Who’s Gonna Turn Down a Junior Mint?

It’s chocolate. It’s peppermint. It’s delicious!

Thanks to Seinfeld, Junior Mints will forever go down in pop culture history as the delicious chocolate, peppermint candies loved by Kramer and accidentally dropped into someone’s abdominal cavity during surgery.  But Junior Mints were around long before Seinfeld solidified their place in candy aisles for years to come.  Here’s a brief history of Junior Mints:

The name of the product is a pun on Sally Benson’s Junior Miss, a collection of her stories from The New Yorker, which were adapted into a successful play. According to one past official company history, when James Welch developed and launched the product in 1949, he named the candy after his favorite Broadway show, although the candy came six years after the play had closed on Broadway.

In 1963, the brand was acquired by Nabisco, who sold the brand to Warner-Lambert Company (now part of Pfizer) in 1988, who in turn sold the brand to Tootsie Roll in 1993. Today, Junior Mints are still manufactured in Cambridge at Tootsie Roll Industries.

Over 15 million Junior Mints are produced daily. Tootsie Roll also makes Junior Caramels (caramel filling with a milk chocolate coating) and limited edition “Inside Outs” (mint-chocolate filling with a white chocolate shell). Other limited edition Junior Mints include Valentine’s Day Pastels/Valentine’s Day Regulars (not pastel), Easter Pastels, Senior Mints, Christmas edition (featuring red and green fillings), and Christmas Peppermint Crunch edition (featuring crunchy peppermint flakes in the outer chocolate coating).

In the United States, Junior Mints are now vegetarian, as the previously contained gelatin has been removed from the product. They are now certified kosher dairy by the Orthodox Union.