Muggles Make Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans a Success

Teenage wizard Harry Potter lives in a world filled with magical spells, unusual creatures and a colorful assortment of chocolates and candies, in particular "Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans," a candy that literally comes in flavors like black pepper, dirt, earwax and vomit.

Though all the spells and creatures have remained safely on the pages of the books by author J.K. Rowling and in the movies, the candies that Potter enjoys have crossed over into the real world thanks to Hasbro. Referred to as an "artifact candy", making Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans requires some Muggle imagination and creativity.

"The idea was that we were going from the descriptions of the candy directly from the books and giving them candy form," said Julie Nunn, Marketing Director, CAP (Children at Play) Division of Hasbro. "We're always looking for new flavors that aren't necessarily in the book because the official description from the author, J.K. Rowling, is that they are Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans. That opened it up to any flavor that we wanted to do."

Frankford Candy & Chocolate Company of Philadelphia owns the literary candy rights and develops the beans in partnership with Hasbro. Jelly Belly, a company that has plenty of experience with jellybeans, manufactures and distributes the candies. "We were awarded the literary candy rights. We do not do the product based on the movies; we do the product based on the books," Nunn said.

Unlike other confections, people tend to embrace the play value of the beans as opposed to their taste. Nunn said it's like a toy you can eat.

"We include menu guides with the beans and that's half the fun. I've given bags of these beans to kids and the first thing that they do is put that menu guide out on the table and dump out the beans," she said. "They try to match up all the beans that they have in the bag with the menu guide so they know when they are eating a booger, they know when they are eating vomit or black pepper or sardine.