Centennial Iowa Snacks: The Palmer Candy Company has focused on one product – Bing – for 100 years

Twin Bing is an Iowa icon, handcrafted in Sioux City for more than a century. What it really isn’t is a candy bar, even if the package says “candy bar” and is made by the Palmer Candy Company. Palmer was trying to break into America’s booming candy market when it introduced the first Bings in 1923.

When Milton Hershey started making chocolate bars in 1900, the Palmers were already in the candy business. EC Palmer acquired a wholesale grocery business when he moved his family to Sioux City in 1878. In 1892, Palmer and his sons, Charles and William, added a wholesale fruit company. By 1898, Palmers had also expanded into candy production.

At the beginning of the 20th century, candy was still mainly sold by the box in drugstores or by the bag in candy stores. Hershey’s success showed that there was a market for individually wrapped bars.

America’s entry into World War I in 1917 really established Hershey’s innovation as a new norm, as the War Department included small chocolate bars as part of a soldier’s rations.

In the early 1920s, a wave of new candies hit markets across the country and sales soared. The Palmers decided to join the sugar rush with their own round sweets, which the makers have nicknamed ‘bumps’.

There is no record of who invented Bing or who named it. According to Marty Palmer, the fifth generation of his family to run Palmer Candy, no one even knows what the name means. But while its origins are a mystery, the Bing itself is pretty simple: a chewy, flavorful nougat center is topped with a thick chocolate coating that has chopped roasted hazelnuts mixed into it.

Bings originally came in four flavors: pineapple, maple, vanilla, and cherry. While the others have fallen by the wayside, the cherry tree, with its bright pink, cartoonish cloud center, remains a mainstay of the Bing world. Palmer’s makes other Bings — S’mores and Caramel Crunch — but that’s what people think of when they hear Twin Bing.

Bings became twinned in the 1960s. The price of the candy rose as the cost of ingredients rose, and most manufacturers reduced sizes as prices rose. Palmer wanted to offer more Bing for the money when it raised the price, but a bigger Bing would be a tough match for the slot machines. So two bumps were packed together as twins. After “king-size” bars became a thing, Palmer introduced the King Bing, with three bumps instead of two.

The candy world is changing, sometimes drastically. But in interviews last year for Bing’s 100th anniversary, Marty Palmer said cherry-flavored Bing isn’t changing as long as his family owns the company.

This article was originally published in the 2024 special issue of Little Village Bread & Butter.