Chocolate Easter bunnies leaped from Pennsylvania Dutch ingenuity, hobbled by inflation in 2024

Chocolate Easter bunnies are a sweet example of European tradition re-imagined by American ingenuity and capitalist creativity. 

Credit first-generation German-American Robert Lincoln Strohecker, known in confectioner’s lore as the "Father of the Chocolate Easter Bunny."

The source of Strohecker’s legend was a massive 5-foot-tall (or perhaps even taller) solid chocolate rabbit he displayed outside Pennsylvania retailers in 1890 to popularize smaller versions of his new Easter sweets born of German tradition.