A well-known York-made sweet is celebrating 75 years.

Polo, ‘the mint with the hole’ was devised in the 1930s, what producer Nestle describes as “a golden age for confectionary.”

It was the decade that gave us KitKat, Aero, Smarties, Black Magic, and Dairy Box.

This period of innovation was cut short by the outbreak of World War 2.

During wartime, Rowntree’s entire confectionery output had to stop (due to shortages of ingredients) and the factory was turned over to war work.

When the war ended, production didn’t return to its pre-war levels immediately; nor did innovation. Rationing and sugar shortages had a severe impact on the confectionery industry until well into the 1960s.

There was, however, one exception to this rule, and it was POLO.

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The man behind POLO was George Harris, a marketing man who had been the mastermind behind KitKat and all the other brands listed earlier.

In 1948 Harris decided to resurrect an idea he had been forced to shelve at the outbreak of war.

Having been inspired by the US brand Life Savers (a mint with a hole designed to look like a life-saving rubber ring) he wanted to make something similar in the UK.

Company legend has it that he chose the name POLO because it derived from Polar and he thought that this implied the cool, freshness of mint.

But perhaps the most interesting part of POLO’s story is how the brand managed to be launched at all, given that sugar was still in very short supply at that time.

Nestle says the answer to that question remains unknown, but what it does know is that POLO launched on 15 April, 1948 in London and the South East, and by 1952, was available country-wide.

Some 75 years it is still going strong.

The Nestle factory can produce up to 22,000 sweets a minute- the equivalent of over 32 million single POLO sweets a day or 1.37 million packs of POLO a day.

The factory on Haxby Road also produces Kit Kat, Aero, Milky Bar and Yorkie.

Over the years, an increasing number of variants have appeared, including Fruit POLOS, and extra strong POLOS, which were launched in 2016. Some varieties have been discontinued.

Mint with a hole load of air miles

The global reach of POLOS was highlighted in 2008 and 2010 when POLOS made in Indonesia appeared in York shops, due to imports involving third-parties. Nestle said it could not stop such imports and York-made POLOs were for the UK market.

Nestle says surveys show POLO is the UK’s best loved mint and the number one sugar free mint in the UK.

A spokesperson added: “Here at Nestlé in York, the confectionery team is delighted to be celebrating the 75th anniversary of Polo. The Mint with the Hole has been produced in the city since 1948 and remains one of the nation’s best-loved mint brands.”