The earliest evidence of the word jellybean seems to have appeared in an advertisement in the Chicago Daily News on July 5, 1905: “Jelly beans, assorted, per lb., 9c.” It was years in the making. A precursor of the jellybean was advertised as early as 1861 as a gift for soldiers in the Civil War. A candy manufacturer had joined the confection known as Turkish delight and the French fashion of coating almonds with a sugar shell to produce a candy with a crisp shell and a soft center, the essential structure of today’s jellybean.

The tradition of giving jellybeans in Easter baskets arose in the 1930s during the recovery from the Great Depression of 1929. Of seasonal candies, jellybeans at Easter rank with candy canes (1936) at Christmas and candy corn at Halloween. The National Confectioners Association reported that over thirteen billion jellybeans were sold for Easter in 1996.

President Reagan was particularly fond of jellybeans, to the point of keeping a jar of them on his desk in the Oval Office of the White House.

The epithet jellybean is used for people too. On the one hand, it has been used as a derogatory term for someone weak or timid, as in this example from 1919: “Mary is such a jellybean that she never gets her lessons.” On the other hand, it can mean a young man dressed like a DUDE (1877), noted as early as 1921, and here in a 1937 example: “It made them all feel glowingly united, not just flappers and jellybeans, but a new young generation capable of facing the serious things of life.”