A Dutch sweets maker’s American plant.

Airheads is an American sweet with a Dutch and Italian family tree. It was created in Erlanger, Kentucky, a town in the Cincinnati area just south of the Ohio River, at the American plant of the Dutch confectioner Van Melle. English Wikipedia says Van Melle’s US business has been based in Erlanger since 1979 and started making sweets there in 1982, citing The Encyclopedia of Northern Kentucky; the local news site LINK nky reported in 2024 that the plant opened in 1978. Van Melle itself was much older: it was founded in 1840 in the Netherlands and was based in Breskens, in Zeeland, according to English Wikipedia.

Sources agree on who made the bar but differ on the year. LINK nky reported in July 2024 that Steve Bruner created the taffy bar at the Erlanger plant in 1985, and English Wikipedia gives the date as 7 August 1985. The company dates the launch a year later. In April 2026, marking the brand’s 40th birthday, Perfetti Van Melle said Airheads “was first introduced in 1986 by the U.S. division of Van Melle” at its Erlanger factory.

The name came from the people it was aimed at, the company says. After sampling the bar in early focus groups, children chose the name “Airheads,” which the company calls a playful label that stuck. In the same release, Paul Steffen, a facility manager who has worked at the plant since 1983, recalled tasting the first bars: “I took a bite and said, ‘this is a winner.’ At the time, it didn’t even have a name.” Brand director Chris Borges said Airheads “has always celebrated individuality and not taking yourself too seriously.”

Strips, flavours and a white mystery.

The product is simple: a flat strip of chewy taffy, individually wrapped in a long coloured wrapper, with the colour of the wrapper and the sweet matching the flavour. English Wikipedia describes the process as making long strips of taffy that are thinned, formed and packed along a conveyor line. Flavours include cherry, blue raspberry and watermelon, and the range now also takes in sour, striped and mini versions.

The best-known flavour is the one without a name. White Mystery bars come in a silver and white wrapper with question marks where the fruit picture usually goes, and the taffy inside is white. English Wikipedia says the flavour was not part of the original range. A former employee, Matthew Fenton, wrote on his own blog in 2019 that the idea came from a child’s fan letter and that he helped develop it. The flavour is deliberately left unexplained, which keeps people guessing — and talking about it.

Spin-offs followed. Airheads Xtremes, sour fruit belts and rolls, extended the name into sour candy, and Airheads Bites, small pieces of taffy in a candy shell, were released in 2013, according to English Wikipedia, citing Candy Blog. In 2015, Licensing.biz reported a planned launch in the United Kingdom, with the singer Tallia Storm as its face, and in 2013 the brand’s website said Airheads Pops lollipops were made and sold in Mexico and Spain. Airheads Sour Bars arrived in 2024, and in April 2026 the company announced Airheads Xtremes Mega Bites, with two flavours in every bite.

The brand has a mascot too. Oscar, a red balloon character, now stands outside the Erlanger plant: on 1 July 2024 Perfetti Van Melle unveiled a giant three-dimensional Oscar sign there, which it said would mark the site as “the birthplace of Airheads,” Spectrum News 1 and LINK nky reported. Holly Ingram, the company’s communications director, told Spectrum News 1 that the business was “somehow still a best kept secret” in the region despite more than 40 years there.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group all make sugar candy, and all of them are sold as American brands: Sour Patch Kids, Swedish Fish, Twizzlers, Red Vines, Airheads, Nerds and Warheads. American candy brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from names still tied to a single family firm to names that now belong to much larger food groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a gas-station counter to a cinema concession stand.

A candy brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single sweet than by a pack, a name, a colour and sometimes a character, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its factory or grown far beyond the town where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its candy is actually made and packed.

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

Perfetti Van Melle and the Erlanger plant.

Airheads changed owners when its parent did. Perfetti Van Melle was formed in 2001 when the Italian confectioner Perfetti SpA, founded in 1946, took full control of Van Melle, in which it had held a 37 per cent stake since 1991, English Wikipedia says. The group is owned by the Perfetti and Van Melle families and has head offices in Lainate, near Milan, and Breda, in the Netherlands. Its brands include Mentos, Fruittella and Chupa Chups, the Spanish lollipop maker it agreed to buy in 2006, Forbes reported. Perfetti Van Melle said in April 2026 that it had net sales of more than €4 billion in 2025 and operates in more than 150 countries.

The bars are still made where they began. The company says Airheads is still manufactured in the Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky area, and in April 2026 it said its US operations are based in Erlanger, with factories in Erlanger and Rockford, Illinois. LINK nky reported in 2024 that the Erlanger plant produces about 6.5 million Airheads bars a day, along with Airheads Xtremes, Mentos, Chupa Chups, Trident, Dentyne and Bubblicious. In December 2015 an explosion and fire at the Erlanger factory halted production temporarily, with no one hurt, the Cincinnati broadcaster WLWT reported.

The company has kept investing there. In December 2021 Perfetti Van Melle USA announced a $9.8 million expansion to add a production line and an automated packaging area in Erlanger, creating at least 16 jobs, The Lane Report reported, and said it had invested more than $35 million in the site since 2017. For the brand’s 40th anniversary in June 2026, the company donated $40,000 to five nonprofits in the Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky region, the NKyTribune reported.

For a design guide, Airheads shows how a wrapper colour, a mystery flavour and a balloon mascot can carry a simple bar for four decades. Compare Mentos, the Breskens mint from the same Van Melle line, and Fruittella, Van Melle’s fruit chew. For this guide we use a balloon red, a raspberry blue and a watermelon green with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Airheads’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.