. In fact, Shirley Temple once hawked them in the 1934 film “Baby, Take a Bow” in one of the earliest instances of product placement. And even that was more than a decade after Butterfinger’s 1923 invention by Otto Schnering of the Curtiss Candy Company in Chicago.

Abba-Zaba bars debuted in 1922, which gave them plenty of time to divide the candy bar community. Not everyone is a fan of a white piece of tāffy filled with peanut butter, but some people are obsessed with it, which explains why this candy bar often appears in pop culture and is still around after 100 years.

Credit another winner to Otto Schering, the Curtiss Candy Company founder, and Butterfinger inventor, who was also the brainchild behind Baby Ruth. Initially, a refreshed version of their Kandy Kake bar, the peanut, caramel, and nougat-filled chocolate bar, was re-named after President Grover Cleveland's daughter, Ruth Cleveland—or so the company claimed for many years. In November 1921—when the company claimed to first use the name in their trademark application—Ruth Cleveland had already been deceased for 17 years, having died of diphtheria at age 12. Meanwhile, New York Yankees slugger Babe Ruth had spent 1921 mashing an otherworldly 59 home runs and was one of the most popular people in the entire country. Draw your own conclusions…

Almond Joys have nuts, Mounds don’t—and it’s that simple difference that would make one think the two coconut candy bars were created around the same time, if not simultaneously. Instead, Mounds were created in 1920 by Connecticut candyman Vincent Nitido, and the Almond Joy didn’t come around until 1946!

The Oh Henry! is o-l-d. How old, you ask? The exact origins of this candy bar are as murky as its peanut butter, caramel, and fudge center, but historians agree that the Oh Henry! was introduced by the Williamson Candy Company of Chicago in 1920. Whether George Williamson invented the bar or bought it from another candy creator is still up for debate, and today it is manufactured by Ferrara Candy Company and The Hershey Company—although neither currently distributes it in the U.S.

For years, we gave zero thought to the idea that a Zero Bar is an old candy bar. Imagine our surprise when we found out this white chocolate fudge bar packed with caramel, peanuts, and almond nougat was actually invented all the way back in 1920. Hollywood Brands was the first to make it, but production rights now belong to Hershey.

To us, the Clark Bar always had an old-sounding name…probably because you rarely meet anyone named Clark anymore. The bar, now known for its peanut butter and tāffy core, was first introduced in 1917 by the D. L. Clark Company, although at the time, it actually came with a core of caramel and ground peanuts. The Clark Bar was once popular nationwide, but now you’ll have to do some searching to find one, as they’re generally only available in the greater Pittsburgh area.

People often think The Hershey Company was the first to mass produce a chocolate bar, but it was actually J. S. Fry & Sons, a British confectioner. A version of that bar is still in existence, and so is a later offering from J. S. Fry & Sons: the Fry's Turkish Delight, which was first made in 1914. As the name suggests, the bar includes a Turkish delight—a sugary gummy candy (rose-flavored, in this case)—encased in milk chocolate.

Although it’s not bar-shaped, the Goo Goo Cluster is still considered a candy bar—and one of the oldest candy bars still around, too! Not only can you find this chocolate, marshmallow nougat, and caramel-filled treat in candy racks across the country, but you can also still get them straight from the source: Goo Goo Chocolate Co. in Nashville.

Can we acknowledge that Milton Hershey wouldn’t allow his company to openly manufacture a chocolate bar with peanuts, but he was totally fine with almonds? And Milton didn’t waste any time introducing the almond variety. The Hershey Chocolate Company was founded in 1894, and Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Bar with Almonds debuted in 1908.

The Toblerone was created in Switzerland in 1908 by Emil Baumann & Theodor Tobler. This chocolate bar filled with nougat, almond, and honey can still be bought today, it still comes in the form of numerous connected triangular prisms, and it’s still emblazoned with the same original packaging. 

Cadbury has been in the chocolate biz since 1824, beginning with the sale and production of drinking chocolate. John Cadbury eventually introduced a dark chocolate bar in 1849, a milk chocolate bar in 1897, and the Dairy Bar—which featured an even higher amount of milk—in 1905. That last variety is still available today and is the most popular chocolate bar in the U.K.

Some Hershey Bars proudly include “Since 1894” on their wrappers, but that’s just the year The Hershey Company was founded. Milton S. Hershey actually got his start producing candies and caramels before deciding to focus on chocolate in 1894 and making his first bar in 1900.

Swiss chocolatier Rodolphe Lindt founded his first company in 1879 and soon started making chocolate bars with the use of a conching machine, which he invented earlier that same year. The device made chocolate bars taste better, gave them a less gritty texture, and allowed them to be mass-produced much more easily. Rodolphe’s company was acquired by Johann Rudolf Sprüngli-Ammann in 1899 to form what is now known as Chocoladefabriken Lindt & Sprüngli AG, a.k.a Lindt, which still produces chocolate bars to this day.

The first mass-produced chocolate bar was J. S. Fry & Sons’ “Fry's Cream Stick,” which was introduced around 1850. You can no longer buy that exact bar, but you can buy the version created in 1866, Fry’s Chocolate Cream. It features a fondant filling and is currently produced by Cadbury, as the company merged with J. S. Fry & Sons in 1919.

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