Curtiss Candy Company
confectionery company
The Curtiss Candy Company was an American confectionery brand and a former company based in Chicago, Illinois. It was founded in 1916 by Otto Schnering near Chicago, Illinois. Wanting a more "American-sounding" name (due to anti-German sentiment during World War I), Schnering named his company using his mother's maiden name.
Their first confectionery item was Kandy Kake, later refashioned in 1920 as the log-shaped Baby Ruth. Their second confectionery item was the chocolate-covered peanut butter crunch Butterfinger, which was introduced in 1926. In 1931, Curtiss marketed the brand by sponsoring famous air racer, John H. Livingston, in the Baby Ruth Aerobatic Team flying the air-racer Howard "Mike" at airshows, and sponsoring Livingston's Monocoupe racer in the 1934 MacRobertson Air Race. The Jolly Jack candy was included in army rations during World War II.
In 1964, Standard Brands purchased Curtiss Candy Company. Standard Brands merged with Nabisco in 1981. In 1990, RJR Nabisco sold the Curtiss brands to Nestlé.
The Baby Ruth / Butterfinger factory, built in the 1960s, is located at 3401 Mt.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Curtiss Candy Company” as confectionery company. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as confectionery company. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5195950. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1916, 1920, 1926 and 1931.
Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Curtiss Candy Company” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.