Haribo sounds like a word someone invented for a sweet packet — friendly, a bit nonsense, easy to say. It isn't. It's an initialism, built the same way you'd shorten a company name in a filing cabinet, and it's been hiding a real person's name in plain sight since 1920.
Hans Riegel, Bonn — that's the whole name
Hans Riegel Sr. registered his sweet-making business in the German city of Bonn on 13 December 1920. When it came to naming it, he did what plenty of German companies did at the time and abbreviated it: HAns RIegel BOnn. Take the first two letters of each and you get HARIBO. It's not a founder's surname on its own, and it's not a made-up brand word — it's a person and a place, compressed.
The company started small enough that "factory" would be generous: Riegel worked out of his own kitchen with a sack of sugar, a marble slab, a stool, a stove, a copper pot and a rolling pin. Two years later, in 1922, he made the product that would define the company for the next century.
The Gold Bear didn't start gold, or particularly bear-shaped
Riegel's first gummy sweet in 1922 was the Tanzbär — German for "Dancing Bear" — and it looked quite different from the bear in the bag today. It was taller, slimmer, and posed more like an actual dancing bear, a nod to the performing bears that toured festivals and fairs across Europe at the time (a tradition nobody would put on a sweet wrapper now, but it's genuinely where the shape came from).
That original shape stuck around for decades. It wasn't until 1960 that Haribo redesigned it — smaller, rounder, and easier to eat one-handed — and relaunched it as the Goldbär, the shape that effectively invented the modern "gummy bear" as a category. Haribo's Gold Bears got a formal trademark from the German Patent Office in 1967, by which point the shape you'd recognise instantly was locked in.
Why this is worth knowing
It's a small thing, but it's a useful reminder that most of what feels like throwaway branding — a name, a shape, a mascot — usually has a real, specific, and often quite mundane origin if you trace it back far enough. Haribo isn't an exception dressed up as one; the name is literally just "who made it, and where."
See the current lineup for yourself: the original Gold Bears, the mixed-bag Starmix, and the sour Tangfastics — or browse the full Haribo range.
Frequently asked questions
What does the name Haribo actually stand for?
HAns RIegel BOnn — the founder's first and last name plus the city where he founded the company, each contributing the first two letters.
When was Haribo founded?
13 December 1920, in Bonn, Germany — starting out of Hans Riegel Sr.'s own kitchen.
Did the Gold Bear always look the way it does now?
No — the original 1922 "Tanzbär" was taller and slimmer. It was redesigned smaller and rounder in 1960 and relaunched as the Goldbär.