But why were they renamed from Dancing Bears to Goldbears? The name has always puzzled me, since I would expect it to refer to a yellow candy, when in fact yellow is only one of the multiple different colors of gummi bears mixed in the package. I wonder if it used to be different; the article doesn’t say.
> The gummy bears were invented in 1922 by the Bonn entrepreneur Hans Riegel, who christened his creation »Dancing Bear«. It was not until 1960 that the colorful fellows were renamed »Goldbears«. The dancing bears were significantly softer than their successors: Instead of the gelatine used today, a mixture of animal proteins, they consisted mainly of the plant sap gum arabic, which contains various polysaccharides (multiple sugars). Numerous companies now produce gummy bears and other fruit gums in many variations.
Dancing Bears/Tanzbären is a super sad and kinda offensive name. Just look up photos of some actual dancing bears and read how they used to be treated.
Do you think gelatin being a byproduct of other animal slaughter-based products makes it better than sourcing it by melting down hooves? (I’m not a vegan, just curious of the intent behind this comment)
Hard to say how it looked in Germany specifically, but consumer research models where established at that time and inspired the focus groups we have today.
