Heavenly Hash and Gold Brick eggs shine bright at Easter

The big picture: The company's primary business is making boxed chocolates for Valentine's Day, CEO Rob Nelson tells Axios, but there's a loyal following on the Gulf Coast for its Easter candy.

• Heavenly Hash Eggs are the bestseller, he says, closely followed by Gold Brick Eggs then Pecan Eggs.
• Easter candy makes up about 5% of its business.

What's inside: A Heavenly Hash Egg is filled with marshmallow fluff and roasted almonds and covered in either milk or dark chocolate.

• You can get it with strawberry fluff this year, too.
• A Gold Brick Egg is solid chocolate-covered melt-away egg filled with pecans and more chocolate.
• A Pecan Egg is an egg-shaped nougat covered in pecans and caramel. Nelson suggests fans cover it in chocolate to make it "extra decadent."

Catch up quick: Elmer's was founded in 1855 as the Miller Candy Co., according to 64 Parishes.

• The company later changed its name to the Miller-Elmer Candy and invented CheeWees about a dozen years before Cheetos were introduced.
• The cheese curl business was later spun off and is now made by Elmer's Fine Foods.
• The Nelson family bought Elmer Chocolate in the 1960s and moved manufacturing to Ponchatoula. Rob Nelson is the third generation of owners.

Fun tidbit: They used to make candy with pralines, Nelson said, but the praline experts didn't want to relocate to Ponchatoula. Elmer's now has about 350 employees.

Zoom in: Elmer's has since automated its manufacturing facility and spends the majority of the year making boxes of chocolate.

• They make it under the name of Elmer's, Hershey's Pot of Gold and others, and, he says, they use Louisiana sugar in everything.
• It's not like the episode of "I Love Lucy" any more, Nelson says, where everything is packed by hand.
• "People are making candy, but they're doing it from a computer screen. ... For most chocolates that you would buy under our brand, or any of the other brands that we sell, human hands have never touched it."

Stunning stat: The company is the country's second-largest producer of heart-shaped boxed chocolate, Nelson says.

• They produce more than 50 million boxes per year.

During Easter, they run the old-school lines for 6 to 8 weeks while the automated ones go through maintenance.

• "The product's made on almost exactly the same equipment as it was in 1970," Nelson says.
• They make Easter shirts for everyone and it's a "big deal" to get a shirt, he said.
• "We have a lot of fun with it," he says.

The intrigue: Nelson says they get customer requests often to bring back candy or try new combinations.

• The two most common requests: Malted Gold Brick Eggs and Bublets.
• Bublets, which were discontinued in the 1980s, were puffed hard candy that would melt in your mouth.

Yes, but: He says it's hard to do different varieties because it introduces allergens to the equipment.

• So, only the Gold Brick Egg line makes that item.
• They also have to do a big enough production run to make it profitable.

The bottom line: Easter falls on 4/20 this year, which is an informal marijuana holiday, so a Heavenly Hash candy basket is even more appropriate than ever, if you know what we mean.