Chupa Chups is a Spanish lollipop company founded by Enric Bernat in 1958.
In the early 1950s, Bernat went to north Spain to revive an apple jam factory. As he introduced later his idea of lollipops to the investors, they left. Bernat took over the company in 1958 and renamed it to Chupa Chups, from the Spanish verb chupar, meaning "lick" or "suck." He constructed the machines and sold a striped bonbon on a wooden stick for one peseta each.
Bernat got the idea of a "bonbon with a stick" from a cursing mother as her child got sticky hands from melting sweets that it wiped off on the cloth. He came up with his lollipop idea as he thought that, at that time, sweets were not designed with the main consumers, children, in mind. The shopkeepers were also instructed to place the lollipops near the cash register within reach of children's hands - instead of the traditional placement behind the counter.
The Chupa Chups logo was designed by the surrealist Salvador Dalí. The first marketing was the logo with the slogan "Es redondo y dura mucho, Chupa Chups", which translates as "they are round and hold for a long time." Later, celebrities like Madonna were hired to advertise. In the 1980s, due to falling birth rates in Spain, an anti-smoking slogan "Smoke Chupa Chups" was tried to attract further adult consumers.
The Chupa Chups company was quite a success. Within five years his sweets were sold at 300,000 outlets. After the dictatorship of Franco (1939-1975), the self-funded private company went international. In the 1980s it expanded to the European and American and in the 1990s to the Asian and Australian market. In 1995 a Chupa Chups lollipop was brought to the Mir space-station. Today (2003) 4 billion lollipops a year are sold to 150 countries with 2000 employees, 90 percent of abroad sales and a € 500m turnover.
In 1991, Bernat passed formal control of "Chupa Chups" to his son Xavier. The Smint subsidiary brand/company was founded in 1994.
