A candy maker trained in Paris, a sign in a shop window and a move in the Depression.

Just Born is an American confectionery company based in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and owned by the families of its founders. It makes Peeps marshmallow candies, the Mike and Ike and Hot Tamales chewy candies and Goldenberg’s Peanut Chews. Its name comes from a shop window. ConfectioneryNews reported on 25 January 2023, as the company began its centenary year, that founder Sam Born opened a small retail store and factory in Brooklyn, New York, in 1923, produced a fresh line of candy daily and declared the candies “Just Born”. The company’s own history says he displayed the day’s candy in the store window under a sign that read “just born”. English Wikipedia dates the Brooklyn store to 1917 and the start of Born’s manufacturing company in New York City to 1923.

The founder’s story begins in Europe. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported on 31 January 2023 that Sam Born had been a rabbinical student from Berdichev, in present-day Ukraine, before his family fled to Paris, where he learned the art of chocolate-making. An Associated Press report carried by the Los Angeles Times on 11 October 1999 said he immigrated to the United States from Russia in 1910; Just Born describes him as a Russian-raised candy maker who arrived from France. The company credits him with the technology that produces chocolate sprinkles, known as jimmies, and with the hard chocolate coating used for Eskimo Pies.

Two relatives joined early. Just Born says Born’s brothers-in-law, Irv and Jack Shaffer, came into the company shortly after the store opened, and The Morning Call of Allentown described them as co-founders in a column of 1 April 2001.

Then came the move to Pennsylvania. The AP said in 1999 that Born moved the company from New York to an empty factory in Bethlehem in 1932, at the height of the Depression, and Just Born says the building was an empty printing factory. Chief Executive magazine reported on 18 July 2023 that the partners wanted a large facility with rail connections. The Morning Call wrote in 2001 that the site offered railroad access and lay a trolley ride from the Bethlehem Steel plant, and that the people of the steel town, many of them laid off in the Depression, were the main attraction.

Maillard, Rodda and Goldenberg, and a family that turned buyers away.

Growth came largely through acquisition. The Morning Call reported in 2001 that Just Born bought the Maillard Corp., known for hand-decorated chocolate, in 1935, and that the company later stopped all chocolate production when that line became unprofitable. Just Born dates Mike and Ike to 1940 and Hot Tamales to 1950. In 1953, the AP reported, Just Born acquired the Rodda Candy Co. of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, known for its jelly bean technology and also the holder of a patent for a small line of handmade sugared chicks called Peeps; Just Born then mechanised their production. The company says it drew on Rodda’s jelly bean expertise to introduce Teenee Beanee jelly beans in 1977.

The second generation shaped that era. The JTA reported that Bob Born, Sam’s son, joined the company in 1945 after studying engineering physics at Lehigh University and serving in the Navy; Just Born gives his start as 1946. After the 1953 purchase, the agency said, he devised a way to speed up the making of the marshmallow candies, and he turned misshapen Mike and Ike candies into Hot Tamales by remelting them with a hot cinnamon flavour. The JTA reported his death on 31 January 2023, and noted that the city of Bethlehem had declared 15 February “Bob Born Day” in 2019.

The families kept control. The Morning Call reported in 2001 that Ross Born, Bob’s son, had been co-president with his cousin David Shaffer since 1983; Just Born says the two joined in 1978 and became co-presidents in 1992. In 1999 Shaffer, a nephew of the founder, told the AP that larger candy makers often approached Just Born and that the company turned them down. “In our vision statement we are committed to continue as a family-owned confectionary business,” he said. Chief Executive reported in July 2023 that Just Born acquired the Philadelphia brand Goldenberg’s Peanut Chews in 2003, and that the company was led by co-CEOs David N. Shaffer and his son-in-law Gardner Jett, Jr. The same article said a 2016 effort to stop enrolling new employees in a multi-employer pension plan led to a union strike and two years of court proceedings, which ended when a federal appeals court dismissed the suit. ConfectioneryNews reported in January 2023 that president and chief operating officer David Yale, with the company since 2011, would retire at the end of March, and quoted Shaffer as saying leadership was in the hands of the next generation of the Shaffer and Jett family.

Design and documentation.

The brands in this group are American sweets and regional potato chips: boxed chocolates, jelly beans, cinnamon candies, marshmallow shapes and chips sold mainly in the cities where they began. Brands of this kind sit at very different points in the trade, from family companies that still carry a founder’s name to labels that have passed through several owners, and a single name can be sold everywhere from a corner shop to a supermarket aisle.

A candy or chip brand’s identity is usually carried less by one product than by a box, a bag, a seasonal pack and a name, because the company behind it may have changed hands, moved its production or grown well beyond the place where it started. Candy boxes and holiday packs return each year with familiar colours, while a regional chip bag often leans on the city it comes from. That makes the plain questions worth asking: who started it, who owns it now, and where it is made.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its products are made and how its packaging has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A window sign, a slogan, a restored family name and a centenary of small surprises.

The window sign is still the company’s story. Just Born describes itself on its website as a family-owned candy manufacturer headquartered in Bethlehem that has been in business since 1923, and it tells the history of its name through the “just born” sign in the Brooklyn store window. English Wikipedia says the original company symbol showed a baby resting in a candy measuring scale, and that the company has advertised its products with the slogan “a great candy isn’t made … it’s Just Born”.

The company name sits behind brands that each carry their own look, and the balance between them has shifted. English Wikipedia says that after buying the Goldenberg Candy Company, Just Born initially re-branded Peanut Chews as a Just Born product and removed references to the Goldenberg name, then later restored it; the company now sells the candy as Goldenberg’s Peanut Chews. A Just Born statement reported by CSP Daily News on 26 April 2012 said Peanut Chews are produced in Philadelphia, while Peeps, Hot Tamales and Mike and Ike are made in Bethlehem.

Its marketing has leaned on characters, vehicles and anniversaries. The AP reported in 1999 that the company sponsored a fiery red Hot Tamale stock car in NASCAR racing, carrying the logo of its new sour candy, Zours. For the 50th anniversary of Peeps, Just Born says, it ran television advertising in every season, sent two Peeps buses and the Peepsmobile on tour and put a float in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. In spring 2012, the company says, the characters Mike and Ike went their separate ways, Mike to pursue music and Ike to pursue art, before reuniting a year later. Candy Industry reported on 20 May 2010 that the company dressed Mike and Ike and Hot Tamales in vintage packaging for their anniversaries, designed, an assistant brand manager said, to capture the personality of the brands across the decades.

The centenary turned the brand outward. ConfectioneryNews reported in January 2023 that Just Born launched a 100 Random Acts of Sweetness programme, stopping at locations across the Lehigh Valley and Philadelphia through the year to surprise fans with candy, gift cards and other prizes, and that it was working with local organisations on training a future manufacturing workforce. Co-CEO David Shaffer said the company’s goal was to bring sweetness to people’s lives through the family traditions and memories that fans create with its brands.

For a design guide, Just Born shows how a company name taken from a shop-window sign can stand behind a family of candies that each keep their own colours and characters, from a yellow marshmallow chick to a cinnamon fireball. Compare it with Peeps, the marshmallow line that came with the 1953 Rodda purchase, and Hot Tamales, the cinnamon chew the company introduced in 1950. For this guide we use window navy, sugar yellow, marshmallow pink and paper cream with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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