When Does My Candy Expire?

For anyone that has sold grocery through Amazon FBA, you understand that everything you send to Amazon has to have an expiration date printed on the label and box (when applicable). But not every product has an expiration date, especially with candy. Gum and lollipops are two examples that quickly come to mind for products that don’t have an expiration date at all; while items like Tootsie Rolls have a code for the production date. Let’s look at some of those codes.

When do Tootsie Rolls Expire?

• Cambridge Brands / Tootsie Rolls Includes
  • Andes Chocolate Mints
  • Charleston Chews
  • Charms Blow Pops / Caramel Apple Pops
  • Dots
  • Double Bubble
  • Fruties
  • Junior Mints
  • Sugar Daddy / Sugar Babies
  • Tootsie Rolls / Tootsie Pops

The Tootsie Roll and other Cambridge Brand made dates can seem really intimidating, but once you know the secret to decoding them, they are actually pretty easy to understand. Notice we said made date and not expiration date. That is because Tootsie Rolls use the date the item was produced and not when it actually expires. The shelf life is typically two years from production though.

L06 8 131 06:37 is a sample code.

Months are designated by a single letter that corresponds to the alphabet. A = January, L = December (see the chart below). The day is a two digit number, and the year is a one digit number. So in our example above, L = December; 06 = the sixth day of the month, and 8 = 2018. The made date is 12/6/18 and the expiration date would be 12/6/20.

When does Ferrara Pan Expire?

• Ferrara Pan Includes
  • Atomic Fireball
  • Boston Baked Beans
  • Brach’s Brand
  • Fruit Stripe Gum
  • Laffy Taffy
  • Lemonheads
  • Nerds
  • Now and Later
  • Red Hots
  • Trolli

Similar to Tootsie Roll, Ferrara also uses a six digit production date code, such as: 0F0932. The first digit is the year, second is the month code, and the third and fourth characters are the day of the month. Disregard the last two digits.

The example 0F0932 is a production date of June 9th, 2020.

When does Hershey’s Expire?

• Hershey’s Includes
  • 5th Avenue
  • Almond Joy / Mounds
  • Good & Plenty
  • The Heath Bar
  • Hershey’s Chocolate Bars / Kisses
  • Kit Kat
  • Milk Duds
  • Mr. Goodbar
  • Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
  • Rolo’s
  • Take 5
  • Whoppers
  • York Peppermint Pattie
  • Zagnut
  • ZERO

Some codes are obvious, think JAN18, but others are not quite as direct. For example, 8K means that it expires in November of 2018. The 8 is the last digit of the year, and the follows the alphabetized month system shown in the table below.

When does Wrigley’s / Mars Expire?

• Mars Includes
  • 3 Musketeers
  • Dove Chocolate
  • M&Ms Chocolate
  • Milky Way
  • Snickers
  • Twix

• Wrigley Includes
  • 5 Gum
  • Altoids
  • Big Red Gum
  • Bubble Tape
  • Doublemint Gum
  • Eclipse / Eclipse Ice
  • Extra Gum
  • Freedent Gum
  • Hubba Bubba
  • Juicy Fruit Gum
  • Life Savers
  • Orbit Gum
  • Skittles
  • Spearmint Gum
  • Starburst
  • Winterfresh Gum

Mars / Wrigley’s uses a six digit expiration in the format DDMMYY. For example, 290620 means it should be used by June 29th, 2020.

General Candy Expiration Dates

• Milk / White Chocolate: 8-10 months
• Dark Chocolate: 1-2 years
• Hard Candy: 1 year
• Gum: 6-9 months

Manufactured and Expiration Months Code Table

Month	Letter Code
Janurary	A
February	B
March	C
April	D
May	E
June	F
July	G
August	H
September	I
October	J
November	K
December	L