In 1934, the company built a $60,000 addition to the Naugatuck plant and invested still more in new machinery to meet demand, using earnings to pay for expansion without incurring debt.
In the same year, the company introduced a new product, the Dreams candy bar, named by students participating in a contest at Naugatuck High School.
By the late 1930s both Mounds and Dreams were ranked among the five top-selling candy bars in the United States, and Peter Paul had established its reputation “as the company that never knew the Depression”.
[1] During World War II sugar and coconut shortages forced the company to abandon the Dreams bar in favor of concentrating on the better selling Mounds.
[1] The Almond Joy bar was introduced in 1948, using milk chocolate instead of dark chocolate, and adding a double-toasted almond on top, sold in a blue package to differentiate it from the Mounds' red package, becoming an immediate success[1][2] After successfully advertising on national radio in the 1930s, Peter Paul led the industry in the use of network television advertising in the early 1950s, with the Peter Paul Pixies singing that Mounds and Almond Joys were “Indescribably Delicious”, a slogan coined for a contest in 1955 by Leon Weiss of Gary, Indiana, who won $10.