A Square Of Hershey's Chocolate Actually Has A Strange Yet Official Name
When it comes to chocolate, Hershey's has revolutionized the game. Even though chocolate wasn't Milton Hershey's original candy of choice, his company helped people of all economic classes, not only the rich, enjoy the confection.
And since its founding in 1894, the company has made some well-intentioned but strange choices, too, like the kind-of-cringe "She" candy. Another way Hershey's has tried to conjure some company lore is to invent a name for the individual rectangles stamped into each bar of chocolate: a pip.
Who among us hasn't been sitting around a campfire, listing off the time-honored ingredients for perfect s'mores: Two Graham crackers, a toasted marshmallow, and a couple pips of chocolate! It's unclear when Hershey's began officially referring to its individual chocolate pieces as pips, but the company was using the term on social media as early as 2011.
Hershey's also does not appear to have ever clarified where the term comes from, but one intrepid Facebook commenter suggested it's an abbreviation for "perforated individual pieces." We'll buy that explanation!
Pips are actually one of the few successful Hershey's shapes
Each pip is a rectangular piece of chocolate with the company's name in capital letters: Or, as of recently, perhaps a selection of emojis. While the pip and the classic Hershey's Kiss shape certainly have staying power, other oddly shaped candies Hershey's has created have totally flopped.
In 2003, the company sold thin chocolate wafers in the characteristic swooped shape of Pringles. These were gone by 2006. And Kissables, a mash-up of M&Ms and classic Hershey's Kisses, were short-lived, too, because the company changed its recipes to cut costs. Another idea involved relaunching versions of its most popular candies as teeny balls called Hershey's Bites — which didn't last long.
And to be sure, when Hershey's announced the term "pip," social media commenters were quick to declare they found it silly. "I've never called it a pip ... sounds more like a disease," one person wrote on Facebook. Another kept his thoughts simple: "It's a chunk!" But unlike other shapes, the pip has withstood the test of time — so maybe it's time we embrace the name, too.