“It’s one of the biggest hits in the candy aisle this Halloween—and easily the unlikeliest,” says The Wall Street Journal about Nerds Gummy Clusters. The New York Times also gave the candy major coverage ahead of Halloween.
Only six years ago, “all of Nerds had less than $50 million in sales. This year, Nerds Gummy Clusters alone has already generated more than $500 million,” the WSJ wrote.
The WSJ shared that almost every piece of data Ferrara collected suggested that Nerds Gummy Clusters would be a dud. But executives, according to the paper, went with their guts—and the product became a smash.
Ferrara tested five different graphics for packaging and found that showing the sweet, gummy center was crucial to branding, changing the product’s working name of Nerds Clusters to Nerds Gummy Clusters. “Highlighting the word ‘gummy’ also allowed Ferrara to capitalize on one of the hottest trends in candy,” wrote the WSJ.
The NYT reports that for six months, a team of candy scientists and developers at the company’s headquarters in Chicago met almost every day on their quest to create a gummy core that could hold just enough mini Nerds to pack the right crunch.
The WSJ wrote that the candy also “had to be small enough to eat in one bite, roughly the size of a Peanut M&M. They also had to shrink traditional Nerds, which measure between 0.2 and 1 millimeter, for optimal coverage of the gummy center—and the perfect crunch.”
In 2024, Nerds Gummy Clusters “went from a gamble that was being marketed in part by word of mouth, to being showcased on a national stage in Ferrara’s first Super Bowl ad. In a 30-second spot, a gummy blob danced to Irene Cara’s ‘Flashdance … What a Feeling’ before it was covered in Nerds raining from the sky. The camera zoomed out to a live-action scene and the gummy cluster became a snack for Addison Rae, one of the world’s biggest TikTokers,” according to the NYT.