The Nerds Candy Product That Essentially Saved The Company

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Not so long ago, Nerds candy seemed like it might be on the way out. While there was no competitor in the bizarre category of candies that answered the question, "What would life be like if I could eat aquarium gravel?" the unique little brightly colored pebbles were simply not selling very well. But boy, how things have changed. In 2020, Nerds Gummy Clusters hit the market, and suddenly, Nerds were back on top, with sales increasing more than ten-fold in just a few years.

Nerds candy first hit the market in 1983 with two flavors of the crunchy sour pebbles packaged in a single cardboard carton, from which one could shake them into their hand to eat. The small size and irregular shapes of the candy created a perfect marketing strategy, with the Willy Wonka Candy Company slapping faces on adorable cartoon characters meant to resemble the candy (these same adorable characters appeared in CGI form in the Nerds 2024 Superbowl Commercial). This strategy worked for a time, and Nerds even won the Candy of the Year Award from the National Candy Wholesalers Association in 1985, but eventually, the candy fell out of style.

There were a few attempts to reignite Nerds candy through the years after control of the brand passed on to Nestlé. The Nerds Rope, a chewy, fruity candy rope coated with Nerds was introduced in 2001, and in 2018 Big Chewy Nerds were introduced. But neither of those innovative Nerds candies had quite what the brand needed. That next step would require some serious innovation.

In 2018, Ferrara acquired the Nerds brand from Nestlé and set out to solve this Nerds conundrum. The candy was good, once holding top honors, but it wasn't connecting with the current market. In order to get Nerds back to the big time, the company set about tweaking what it already had, transmuting the Nerds Rope into a new, easier to eat format. By 2020, it had accomplished exactly that, and Nerds Gummy Clusters were released to the world. The rest, as they say, is history.

In place of an extended rope, Nerds Gummy Clusters have just a gummy-bear-sized lump of fruity, chewy gummy candy in the center. The classic multicolored crunchy candies make up the rest, coating the gummy candy on all sides. All together, Nerds gummy clusters are sweet, fruity, chewy, crunchy, and sour. It is no wonder that, with such a broad collection of tastes and textures, they came in at number one in our ranking of popular gummy candies — or that they won the Sweets & Snacks 2021 best in show award and the 2022 product of the year award in the sugar confections category

A few years down the road, and the obsession with Nerds Gummy Clusters has not diminished. Right here at Tasting Table, we have not one but two articles about making the candy at home. There's a simple two-ingredient Nerds clusters recipe using gummy bears and a three-ingredient recipe that coats grapes with Nerds. Or, you know, you can always save yourself some trouble and just order a family-size bag of Nerds Gummy Clusters from the Nerds Store on Amazon.