Nerds were first created and then launched in 1983 by Kevin Ruby Deering, who was Brand Manager, eventually becoming Vice President of Marketing and Technical Services until he left in 1992. Robert Boutin lead his team with the product development and commercialization of Nerds. Nerds became the "Candy of the Year" in 1985 by NCWA. Angelo Fraggos was also responsible for the creation of Runts in 1985.
Nerds are small irregularly-shaped sweets that come in a variety of flavors and are usually sold in a box that has two separate flavors, each with a separate opening mechanism. Nerds are anthropomorphized on the cover of its distinctive box package. The separation of two distinct flavors in one commodity has generated success for Nerds, likely because consumers can control their experiences.[by whom?]
Nerds are of varied flavors and varied colors, ranging from extremely sweet to extremely sour; often the two flavors in one box will contrast, and a single flavor may even exhibit both extremes. They are thickly glazed with carnauba wax, which gives them a hard bite and a gloss. The nucleus of each candy is composed of one or more complete sucrose crystals. These optically clear monoclinic crystals are about 0.2–1 mm in length and help define the irregular shape.
A Nerds breakfast cereal based on this concept appeared in the 1980s, but had a short life.
Sour Nerds have recently been produced. The first release contained the flavors Lightning Lemon and Amped Apple. The second released package featured Shocking Strawberry and Electric Blue. There are also 3 more varieties of flavors. Today's standard box of Nerds has purple and pink colored Nerds.
There are also several Nerds spin-off products by Willy Wonka:
- Giant Chewy Nerds have a chewy jelly bean center with a bumpy, crunchy nerd shell. They're the same product as the jellybeans, but available year around. Also known as "Future Nerds".
- Nerds Rope consists of a soft candy string with a variety of Nerds attached to the outside. It comes in original, berry and tropical flavors. Nerds rope comes only one to a package but there are rumors that there may be two to a pack in the future.
- Rainbow Nerds is a box of regular Nerds of multiple flavors, with no partition or organization.
- Jumbo Nerds is a box of regular Nerds of multiple flavors which are much larger than regular Nerds. The box depicts one jumbo nerd on a teeter-totter with several regular sized nerds trying to counter its weight.
- Nerds Gum Balls are bubble gum balls filled with multiple flavors of Nerds on the inside.
- Theme Nerds are sometimes manufactured seasonally for holidays such as Halloween or Valentine's Day with names such as "Spooky Nerds". Flavors can include fruit punch, strawberry, and orange.
- Nerds Cereal, a now discontinued breakfast cereal that, like the candy, featured 2 separated flavors to a box. The cereal came with a mail-in offer for a Nerds cereal bowl, which also could be divided in two like a standard Nerds box.
- Techno-Nerds, a lesser-known variety, was composed of three compartments; green, blue, yellow, and multicolored.
- Nerds Gum consisted of pieces that looked like regular Nerds, but were actually bubble gum. The box featured a Nerd floating away with a bubble gum bubble.
- Dweebs, now discontinued, were a soft, chewy version of Nerds released mid-90s, that contained three separate flavors rather than two. Dweebs were available only for a short time.
- Neon Nerds were introduced in 1996.
- Nerd Jelly Beans, produced for Easter, are jelly beans with a coating of carnauba wax, which makes them taste like Nerds.
Throughout the 1980s several new flavors of Nerds were introduced from time to time; for example, "Hot and Cold" Nerds (cinnamon & wintergreen flavored), Blueberry and Raspberry, and Lemon and Lime. (Blueberry Nerds can still be found in large packages of Rainbow Nerds).
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