The NECCO candy company is known for some unique and increasingly obscure products. They've lent their name to the NECCO Candy Wafers, the Clark Bar and their classic Candy Buttons. One of the hardest NECCO candies to find is the Sky Bar.
The Sky Bar is one of the oldest name-brand candy bars in America. The brainchild of a NECCO employee named Joseph Cangemi, It was first release in 1938 and it got its name from a unique advertising campaign. The NECCO company commissioned a series of sky writing exhibitions to inform the public, mostly in New York, of the upcoming release. After the mandatory blackouts of the Second World War were lifted, only a few companies were ready with their lighted advertisements in Times Square. NECCO was one of them and the ad was for their Sky Bar.
Since then, the Sky Bar has had increasingly limited distribution. The Internet has helped fans of the candy purchase whole boxes via NECCO's website. For everyone else, finding a Sky Bar in a real-life candy display is like seeing a spotted leopard in the wild.
I grew up in Columbus, Ohio. To my knowledge, there were only one or two places where the Sky Bar was available, and only at a certain time of year. My sister danced ballet and so my family got free tickets to the Columbus Metropolitan Ballet and Symphony. There was a little Italian restaurant a few blocks from the Ohio Theatre my family used to go to before shows. At the front register there would always be a box or two of Sky Bars during the holiday season.
Just last year I was with my folks for an outing to see The Nutcracker. Out of convenience or nostalgia we stopped into that same old Italian restaurant. I was so excited to see one lonely little box of Sky Bars, I bought several just in case they disappeared entirely.
What makes the Sky Bar so interesting is that it's halfway between a standard candy bar and a box of assorted chocolates. In four distinct sections, the bar has four different flavored fillings. There is a traditional caramel section that tastes similar to Cadbury's Caramello bar, as well as a loose chocolate fudge section. The oddball of the design is what NECCO calls the "peanut" section. It isn't peanut butter, but a sort of peanut-flavored caramel goo. The first few times I tasted a Sky Bar I couldn't identify the flavor of that section. By far my favorite section is the vanilla flavor. Like the vanilla cremes you'll find a standard box of chocolates, the Sky Bar's vanilla filling isn't very firm. It's a lot like the filling of another Cadbury product: the famous Cadbury Easter Egg.
The Sky Bar belongs to a sadly growing pantheon of old and hard-to-find candies. It tastes like what it is- an odd item from the past that hasn't been fussily tweaked to meet the standards of the largest possible demographic. It has neither the elegance of gourmet dark chocolates nor the reliability of something like a Snickers. In a sense, the Sky Bar tastes campy. It's what my grandparents' generation wanted in a candy bar. NECCO never went to any lengths to modernize their products. I'd be interested to taste a 21st century version of the Sky Bar, but I'm also glad we have the classic recipe to enjoy. If the Sky Bar was as ubiquitous as today's big-name candies, I don't think I'd appreciate it as much. For now, we appreciators of the Sky Bar will have to settle for the glee of finding one "in the wild" or else occasionally give in to our inner fanboy/fangirl and buy them in bulk online.