By Ines Keane
Turn a gummy bear over. The back is flat. That small fact says more about how it is made than any history of the company does, and we will come back to it.
Dates in order
The company’s own timeline, on its US site, gives the sequence. Wikipedia fills in some of the gaps and, at two points, disagrees.
- 13 December 1920: Hans Riegel founds Haribo in a home kitchen. English Wikipedia says the company was entered in the commercial register on that date.
- 1921: Riegel’s wife Gertrud becomes the first employee. Wikipedia adds that he bought a house on Bergstraße in Kessenich, Bonn, which became the first production site.
- 1922: Riegel invents the Dancing Bear, in German the Tanzbär, the forerunner of the Goldbear. The company says it was larger and slimmer.
- 1925: liquorice production begins, and a Black Bear joins the Dancing Bear.
- 1930: the Teddy Bear appears, and the slogan “Haribo macht Kinder froh” (“Haribo makes children happy”) is coined.
- 1960: the company says Goldbears launch, with official trademark recognition in 1967.
- 1978: Goldbears take on their compact, stylised shape.
- 2018: the international headquarters moves to Grafschaft, Germany. English Wikipedia says Bonn remains a production location.
- 2020: the company marks its 100th anniversary on 13 December.
The name
Wikipedia calls “Haribo” a syllabic abbreviation of Hans Riegel Bonn. That is as short a brand story as you can get, and the sources do not argue about it. The sweets themselves are Gummibärchen in German, small gummy bears, and the gummy-bear article says they originated in Germany.
Side by side
| Question | One source | Another source |
|---|---|---|
| When was the first gummy bear? | 1920, says the English Wikipedia article on the founder: he “invented the gummy bear in 1920” | 1922, says the company timeline; English Wikipedia’s article on the company says the Dancing Bear was invented “two years after the founding” |
| When did the Goldbear launch? | 1960, with trademark recognition in 1967, per the company | 1967, per English Wikipedia’s article on the gummy bear |
| What was the original base? | Gum arabic, per English Wikipedia on the company | Gum arabic again, per its article on the gummy bear; today’s bears use gelatine |
We do not resolve these. Our reading: 1920 is the year the firm began, and 1922 the year the bear did; but the founder’s Wikipedia page puts the invention at the earlier date, and we show it as written.
How the bear gets its flat back
English Wikipedia’s article on gummy bears describes the process. An artist first carves each original design in plaster. A machine then copies it to make the moulds, which are impressions pressed into trays of powdered starch by a machine called a starch mogul. The hot liquid mixture is poured into the dents and left to cool overnight. Once set, the candies come out of the starch and are packaged.
Because the dents are open at the top, only the front of the bear is formed. The back stays flat. A standard bear, the article says, is roughly 2 centimetres long.
What is in a gummy
According to the same article, a traditional gummy bear contains gelatine, sugar, glucose syrup, starch, flavouring, colouring and citric acid. Higher-quality gummies, it says, list gelatine first. Gum arabic, it explains, was the original base and is where “gummy” comes from. The Haribo article says today’s Goldbears use a gelatine mixture that gives them a rubbery texture, where the earlier Dancing Bear was bigger and softer. Neither page gives a recipe, and we do not know the proportions.
The man and the town
English Wikipedia’s article on the founder says Johannes “Hans” Riegel was born on 4 April 1893 in Friesdorf, now part of Bonn, and worked as a confectioner. It says he left a job at a confectionery factory to start his own firm, and that he married Gertrud, née Vianden, in 1921 and hired her to work there. The company timeline says his sons took over management in 1946.
Bonn is therefore not decoration in this story. It is in the name, it is where the first house stood, and, per Wikipedia, it is still a production location even though the headquarters moved to Grafschaft in 2018. We found no museum or visitor site for the Kessenich house, so we point to none.
What kind of sources these are
The company’s own timeline, a producer’s site and so promotional by nature, and three English Wikipedia articles (on the company, the founder and the gummy bear). We could not load a second independent source for the dates. For that reason the 1920/1922 and 1960/1967 splits are shown rather than settled.
What we left out
Prices, factory counts, advertising partnerships and anything about the founder’s family after 1946. We also left out sales claims, since the only source for them is the company.
Quick answers
Where did Haribo start? According to English Wikipedia, in Kessenich, Bonn, in 1920. The company’s timeline says it began in a home kitchen.
What does Haribo stand for? English Wikipedia says it is a syllabic abbreviation formed from Hans Riegel Bonn.
Why do gummy bears have flat backs? English Wikipedia’s gummy bear article says the moulds are open dents in starch, so only the front is formed and the back stays flat.
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