Squirrel Nut Zippers and Squirrel Nut Caramels are not in production. They were made under licence by the New England Confectionery Company — Necco — and production stopped when Necco collapsed in 2018. Nobody has picked the licence up since.
What happened
Creditors filed an involuntary Chapter 7 petition against Necco on 3 April 2018. The case was converted to Chapter 11 on 19 April and a trustee was appointed the next day (Case No. 18-11217, US Bankruptcy Court, District of Massachusetts). The Revere plant shut that July, and what was left of the company was broken up — some brands sold privately, the remainder auctioned off that September.
Plenty of Necco names came through it. Necco Wafers went to Spangler and returned to shelves in summer 2020. The Clark Bar went to Boyer Candy in Altoona. The Sky Bar went to a shop owner in Sudbury, Massachusetts, who restarted it in small batches. Mary Janes are made by Atkinson. The Zippers were never a lot in either sale, because Necco did not own them to sell.
Squirrel Brand still exists — but it sells nuts now
This is the part that confuses people, and it is worth being precise about. Necco never owned Squirrel Nut Zippers; it licensed the name from Southern Style Nuts. The Squirrel Brand trademark now belongs to John B. Sanfilippo & Son, and the brand is alive and selling — coated nuts. Chocolate almonds, brown-butter cashews, glazed pecans. The Nut Zippers appear on its website in a company timeline, not a product list. A live Squirrel Brand does not mean the caramel chews are back.
And Walnettos?
Walnettos — the walnut caramel chew introduced by the J. N. Collins Company of Minneapolis in 1919, later owned by Peter Paul and revived in the 1980s — are also gone from general distribution. We are not going to give you a discontinuation date, because there is not an honest one to give: the most-repeated claim about their current maker traces to a company website last archived in 2014, and that domain no longer resolves. What we can say is that no current manufacturer is selling them and no wholesaler is stocking them. The same goes for Chocolettos, on which we could find no reliable record at all.
The closest things we carry
Nothing below is a Squirrel Nut Zipper, and we would rather say that than pretend otherwise. But if what you miss is a soft, chewy, nutty old-fashioned candy that pulls at your fillings, this is the shelf to look at. A Zipper was a vanilla nut caramel — vanilla chew, peanuts through it. Mary Janes are the nearest thing still made: same era, same pull, peanut butter and molasses instead of vanilla. Goetze's Caramel Creams give you the caramel-with-a-soft-centre texture. Bit-O-Honey brings the honey-almond chew. Slo Poke and Cow Tales are the long-chew caramels.
