A great American.

[Note: I know I said I would have a product review today, but we have not sampled the product yet. Hold tight for future developments!]

A while back I was talking about commercial jingles with some friends, and the woeful lack of good jingles in the modern era. I asked, What classic jingle do you think really works both as a means of selling and as a pleasure on its own? It's difficult to say now; there are few commercial jingles anymore. I think you'd have to look back to the 1980s or further to find commercial music that was enjoyable and successful as a product mover. 

But I did think of one that fulfilled both goals powerfully. 

For about twenty years, from the seventies into the eighties, Hershey billed itself as "the Great American Chocolate Bar." And they meant it. Hershey Community Archives shares the thoughts of the amazingly named Billings Fuess Jr., the ad man who came up with the campaign: 

I had the idea for “The Great American Chocolate Bar” because I knew there was a lot of wonderful history behind Hershey. I also liked Hershey bars and they were a heck of a lot better than their competition from Switzerland. And I wanted to give them a dig and say the great AMERICAN chocolate bar.

I think that the fact that Fuess really believed in the product is what made it so inspired. Milton Hershey certainly deserved to have his chocolate bar known as the great American one, after selling his caramel business and going into milk chocolate -- even though the Swiss refused to show him how to make it, so he had to invent it all over again himself (as I have blogged before). 

One of the jingles that went with the ad campaign is a song for the ages -- catchy, upbeat, patriotic, even bombastic, but delivering the message that America is a sweet place, and this is its chocolate. 

You can go anywhere, anywhere on Earth, and they will know Hershey, and you can find it, and you are never alone, because Hershey is there, and all of America is with you in spirit with your Hershey bar. God bless the USA!

Okay, maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it really does sell without selling. Sure, it tells you the product is delicious, but if the main goal of the advertiser is to make you happy about the product, this one can do it. 

I'm glad to see that there is a film out this year about Milton, because I do think he was an interesting man and one of the more benevolent American millionaires. He didn't win over the country by using his wealth to crush small competitors, like John D. Rockefeller and Bill Gates. He made a product people liked, available at a good price. In 2025 the Hershey Company made $11.69 billion in consolidated net sales, so clearly people still like it. 

My advice, if you can: In addition to whatever other Independence Day celebrations you may have, get some Hershey bars, make some s'mores, and lift them high to toast America, and Americans like Milton Hershey who helped make it awesome. Awesomeness does not just happen; like milk chocolate, it has to be made.