I am not a fan of honey. I never really have been. Both of my siblings like it, our mom loved to eat comb honey, which I likened to drinking a shooter of honey and following it up with a wax lips chaser. Yuck! Nevertheless, we all loved the plastic honey bears the gooey stuff came in.

They were perfect to use in place of squirt guns, soap dispensers, and were a predecessor to personal water bottles. You could fill them with Kool-Aid or chocolate milk and somehow they made those beverages more tasty.

Even though it seems like this cute honey keeper has been around forever, the Original Honey Bear is only approaching its 61st birthday. But why does honey come in those bottles?

Because two beekeeping families (the Gambers and the Millers) in 1957 California, had a brainstorming session after dinner one night. They were trying to decide how best to market their honey.

A.A. Milne, the creator of beloved, honey-loving bear, Winnie-the-Pooh, had passed away recently, and they were voicing their thoughts on; how much people loved Pooh,  the popularity of stuffed bears in general, and how bears and honey just go together.

Ralph Gamber hit upon the idea of packaging their honey in cute, squeezable, plastic, bear-shaped containers. The first bears had a habit of leaking at the seams and originally the Gamber's daughters hand-painted on the little bear's faces. But eventually plastic technology improved and they sold like crazy.

The one mistake Mr. Gamber made was not getting a patent on his bear-shaped bottle, so every honey manufacturer under the sun markets their products in little plastic bears. So no matter what kind of honey you buy, odds are you can get it in a squeezy bear bottle that keeps on giving when the golden syrup is long gone.


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