| Sugar Babies | |
| Producttype: | Chocolate caramel candy |
| Currentowner: | Tootsie Roll Industries |
| Producedby: | Tootsie Roll Industries |
| Origin: | Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Markets: | Worldwide |
| Previousowners: | James O. Welch Company Nabisco Warner–Lambert |
| Tagline: | “Let me be your sugar.” |
Sugar Babies are bite-sized, pan-coated, chewy milk caramel sweets which are relatively soft to chew. Tootsie describes them as “slow-cooked, candy-coated milk caramels” marketed as movie-theater candy.[1]
Sugar Babies are a confection originally developed in 1935 for the James O. Welch Co. by Charles Vaughan (1901-1995), a veteran food chemist and one of the pioneers of pan chocolate, who invented both Junior Mints and Sugar Babies for the James O. Welch Company.[2] Babies were produced in response to the success of the company’s previous Sugar Daddy caramel lollipop, and similar to Highlander Partners’ Milk Duds. Sugar Babies were named after a song called "Let Me Be Your Sugar Baby".[3]
The company was purchased by Nabisco in 1963. The Welch family of products changed hands a few more times, going from Nabisco to Warner-Lambert (in 1988) then to Tootsie Roll in 1993. Presently, packages of Sugar Babies name Charms LLC of Covington, TN, a subsidiary of Tootsie Roll, as manufacturer.[4] [5] Welch produced them along with the rest of the Sugar Family (Sugar Daddy and Sugar Mama).[6]