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Legislation has been filed to make Sky Bar, produced in Sudbury, the “official chocolate bar of the Commonwealth.”
Rep. Carmine Gentile, Sudbury’s state representative, has filed a bill to bestow that designation on the 88-year-old confection. The Sky Bar is now made in a factory in Sudbury’s Mill Village, next to the Duck Soup store.
Duck Soup owner Louise Mawhinney purchased the famed Sky Bar brand in 2018 following the closure of the New England Confectionery Company (NECCO). The original 1938 Sky Bar is manufactured in a facility adjacent to Duck Soup, and it is the only NECCO product still made in New England.
“Sky Bar has been a great chocolate candy bar for generations,” said Gentile. “I enjoyed it growing up. It was a favorite of mine. After its previous manufacturer closed down years ago, I was delighted to celebrate its rebirth at Duck Soup in Sudbury by filing legislation to recognize Sky Bar as the Commonwealth’s official chocolate bar.”
The Sky Bar was invented in 1938 by NECCO. In 2018, NECCO was bankrupt and unable to find a buyer for the whole company. Instead, it was forced to sell off its assets piecemeal. Mawhinney bid on and won the rights to the intellectual property of the Sky Bar at auction. She formed SkyBar Confectionary Company LLC with the sole purpose of producing the Sky Bar candy bar.
The Sky Bar is iconic in New England. With four different centers in each bar – caramel, peanut, vanilla and fudge – it was innovative in 1938 and remains distinct from other candy bars.
NECCO launched it with a competition for its name. When “Sky Bar” was chosen, NECCO decided to do a sky writing advertising campaign to build up excitement prior to its release. For several weeks, the public saw a fly-over of Boston and surrounding towns in which the words “Sky Bar” were clearly visible on certain days of the week.
Visitors to Duck Soup can look through large windows to see the candy bars being made. Three thousand bars are made daily at 11 a.m. and wrapped at 3 p.m. The company began selling Sky Bars wholesale in January 2020.
Mawhinney had to buy a new, custom-made, machine to make the bars. “We have three people who can run that machine, and every Sky Bar is made by one of those people. We make Sky Bars every day; it’s probably the freshest candy bar on the market. NECCO made them once every six months.”
