Teenage wizard Harry Potter lives in a world filled with magical spells, unusual creatures and a colorful assortment of chocolates and candies, in particular “Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans,” a candy that literally comes in flavors like black pepper, dirt, earwax and vomit.
Though all the spells and creatures have remained safely on the pages of the books by author J.K. Rowling and in the movies, the candies that Potter enjoys have crossed over into the real world thanks to Hasbro. Referred to as an “artifact candy”, making Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans requires some Muggle imagination and creativity.
“The idea was that we were going from the descriptions of the candy directly from the books and giving them candy form,” said Julie Nunn, Marketing Director, CAP (Children at Play) Division of Hasbro. “We’re always looking for new flavors that aren’t necessarily in the book because the official description from the author, J.K. Rowling, is that they are Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans. That opened it up to any flavor that we wanted to do.”
Frankford Candy & Chocolate Company of Philadelphia owns the literary candy rights and develops the beans in partnership with Hasbro. Jelly Belly, a company that has plenty of experience with jellybeans, manufactures and distributes the candies. “We were awarded the literary candy rights. We do not do the product based on the movies; we do the product based on the books,” Nunn said.
Unlike other confections, people tend to embrace the play value of the beans as opposed to their taste. Nunn said it’s like a toy you can eat.
“We include menu guides with the beans and that’s half the fun. I’ve given bags of these beans to kids and the first thing that they do is put that menu guide out on the table and dump out the beans,” she said. They try to match up all the beans that they have in the bag with the menu guide so they know when they are eating a booger, they know when they are eating vomit or black pepper or sardine.
Jelly Belly is the master at actually creating the beans, Nunn said, but when developing a new flavor, she has to be able to hand the food scientists at that company something that they want the beans to taste like. “That’s not to say that I handed them a bucket full of vomit or anything. The point is when we say we want a pickle jellybean, they’ll say to me ‘Sweet or dill’? They have to have something they can go off of in the real world,” she said.
According to Nunn, the vomit beans taste like pepperoni pizza gone bad, but something as simple as a horseradish bean presented some production problems. It was a pretty toxic process in their plant, so we had to move away from that. Mustard was another one we had to move away from; it was such a huge issue to make mustard or horseradish in their plants, they couldn’t go forward with it to do it authentically.”
Striving for authenticity can derail a flavor in other ways, as was the case with the hot dog beans. “J.K. Rowling works very closely with us in terms of all this development. She said “We don’t have hot dogs in the U.K.; we have sausages.’ So, we go back and develop a sausage (bean). Sausages we were able to do because we could go with a breakfast sausage,” Nunn said. “The U.S. market could handle a breakfast sausage.”
Nunn said that other artifact candies from Harry Potter’s world include acid pops, blood pops and ice mice.
“Target has a promotion going on with ‘Exploding Bon-Bons’. We do the ‘Chocolate Frogs’ with the trading cards. Nothing has been quite as close to the beans, but we do a lot of the other artifact products from the book,” she said.
J.K. Rowling also must approve any artifact candy. If she feels that the company’s interpretation of what they are pulling off the page doesn’t meet her criteria, Nunn said they don’t do it. “You have one sentence with the candy item in it that someone just mentions in the book and now you have to decide what it looks like, what it tastes like, how it’s packaged and the author has to agree with you. It’s been interesting,” she said.
One of the things that helps is imagining Honeydukes, the candy store in the village of Hogsmeade where Harry and his classmates load up on candies and other confections. “The product has to feel like it’s come from the candy store. I’m developing (products) for a candy store in which Harry Potter and his friends shop,” Nunn said.
Overall, candy based on the Harry Potter books is an edible experience. “Kids don’t get full on this product; they experience it or give it away or they use it to interact with each other, like they are Ron or Harry and the other characters in the book,” Nunn said. The key to the whole product line is that you get to be like Harry Potter because you are eating actual candy that Harry and his friends would eat. That has really, really struck a chord with the kids and everybody. Adults, too.”
