Finally, your Laffy Taffy wrapper won’t stick to your candy

There’s an oddly specific frustration to opening a Laffy Taffy Mini Bar. Its thin wrapper shreds a little too easily and tends to stick to the candy like tape. Finally, the maker behind the candy says it’s found a fix.

Ferrara Candy Co., the Illinois-based confectioner behind Laffy Taffy and other popular sweets, including Nerds, Jelly Belly, and Red Hots, admits that for years customers have wanted better wrappers for the fruit-flavored taffy, and in response, the company tested more than 10 film options.

The team behind the redesign won’t share technical information on how the new material was formulated, calling it “proprietary,” but they claim to have developed a “material orientation” that reduces the amount of shredding.

“The new wrappers are made from new materials that create a smooth, one-pull opening,” Tricia Asbridge, Laffy Taffy brand manager, tells Fast Company in an email.

The challenge in wrapping any taffy, including when you make it at home, is how sticky the candy is from its high sugar and moisture content. The trick usually suggested online is refrigeration. For Laffy Taffy, however, the trick is in the unwrapping technique: Thus the new wrappers include updated language on the back seal that says exactly where to pull to open them.

“The process involved evaluating the existing wrapper, assessing alternative films, running trials, and testing the performance of new wrapper options compared to the existing wrappers,” Asbridge says. “At one point the brand tested over 10 different film options between the different variables under consideration in order to find the best solution.”

Laffy Taffy wrappers are known for their dad jokes, and the new, improved wrappers will feature new crowd-sourced humor. The company ran a joke hotline, the “Laff Line,” where callers could submit jokes that could end up on a Laffy Taffy Mini Bar wrapper. Ferrara says the top 100 jokes, as judged on “humor, originality, creativity, and relevance to brand values,” like “multigenerational humor” and “being tastefully inclusive,” will be used, and winners will receive a custom bag of first-look candies.

The packaging update comes at a time of expansion for Ferrara. In July, its European holding company announced it had entered into exclusive discussions to acquire the French candy company CPK Group, which has a portfolio of more than 30 brands. Meanwhile, it reports that sales of its Nerds Gummy Clusters have overtaken Mars Wrigley’s Skittles to become the top sugar confection on the market. By improving the wrapper for its taffy brand, Ferrara could see its market share of the candy aisle grow even more.