An eternal retro star: the Százszorszép candy box

By: Trademagazin Date: 2023. 05. 17. 12:55

The renaissance of retro continues to pervade our everyday lives – among the various fashion trends, objects and memories, it is worth lingering over a cult piece that has meant a lot for generations, the box of Százszorszép bonbons. Many of us may even have a childhood memory of our grandmother’s shelf from the 70s and 80s, with the distinctive, octagonal, flower-patterned box on it, which usually hid sewing kits or other personal valuables.

Stühmer’s Százszorszép exemplifies the unusual case when the packaging in a certain sense goes beyond the product’s internal content and becomes eternal. The legend of the Százsórszép Monarchy, created during the Monarchy, lives on to this day: the production of the paper box, once designed by an industrial artist, is now the responsibility of Stühmer’s creative production partner, Sz. Variáns, who deals with packaging design and execution. The company produces tens of thousands of the classic 250-gram iconic box every year.

You can bid on it on online marketplaces to this day, and it even inspired a long-established porcelain manufactory to create a bonbonier with the same shape and pattern, bearing the Stühmer logo.

“One of the keys to the success and uniqueness of Százsórszép lies precisely in the fact that it has been representing the same quality for more than a century. The box also plays a big role in this, which is actually a work of art: its assembly cannot be mechanized. The raw material is printed gray plate, which we cover with art printing paper, all done by hand, which means serious added value”

– says János Szakál, managing owner of Sz. Variáns.