Though you can find them all year, without a doubt Easter is jellybean time; in fact, April 22 is National Jelly Bean Day! As a kid, the jelly beans in my Easter basket were always a favorite. I especially loved the black licorice kind! As an adult, I prefer the Cadbury eggs, but jellybeans are still a fun treat to find in your basket- especially if they’re Jelly Bellys!

I lived in Northern California for 5 years, and one of the things my family did a few times was visit the JellyBelly factory. We toured the factory, seeing the whole process that goes into each little jellybean. I loved seeing the giant silver tubs, stirring up the jellybeans and coating them in delicious, beautiful candy coating! It was also so fun to see the jelly bean works of art up for display. Complete pictures, all put together with jelly beans.

Of course my favorite part of the tour was buying a bag of Belly Flops at the end to take home! (Belly Flops are Jelly Bellys that were deemed less than perfect, and so they are sold in separate bags at a discount! The perfect way to enjoy these tasty little treats on a budget!). We also had a Jelly Belly outlet close to our home, so we often made a trip to pick up a bag (or two…or three…) of Belly Flops!

I actually found a video on Jelly Belly’s website that shows the process of making Jelly Bellys in the first two minutes, and if you skip forward to about 3:50, you can actually see some of the Jelly Belly art as well!


I’m sure this part of my childhood served as my inspiration for a history project- my friend and I completed a replica of a British flag- completely made from jelly beans!

Jelly beans have been around since the Civil War, when William Schrafft, a sweet maker from Boston, encouraged people to send gifts to Union soldiers- one of which was these funny, bean shaped tasty treats! They didn’t really become associated with Easter until the 1930’s, when people started including them in Easter festivities because of their egg-like shape.

And then jelly beans really hit their popularity streak in the 1960’s, when Governor Ronald Reagan publicly expressed his love for these fun little candies! Apparently they helped him kick a nicotine addiction. I still remember the giant portrait of Ronald Reagan, completely put together from various colored jelly beans, in the Jelly Belly factory! He always had a jar of jelly beans on his desk, so it’s pretty fitting that someone deemed him worthy of a jelly bean portrait!

I realize as I reflect on my childhood that jelly beans, especially Jelly Bellys, are quite nostalgic. They played a big part of my childhood, and so they’ll always have a bit of a soft spot in my heart.

Are you a fan of jelly beans?

    Camille Hoffmann
    Weekly Newsletter Contributor since 2014
    Email the author! camille@dvo.com