In an early marketing campaign, the company dropped Butterfinger and Baby Ruth candy bars from airplanes in cities across the United States as a publicity stunt that helped increase its popularity.

In December 1988, RJR Nabisco was purchased by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. in what was, at the time, the largest leveraged buyout in history.

In February 1990, Nestlé, a Swiss multinational food and beverage company, bought Baby Ruth and Butterfinger from RJR Nabisco.

[5] Butterfinger was withdrawn from the market in Germany in 1999, because of consumer rejection when it was one of the first products to be identified as containing genetically modified ingredients (GMOs) from corn.

[6][7] Butterfinger sales ended after a successful campaign by Greenpeace pushed Nestlé to remove the product from German supermarkets.

[9] In January 2018, Nestlé announced plans to sell over twenty of its US confectionery brands (including Butterfinger) to Italian chocolatier Ferrero SpA, for $2.8 billion.

The new bar also uses a higher percentage of cocoa and milk in the "chocolatey" coating and cuts ingredients such as the preservative TBHQ and hydrogenated oils.

Butterfingers are used in a part of Edy's Fun Flavors line (branded as Dreyer's west of the Rocky Mountains and outside the United States).

The product is vanilla ice cream with a peanut butter swirl and bits of the Butterfinger candy bar in it.