We're going to be wrapping up our look at the Hersheypark characters today but have two more days worth of Hersheypark photos to share with you on Monday and Tuesday.
Over the past few days we have been looking at character costumes and their evolution from 1993 to 1997 to today.
The original characters consisted mostly of just Mr. Hershey and Miss. Reese, which we saw both of in 1993. The Version Two version characters expanded the lineup significantly to include all of the characters seen in cartoon form here and even featured some of the more obscure characters you will see below!
Up first, Mr. Hershey's Symphony Bar! A little research on Wikipedia tells us that Hershey's Symphony was introduced in 1989 and was targeted towards a wealthier demographic and came in two varieties. Bars that featured a red Symphony script were of the plain creamy milk chocolate variety while those with a blue Symphony script contained toffee and almonds (yum!) with the creamy milk chocolate. Mr. Hershey's Symphony below is of the toffee and almond variety, and the word almond can even be seen just above my little brother's head!
And here's where things get interesting concerning marketing to demographics and the characters taking on those traits. Mr. Symphony is wearing a tuxedo like wrapper suit whereas we saw in an earlier post on Revision 2 characters that his brother product regular Mr. Hershey's Milk Chocolate wore a backwards cap and had a wrapper that was just basic and peeled back. The characters themselves embodied the product and the market they were trying to appeal to, in this case a wealthier consumer versus the common man. And of course, Hershey has done this in a fun, non-offensive manner (which few will probably even notice) which is great.
Below is an angry little fellow, Hershey's 5th Avenue.
I'm not sure what year 5th Avenue first went into production (it has a muddy history of several acquisitions by different companies) and it's not your most common or most popular Hershey product but I'm sure it does have fans across the country. I also am not too sure of what the target market is, but my guess here is that Hershey was going for that tough guy from the city look to go with the fact that the name of the product is city related. He's a cool looking character and is one that's a little different in his expression from the others.
Our sendoff for today is Rolo, a Nestlé product like Kit Kat that is sold under license in America as a Hershey product! (If you're ever out of the country, look out for these Nestlé Kit Kats, they're quite good!)
Another character with another backwards cap! Backwards hats must have been the ultimate in cool to Hershey brass in the 1990's because nearly every male character we've seen at Hershey has been wearing one. An interesting note here is that despite being a Revision 2 character, Rolo still makes occasional appearances today alongside Revision 3 characters.
Based on the link above, the only characters that appear to be true Revision 3 characters are Hershey, Reese, Kiss, and Peppermint Patty. Nutrageous, Rolo, and Milk Duds all look like carry overs from Revision 2 as does Hershey's Chocolate Syrup, however, he has lost the silver on his label or has been redone over time without it.
The giveaway between these two revisions other than a change in the cartoon style of the faces and loss of skeuomorphic features like breakable pieces and texture is that Revision 2 characters look through mesh eyes to see whereas Revision 3 characters look through mesh mouths. Revision 2 and Revision 3 Hershey's Kisses each look through a mesh screen at the top of the foil above the eyes but the gender changed from female to male and the material of the costume became less foil like. This change in material was probably done so that the costume was easier to clean and wouldn't collect dirt as easily. Here's a link to one of my earlier posts on the Revision 2 Kiss so you can compare it to the current Revision 3 version.
That wraps things up for today folks and concludes our look at Hershey characters for a while. I hope you've enjoyed seeing them and our look at their changes over time. We have two more days worth of pictures from Hersheypark in 1997 so be sure to stop by!
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