Inspired by the dancing bears and the teddy bear, in 1922 Hans Riegel, founder of HARIBO, created his first bear-shaped sweet, which thus became the forefather of the Goldbear that was later to achieve international fame.

		Its original form was the “Dancing Bear”, which the children of the twenties could still meet at fairs everywhere in its natural form. The fruit-gum Dancing Bear was larger than today’s Goldbear, but also slimmer. This was completely in keeping with the spirit of the age, since in 1922, a year of inflation, Germany was going through a serious financial crisis.
The Dancing Bear, along with the “Sweet Devils”, rapidly became one of the classic products in the HARIBO range. At that time, two of them cost one pfennig from kiosks.

In 1925, Hans Riegel also started to produce liquorice products. Naturally, the Dancing Bear very quickly acquired a cousin made from delicious liquorice, the “Black Bear”.

		Another relation of the Dancing Bear appears in HARIBO catalogues from the 1950s: the teddy bear, a smaller, plumper type of bear. At HARIBO, the thinking was the teddy bear that they were selling as a tasty nibble was the same kind of teddy bear that other people cuddled up to. Both kinds of teddy bear are, however, an affectionate way of collecting an object of desire.