John Wayne Loved This Iconic Candy Bar – And You Can Still Buy It Today

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John Wayne was one of Hollywood's most iconic actors, with a rugged, manly image honed in the many Westerns in which he starred. Some of that persona carried over into real life, including when it came to the kind of food he liked. The movie legend loved steak, for instance, and he had it at one restaurant so often that a table was dedicated to him. He was also a fan of a cheesy beef casserole, which was named in his honor after he contributed the recipe to a charity cookbook. But the Duke also had a soft spot for sweets, and daughter Marisa told Closer in 2016 that he had a particular fondness for one vintage candy bar that's still sold today, saying, "He used to keep a stash of Abba-Zaba taffy in his drawer."

Available on Amazon, Abba-Zaba is chewy vanilla taffy with real peanut butter in the center and comes in a wrapper with a yellow and black checkerboard taxi design. It's a regional candy that's mostly found on the West Coast and is particularly popular in California, where the Iowa-born Wayne lived for most of his life. Some people like to put the bars in the freezer to harden before eating them or, conversely, microwave them for a few seconds to soften them.

The taffy is steam-cooked and machine-pulled. It's then flattened, and liquid peanut butter is streamed along the center before it's folded over to enclose the filling and cut into bars. There have also been chocolate, strawberry, and sour apple flavors in the past, as well as all-taffy mystery flavors with no peanut butter inside.

Abba-Zaba was first created in Los Angeles by Colby & McDermott in 1922. The original wrapper featured cartoonish depictions of tribespeople in a jungle setting, and reflected the era's insensitive, racialized tropes before being replaced by the modern yellow and black pattern in the 1950s following the brand's acquisition by Cardinet Candy Company.

Its popularity continued into the 1960s, making it one of several underrated candies from the decade that are still around, before it was taken over by Annabelle Candy Company in 1978 when it bought Cardinet. Annabelle produced Abba-Zaba for decades in Hayward, California, along with its Rocky Road, Big Hunk, and Look! bars. However, it closed the San Francisco Bay Area plant in 2024 due to financial issues. Parent company Promise Confections has since made all four at its other manufacturing facilities.

Abba-Zaba famously had a movie cameo in Dave Chappelle's 1998 comedy "Half Baked," in which his character lovingly called the candy his only friend. It also has the starring role in the Guinness World Record for Largest Taffy, which was set when Annabelle created a 524-pound version of the bar in 2016.