Snacks and confections maker The Promotion In Motion Companies Inc., known for such brands as Welch’s Fruit Snacks, Original Gummi FunMix, Sour Jacks Sour Candies, Sun-Maid Chocolate Raisins, and more, is celebrating 40 years since its founding with a lookback on its achievements and a donation of four million pouches of its Welch’s Fruit Snacks to food banks across the United States.
In honor of its anniversary, the company is giving back with a donation to Feeding America, America’s largest hunger-relief organization. The deliveries amounting to nearly ten truckloads of product are being made to the neediest throughout the United States.
Started with just $150 in 1979 from the college dorm room of Founder and still CEO, Michael Rosenberg, the company later incorporated with $10,000 in 1980. Promotion In Motion has organically grown to become one of the largest snacks and confections producers in the world, making some of the most beloved treats enjoyed millions of times each day across the globe.
From its first product, “Annie Cookies” to creating Care Bear Gummi Bears which it originally imported from Germany and sold for over 25 years, to its transformational invention of Welch’s Fruit Snacks, now the world’s market leading fruit snacks brand, Promotion In Motion’s many milestones worth celebrating include:
- 1981: Under license from Columbia Pictures, PIM launches its first product, “Annie Cookies”, modeled after traditional animal crackers but based on red-haired Orphan Annie from the famed cartoon strip, Broadway musical and movie, “Annie.”
- 1982: Michael Rosenberg creates Care Bear®Gummi Bears, which becomes a fixture at Movie Theatres and Video Store Chains across the USA for over 25 years.
- 1990: Michael Rosenberg creates Sour Jacks®, which PIM launches into theater concessions, in fundraising, vending machines, and eventually retail stores across the U.S.A. More recently, the product gains fame in Europe and Asia.
