Russell Stover chocolates, a Kansas City tradition for 100 years, still bring holiday cheer

The iconic Kansas City-based company is still growing, and attributes its success to the warmth and comfort people feel when they open the box and see the same candies they got from their grandmother.
Every Christmas, the seven O’Neill boys from Kansas City, Missouri, got a box of Russell Stover’s candy from their grandmother.

Neither the rectangular white box printed with the elaborate brown bow nor the flavors of each piece in a tiny brown paper cup ever changed. The boys weren’t allowed to use the map telling which candies were which flavor, so Patrick O’Neill, now 70 and the eldest, pulled rank and always picked first.

“Back off guys, I got the caramel,” he’d tell his brothers.

“But you had to find it first,” he remembers. “And in our house, every box of Russell Stover candies, you could tell what (a piece) was by just turning it over because everyone had already put a thumbnail in it to see.”

Russell Stover has been celebrating its 100th-anniversary this year, commemorating not only its longevity as an industry leader but a century of memories like O’Neill’s.