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The Hershey Company
This is the history of Thingamajig—a chocolate bar that sparked passion, divided fans, and was discontinued faster than it arrived.
Our story begins not in 2009, but decades earlier in the creative offices of a Manhattan advertising agency. It was 1978 when Patricia Volk, an Associate Creative Director at Doyle Dane Bernbach, was tasked with naming an unnamed candy bar.
Hershey had just created a peanut-flavored crispy candy bar coated in chocolate. But they needed a name that would stick. Volk and her team brainstormed nearly 100 possibilities before landing on something absurd.
Whatchamacallit became an instant hit and would set the stage for another wild-named candy bar.
Fast forward to 2009. Hershey's was riding high on Whatchamacallit's success. And they were looking for the next best idea.
The answer came in the form of Thingamajig.
It was a bold reimagining of what made Whatchamacallit special. Instead of peanut crisps, Thingamajig featured cocoa crisps. Instead of caramel, it was packed with peanut butter crème.
The naming followed the same playful pattern as its predecessor. If you couldn't remember what a "whatchamacallit" was, you might call it a "thingamajig." The logic was perfect.
The taste? That was where things got interesting.
What Hershey didn't anticipate was how passionately people would respond to Thingamajig. The new candy bar created a divide.
Team Thingamajig emerged almost immediately. These fans loved the chocolate-forward flavor profile, the way the cocoa crisps played against the peanut butter crème. They described it as a "crunchy Snickers" or a "crunchy Reese's Peanut Butter Cup." Some even claimed it was like the discontinued Bar None from the 1980s.
Meanwhile, Team Whatchamacallit held firm. These loyalists felt the original's peanut and caramel combination was irreplaceable. They thought the original formula just worked better.
The initial sales were strong, but Hershey soon realized something troubling: people were buying Thingamajig not to adopt it, but to compare it with many returning to Whatchamacallit.
By 2012, the writing was on the wall. Despite having devoted fans, Thingamajig couldn't build the sustained momentum needed to justify manufacturing it. Hershey's Chocolate World in Pennsylvania quietly confirmed that the candy bar was now discontinued. Thingamajig was no longer being produced.
Years later, Amazon reviews became memorials to the lost candy bar. Fans shared memories, compared recipes, and pleaded for its return. Some even stockpiled bars they found in forgotten corners of gas stations all around America.
In 2020, the Whatchamacallit brand announced a contest. They were creating a new candy bar and wanted fans to name it.
Hershey offered $5,000 and a year's supply of the new candy. Over 43,000 entries poured in from across the country. When the dust settled, a woman from Massachusetts had won with the name: Whozeewhatzit.
Interestingly enough, the Whozeewhatzit recipe was almost identical to the discontinued Thingamajig. Chocolate coating, cocoa crisps, peanut butter crème—it was all there, plus some added crisped rice for extra texture.
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