Chocolate Easter bunnies are a candy instance of European custom re-imagined by American ingenuity and capitalist creativity.
Credit score first-generation German-American Robert Lincoln Strohecker, recognized in confectioner’s lore because the “Father of the Chocolate Easter Bunny.”
The supply of Strohecker’s legend was an enormous 5-foot-tall (or even perhaps taller) strong chocolate rabbit he displayed outdoors Pennsylvania retailers in 1890 to popularize smaller variations of his new Easter sweets born of German custom.
JESUS CHRIST’S RESURRECTION MEANS WE ARE ALL ON THE ‘ROAD TO EMMAUS,’ SAYS TEXAS PASTOR
Strohecker, whose center title was Lincoln, was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in January 1864. President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Deal with, the positioning of the battle simply 35 miles away, two months earlier than Strohecker was born.
“Sweet of the kind that you simply may acknowledge immediately actually took off … after the Civil Struggle, after the value of sugar [had] fallen,” Samira Kawash, “the sweet professor” and Rutgers College scholar informed Smithsonian Journal in a 2010 interview.

Robert L. Strohecker was a salesman for W.H. Luden Confectioner in 1890 when he had a large 5-foot-tall strong chocolate Easter bunny made to advertise the corporate’s new line of smaller Easter bunnies. One chocolate trade knowledgeable estimates the large bunny weighed 400 to 500 kilos and would value $10,000 to make immediately. (Courtesy Harbor Sweets)
The confection enterprise exploded, and the German-American neighborhood of Pennsylvania proved to be on the middle of it.
Strohecker’s chocolate Easter bunny gross sales gimmick was an immediate sensation. Individuals buy about 90 million Easter bunnies every year, based on WalletHub.
SHOOFLY PIE WAS BORN IN THE USA: ENTHUSIASTS BAKE PI DAY CLAIM OF ‘MORE AMERICAN THAN’ APPLE PRODUCTS
The chocolate Easter bunny enterprise he impressed, nonetheless, is being crippled by inflation right here in 2024.
Cocoa futures have doubled simply for the reason that begin of 2024, based on trade knowledge, after hovering 60% in 2023.

An Easter basket with chocolate bunnies from Hilliard’s Sweets, an artisan confectioner from Easton, Massachusetts. (Courtesy HIlliard’s Sweets)
Rising prices, together with on vitality and transportation, are being met by decrease provides.
The Worldwide Cocoa Group reported final month that cocoa manufacturing is down 11% this yr, citing poor climate situations in West Africa, which produces two-thirds of the world’s crop.
MEET THE AMERICAN WHO MADE EASTER SWEETER, LEGENDARY CHOCOLATE BUNNY SALESMAN ROBERT LINCOLN STROHECKER
Right here in the USA, the Nationwide Retail Federation expects spending on chocolate Easter eggs and bunnies to drop from $3.3 billion in 2023 to $3.1 billion in 2024 — a possible 6% lower.
Huge Easter Bunny is already feeling the pinch.

Harbor Sweets in Salem, Mass. presents the Robert L. Strohecker version of its chocolate Easter bunnies, modeled upon the large 5-foot-tall strong chocolate Easter bunny created by Robert L. Strohecker in 1890. Harbor Sweets was based in 1973 by Ben Strohecker, grandson of the chocolate Easter bunny patriarch. (Courtesy Harbor Sweets Handmade Sweets)
Chocolate big Hershey witnessed a 6.6% decline in gross sales quantity within the fourth quarter of 2023 and introduced job cuts in February.
The general public’s insatiable urge for food for chocolate Easter bunnies makes it a “form of bullet proof” enterprise, nonetheless, based on one native American confectioner.
The prospect of long-term rising prices and dwindling provides is “scary.”
“No matter is occurring on this planet, individuals do not hand over purchasing for chocolate,” stated Maegan Dec, president of Hilliard’s Sweets, a 100-year-old, family-owned enterprise in Easton, Massachusetts.
She stated enterprise this yr stays unaffected, citing loyal prospects in search of artisan goodies. However the prospect of long-term rising prices and dwindling provides is “scary.”

A duplicate photograph of a Luden’s wagon taken on Jan. 29, 2007. Unique photograph from Frederick Edenharter of Shillington, Pennsylvania, grandson of the founding father of Luden’s Inc. William H. Luden. Robert Strohecker, who offered Luden merchandise all through the area and popularized the chocolate Easter bunny in America, traveled in the same wagon. The person within the photograph just isn’t recognized. (Krissy Krummenacker/MediaNews Group/Studying Eagle by way of Getty Photographs)
It is potential Strohecker’s legacy is just too massive to fail.
Strohecker was a salesman for W.H. Luden Confectioner of Studying when he hauled his big chocolate Easter bunny — one estimate places its weight at 500 kilos — round Pennsylvania by horse-drawn wagon in 1890.
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR OUR LIFESTYLE NEWSLETTER
Luden’s is thought immediately as one of many world’s preeminent cough-drop corporations.
Milton Hershey established his first confectioner, Lancaster Caramel Co., simply 4 years later and solely 30 miles away.

Trays of chocolate rabbits sit within the manufacturing facility space at Jacques Torres Chocolate in New York, on Tuesday, April 7, 2009. (Daniel Acker/Bloomberg by way of Getty Photographs)
Richard M. Palmer grew up in Studying, the identical metropolis the place Strohecker established Pennsylvania Easter bunny tradition.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
He returned from service in World Struggle II and, in 1948, established R.H. Palmer Sweet in his hometown.
Palmer Sweet immediately claims to make 1 billion bunnies every year.
For extra Life-style articles, go to www.foxnews.com/life-style.