Junior Mints - Origin of Product Name

Origin of Product Name

The name of the product is a pun on Sally Benson's Junior Miss, a collection of her stories from The New Yorker, which were adapted by Jerome Chodorov and Joseph Fields into a successful play. This is where the "JUNIOR" in Junior mints comes from. Directed by Moss Hart, Junior Miss ran on Broadway from 1941 to 1943. According to one past official company history, when James Welch developed and launched the product in 1949, he named the candy after his favorite Broadway show. Yet the candy came six years after the play had closed on Broadway. Current copy on the Junior Mints box incorrectly gives the date of the Broadway play as 1949.

In 1945, the play was adapted to film, with George Seaton directing Peggy Ann Garner in the lead role. The Junior Miss radio series, starring Barbara Whiting, was being broadcast weekly on CBS at the time Junior Mints were first marketed in 1949. Thus, Welch had cleverly created a product sold at movie theater concession stands and identified with a specific movie and radio series and displaying a name that sounded almost exactly like that property–yet different enough that it avoided any fees for licensing and merchandising. Junior Mints quickly became a popular candy at movie concession stands, and one product in the line is the three oz. box marketed as the "Theater Size Junior Mints Concession Candy".

In 1963, the brand was acquired by Nabisco, who sold the brand to Warner-Lambert Company (now part of Pfizer) in 1988, who in turn sold the brand to Tootsie Roll in 1993. Today, Junior Mints are still manufactured in Cambridge at Tootsie Roll Industries.