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| - At one point during the 1920s, the chocolate brand KitKat was briefly known as "Kit-Cat."
The idea that the chocolate wafer snack KitKat once had a hyphen between the "Kit" and "Kat" has circulated online for years, fueled by discussions on social media forums, such as Reddit and Instagram, and by references in Mandela Effect lists by media outlets like Good Housekeeping and Today.com.
For instance, in late 2023, a Reddit post shared in the Mandela Effect subreddit reignited interest in whether the "Kit" and the "Kat" were ever divided by a hyphen. Users commenting on the post cited this as an example of the phenomenon where groups of people misremember the same detail, leading to a collective false memory.
(FalseBodybuilder-21/Reddit)
However, while this claim of a missing hyphen does hold a crumb of truth, the evidence shows that the punctuation mark never split the "Kit" and "Kat" in the logo, which is why we have rated this claim as false.
But there is evidence of a moment in history when a variant of the name "KitKat" did, in fact, briefly have a hyphen.
Allow us to explain.
The official KitKat X account directly addressed the hyphen rumor in a December 2016 tweet (archived), clarifying that the "KitKat" name has never featured a hyphen on its packaging in either the U.S. or U.K. market:
Great question Jacqueline! The KITKAT name has never been hyphenated on either the UK or US wrappers. #MandelaEffect https://t.co/PBrYNtSB2a https://t.co/VmrIV50KX4
— KITKAT (@KITKAT) December 1, 2016
An archived "History and Archives" page from Nestlé's official U.K. website acknowledged the rumor that the "Kit" and the "Kat" were once divided by a hyphen but said there was a period during WWII when this did happen. According to a Nestlé spokesperson on the website:
My colleagues tell me that there is a rumour going around that there used to be a hyphen on KitKat's wrappers, and that it has mysteriously disappeared in recent years.
I can categorically say that the KitKat name was not hyphenated (either on the UK or US wrappers), and that the only time I have seen the name hyphenated is on one very rare wrapper from the Second World War (which I don't have a photograph of) and on our 1920s Kit-Cat chocolate boxes.
There isn't room here for me to upload the many thousands of examples that I have in the company archive, but here are one or two from down the years that show that there is not, and never has been, a hyphen on the KitKat wrapper.
Unfortunately, whichever examples from the company archive regarding the lack of a hyphen are no longer available on that page. However, several weeks after this statement on the company's website, the same representative shared this update, noting they had misspoken:
I have been back through some photographs of another collector's archive and I found a photograph the wartime item I was thinking of, but when I found it I realised that I had remembered it incorrectly; there was no hyphen. As far as I can see in the archive there is no evidence of Kit Kat ever having a hyphen, except on the boxed assortment Kit-Cat. The reference to a hyphen on the wartime packaging was a false memory on my part.
However, the company rep's initial statement remains significant. While it acknowledges occasional historical exceptions, such as the "Kit-Cat" branding on chocolate boxes from the 1920s, the consistent branding has remained "KitKat" without a hyphen.
This image of the old chocolate box, found on Pinterest, backed up Nestlé's historical claim that there was once a "Kit-Cat" chocolate box complete with a hyphen and alternate spelling of the name's second syllable.
(Pinterest)
However, this does not detract from the fact that, specifically, the "Kit" and the "Kat" have never been separated by a hyphen.
No verifiable evidence supports the widespread or consistent use of a hyphen during the primary decades of the product's popularity.
Presently, the official KitKat website writes the name as one word, KitKat. However, other official sites, including Hersheyland, the website of The Hershey Company, place a space between "Kit" and "Kat" but without the hyphen.
Globally, the KitKat name remains uniform as one word. While some websites may insert a space between "Kit" and "Kat," there is no regional variation officially featuring a hyphen.
The Mandela Effect offers a compelling psychological explanation for this common misremembering. KitKat's snappy name and iconic jingle — "Have a break, have a KitKat!" — lend themselves to the assumption of separation or punctuation. Some people might even conflate the name with other hyphenated brand names, such as "Coca-Cola," "Fruit Roll-Ups" or "Baskin-Robbins" (the latter of which is sometimes hyphenated but not always).
In sum, the claim that KitKat used to have a hyphen between the "Kit" and the "Kat" is false. While rare historical anomalies exist, the brand's consistent official name has always been "KitKat," written as one word. This fact is supported by the brand's statements, historical packaging archives and Nestlé's own clarifications. The widespread misremembering likely stems from the cognitive bias of the Mandela Effect rather than any substantial change in branding.
Snopes has previously written about the Mandela Effect, including the true claim that TV fitness instructor Richard Simmons didn't wear a headband while working out and whether Mr. Monopoly, the mascot of the board game Monopoly, ever wore a monocle.
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