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Food historians confirm confectionery packaging through time is a complicated issue. Not only is packaging period-dependent (technologically possible options), but venue (penny-candy street vendors vs shops catering to wealthy clients), occasion (Valentines gift, everyday candy bar) and product (chocolate bars are packaged quite differently from gumdrops) factor in as well Laura Mason, confectionery history expert, offers these notes:

"Containers are essential; they help maintain low humidity, hold sweets together, and protect them during transport. Before the nineteenth century, options were limited. Fruit in syrup was mostly stored in earthenware gallipots, and small sugar confections and pastes in oblong or round boxes made of thin sheets of matchwood...'Jar glasses' (small, cylindrical glass containers) were in use by the seventeeenth century but they are rarely mentioned. They were expensive, limited to wealthy households or enterprises. Glass jars probably did not become common until the late eighteenth century when, though used as storage containers, their emphasis had switched to a means of display. They include straight jars presumably for conserves or jams, small, stemmed glasses for jellies and larger ones with lids for sweets and comfits. Tall straight-sided and later ones with lids are also shown. Glass was used more and more to show off the bright colours and clarity of newly fashionable, transparent acid and fruit drops to brilliant advantage in the 1830s and '40s...Another imporant innovation, from the 1850s onwards, was the airtight tin--especially for toffee. Functional yet decorative, these became coveted in their own right. Commemorative versions were produced for national events, or the patterns designed so that a set of tins with themed pictures was avaialble. Transparent wrapping is a product of our own age. Cellophane was introduced in the 1920s and plastics followed later."
---Sugarplums and Sherbet: The Prehistory of Sweets, Laura Mason [Prospect Books:Devon] 2004 (p. 202-3)

"Wrappers, although treated as so much waste paper, account for much of the colour perceived in confectionery by the modern observer. This is a phenonemnon of the last hundred years. Before, a scrap of paper wrapped round a sugar stick or twisted into a cone (the origin of the triangular paper bag) was the most one could expect when buying sweets in the street. These wrappers were themselves waste paper. Henry Mayhew recorded how one street-seller of sweet stuff bought paper from stationers or secondhand book shops, including the Acts of Parliament, 'a pile of these a foot or more deep, lay on the shelf. They are used to wrap rock &c. sold.' Smarter confectioners used paper wrappers with cut or fringed ends twisted around sweets. A French custom of making these up as packets of bonbons for presents at New Year is metioned by Jarrin. The London confectionery Tom Smith is said to have commercialized the idea in Britain. His bonbons consisted of several sweets wrapped together in tissue paper, with mottoes enclosed. They were first introduced as a Christmas novelty in the late 1840s. Shortly afterwards, Smith added a 'bang', evolving the modern Christmas Cracker. The theory is that the idea was provided by a spark leaping out of the fire one night. However, exploding 'cracker bonbons' were apparently known some years earlier."
---ibid (p. 205)

"Initially, chocolate was packed as unwrapped bars in wooden boxes with paper labels, displayed on the shop counter. Individual paper wrappers developed soon afterwards. Gold printing and metal foils repeated this luxury message which gold leaf had given to sweets in earlier centuries. Designs used the latest images, and graphics publicized the desirability of chocolate. Even more status was attached to special boxes, decroated with pcitures, lined with tissue and paper lace. As the package, not the contents, occupied more and more of the foreground, so advertising has shifted almost entirely from the taste of confectioenry towards style by association."
---ibid (p. 207-8)

"Most companies concentrated on indivudally wrapped toffees as opposed to bulk tray toffee sold by weight. They were popular, kept well, and sold at a lower price than chocolate while maintaining a luxurious image. This was done partly by advertising and packaging. Robert Opie examined the role of packaging, especially tins, in marketing confectionery, and commented on toffee: 'splendid and glamorous tins abounded with bright colours and decorative patterns. The use of a tin also enhanced the status of the toffees, making them a more acceptable gift in comparison with the prestigious box of chocolates'."
---ibid (p. 191)