Sky Bar

When the candy company Necco went bankrupt in 2018, it put its sweet, sweet intellectual property up for auction. While the confectioner was well known for its chalky wafers, Louise Mawhinney had a more pressing concern: Would the world never know another Sky Bar? 

A chocolate bar introduced in 1938 when an airplane spelled out its name in the sky, the Sky Bar was an innovative candy bar, and remained unusual through Necco’s demise in 2018. Opening a Sky Bar’s cheery yellow wrapper revealed four chocolate-coated chambers, each containing a different flavor: caramel, peanut, vanilla, and fudge. 

Tipped off by one of the customers at her gourmet-food shop in suburban Sudbury, Mawhinney bid on the rights to the Sky Bar. Most of the Necco oeuvre was snapped up by candy giants such as Spangler, maker of orange Circus Peanuts. But Mawhinney bagged her bar, a win that came with decades of different Sky Bar recipes.

Luckily enough, a location next door to her food shop became available, and is now the site of the Sky Bar’s triumphant return. With the help of a former Necco vice president (and fellow Sky Bar fan), she figured out how to manufacture the chocolates on a 3-D printer-esque machine that is a fraction of the size of the line that once churned out Sky Bars for a global fan base. With the help of her employees’ taste buds, she chose a 1970s Sky Bar recipe to resurrect, which most tasters find superior to the 2018 version. 

The opening of the shop, also called Sky Bar, in 2019 was warmly welcomed, attracting New England press as well as dazed drivers who pulled over for a bite of nostalgia. The shop also offers retro candies, tees, and games. But the Sky Bars are the star attraction, and if you come at the right time, you can watch the candies coming off the line, injected full of four nostalgic flavors.