From a pasta factory’s spare machine to a salted-peanut bar.

PayDay began with a pasta business. English Wikipedia’s entry on the Hollywood Candy Company says the firm was formed in Hollywood, Carver County, Minnesota, in 1912 by Frank Martoccio, whose F.A. Martoccio Macaroni Company had in 1911 acquired the defunct Pratt and Langhoft Candy factory. Citing a 1986 article in American Heritage, Wikipedia says Martoccio had only wanted to buy a machine to replace one that had burnt out at his macaroni factory, but was talked into taking the whole plant and entering the confectionery business. In 1927 he bought the Pendergast Candy Company of Minneapolis, and in 1933, Wikipedia says, the company’s name changed to Hollywood Brands.

The bar itself arrived in 1932. Wikipedia’s article on the confection says PayDay was introduced that year by the Hollywood Candy Company, and that it got its name because it was first produced on payday at the company. The Hershey Company tells the same story on its consumer site, Hersheyland, prefacing it with “as the story goes”: it says it was payday at the plant when the inventors were trying to name the new bar, and it credits Frank “Marty” Martoccio, a macaroni and candy manufacturer from Minnesota, with first making it in 1932. The Chicago Tribune, reporting on the brand in October 1988, likewise described Pay Day as a salted-nut bar that dated back to 1932.

The construction has stayed simple. Wikipedia describes the original bar as salted peanuts rolled over a nougat-like sweet caramel centre, with no chocolate, and says it was marketed during the Great Depression as a meal replacement because of its dense peanut outer layer. Hershey’s own description is much the same: salted peanuts covering a nougat-like caramel centre. Hollywood sold PayDay alongside other bars; Wikipedia names the Zero bar, first released in 1920 as the Double Zero, and the Tribune listed Zero, Milk Shake and Butternut as Hollywood’s other products in 1988.

Centralia, Consolidated Foods, Leaf, Hershey.

The business soon left Minnesota. Wikipedia says the Hollywood Candy Company moved to Centralia, Illinois, in 1938, and the Chicago Tribune in 1988 still described Hollywood as based in Downstate Centralia. In 1967, according to Wikipedia, the Martoccio family sold Hollywood Brands to Consolidated Foods, the company later renamed Sara Lee; the Tribune put Sara Lee’s acquisition in late 1967. Wikipedia says fire destroyed the Centralia plant in 1980, and that production of the bar continued with help from the L.S. Heath and Sons Company until a new facility could be built.

The next owner was a confectioner built largely by acquisitions. On 20 October 1988 the Chicago Tribune reported that Leaf Inc., based in north suburban Bannockburn, Illinois, and owned by the Finnish group Huhtamaki Oy, was acquiring Hollywood Brands and Pay Day; Sara Lee was quoted saying Hollywood “did not fit the long-term strategic direction” of the parent. The same report listed Whoppers, Milk Duds and Good & Plenty among Leaf’s brands, and named James A. Hanlon as the new president and chief executive of Leaf North America.

Hershey followed eight years later. Wikipedia, citing a Wall Street Journal report dated 21 October 1996 headlined “Hershey Will Buy Candy Unit From Huhtamaki Oy’s Leaf”, says Hollywood Brands became part of the Hershey Company in 1996, and its PayDay article cites Hershey’s 1996 summary annual report for the acquisition of Leaf North America. Hershey has made and sold PayDay since 1996. Private Equity Professional reported on 30 April 2018 that Highlander Partners of Dallas, through Iconic IP Interests, LLC, had bought the trademarks of ten former Leaf brands from Huhtamäki, PayDay and Milk Duds among them, with the brands remaining licensed to Hershey. On Hersheyland, Hershey says that since 1996 it has been producing the classic peanut-covered bars in its Robinson, Illinois, plant — the town the Tribune named in 1988 as the home of L.S. Heath & Sons.

Under Hershey the line has widened. Wikipedia lists a glazed-honey limited edition in 2003 and a protein bar called PayDay Pro in 2005, and says Hershey made limited chocolate versions in 2006 and 2007. In August 2020, the New York Daily News reported, a Chocolatey PayDay, the same bar with a compound chocolate coating, joined the range permanently; Wikipedia notes a chocolate-covered PayDay had also existed in the 1980s under Sara Lee.

Design and documentation.

The candies in this group are American sweets whose identity lives on the outside of the pack. A candy brand’s look is carried by small, cheap and much-handled things: a twist wrapper in a single strong colour, a paper roll of identical pieces, a narrow cardboard box sized for a cinema counter, or a bar wrapper read in a second at a checkout.

Wrapper colour often signals a flavour before any words are read, and a roll pack or theatre box can become as recognisable as the name printed on it. Some wrappers carry more than a name, with jokes, riddles or slogans printed where a label would usually sit, so the packaging becomes part of the product.

Many American candy names have also outlived the companies that created them, passing between owners over the decades while keeping their names and packs. Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — who started the candy, who owns it now, where it is made and how its packaging has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A name that doubles as a promise.

The brand’s marketing has leaned on its name. In a column dated 2 November 1988, the Chicago Tribune’s George Lazarus reported that Hollywood Brands, by then a Leaf unit, would wrap a shiny nickel inside the packaging of Payday bars sold in the first weeks of 1989, with the coins coming from the Philadelphia mint. John T. “Jack” Sletten, Hollywood’s vice-president of marketing, told the paper: “When was the last time you got a nickel in a candy bar?” The same column said the promotion fitted Payday’s advertising, which had included the line “Can you make it to your next Payday”. Wikipedia’s infobox lists two later taglines, “Totally Nuts about Payday” and “Get To It”.

The spelling of the name has also moved. Wikipedia says the bar is officially styled PAYDAY, in capitals, and was previously sometimes written PayDay, citing photographs of packaging from 2009 and 2021; the Chicago Tribune wrote it as “Pay Day” in 1988. Hershey’s own pages today use the all-capital form throughout, from the classic Peanut Caramel Bar to the chocolatey version.

What the brand sells is a contrast of salt and sweet, and Hershey describes it in exactly those terms, calling the bar “salty, nutty, sweet”. Hershey has also folded PayDay into broader Hersheyland content, from recipes to “snackle box” ideas, alongside Hershey’s chocolate brands. For a design guide, PayDay shows how a bar named after a single day at one factory can carry that story from a Minnesota macaroni works through Centralia, Bannockburn and Hershey without changing its name. Compare it with Reese’s, another Hershey peanut confection, and Twizzlers, a non-chocolate candy Hershey also sells. For this guide we use wrapper red and deep brick on roasted peanut with a heavy sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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