Tonight was the Super Bowl. We bought the usual junk. I formulated in my mind that this was okay since I ate a vegetarian sandwich at lunch. I started thinking about candy. Sugar gets a bad, bad rap these days. I should know-I am a type two diabetic of sorts and I do well if I avoid the stuff. Yes and it causes tooth decay and such and obese children and the list goes on and on.
Yet, some of the most fun times of my life were supported in memory by the Great American candies of my childhood. Here are some of my favorites. Many are still around; others are not. Anyway, these were the candies of Christmas mornings, the movie theatre, the football game on a Friday night, the ones we sold to raise money for the band.
Your list may be different. That is alright for your memories are different. But here are my twenty best loved candy delights from my childhood and teenage years. We were told that chocolate would cause pimples-but I had fairly fair skin. Who knows? I still crave some of these candies today.
Pixie Sticks: I still see these around. Remember the giant plastic ones that were like two feet tall and cost about 50 cents? Full of the tasty colored sugar?
Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups: Still a tradition for Christmas morning in my family. Do you recall the old commercials where two people would run into each other? One would get peanut butter on another’s chocolate? The other would get chocolate in the other’s peanut butter. Both would taste it and sparks would fly?
Milk Duds: My dad bought me my first box of milk duds as a small child when he took me to see ‘Song of the South.’ The movie is now banned. Fortunately the duds are not.
Fun Dip: This consisted of a hard white sugar stick that you licked and then dipped into more colored sugar. Was fun. My mother hated it because of the odd way of eating it that involved spit. Oh, what fun times.
Tart ‘n’ Tinys: This was one of my absolute faves. I haven’t seen these in years. They were little tiny sugar cylinders packed in a tiny clear cellophane wrapper with bright green edges. They did come out with a new version later that was slick and candy coated and shaped like round pellets. They really were no good. Bring back the true Tinys!!
M and Ms: Everyone loves the M and Ms. High school provided all the rage for the green ones.
Reese’s Pieces: Came about for the movie ET. The book had ET eating M and Ms, but Mars did not want their product in the movie with an ugly alien. So Reese’s developed the pieces. One of the biggest branding mistakes ever made by a food company was the Mars goof. Since then, branding on the big screen is one of the highest sought out marketing tools.
Spree: I loved these as a child, but you could not buy them in a store in North Georgia. Instead, you put your penny or nickel in a candy dispenser and turned turned turned to get a handful.
Kits: I can find these in a specialty candy store in Savannah, Georgia but haven’t seen them anywhere else lately. These ‘chewables’ were hard as a rock. It is a wonder they did not pull my teeth out. However, when in Savannah I still buy the chocolate ones. Anything to feel young again.
Saltwater Taffy: This used to be all the rage for a while in my childhood when it started coming in a gazillion flavors. I have found the best place in the world to get it is the Savannah Candy Kitchen in Savannah, Georgia. They have ever imagined flavor and you buy it bulk by the pound, mixed the way you want it.
Fireballs: Hot, Hot, Hot and they were an absolute favorite of my big sister. I used to eat them while holding a glass of water where I would dip them into the water and pop them back and forth between the water and my mouth. Another disgusting moment for my mother.
Pop Rocks: They sizzled and popped on your tongue. They got a bad rap after a while. The rumor was that if you swallowed them before they finished popping they would kill you. Late seventies urban legend? I don’t know. They stopped selling the little packages of explosive candies around here. I used to buy them in a tri-box. You got a package each of three flavors.
Zots: Talk about explosive. These little hard candy guys came individually wrapped and connected together in s strand, not unlike butcher wieners. They were hollow and filled with a white powdery substance that bubbled and boiled in your mouth and the thin hard shell melted away. I had a preference for the grape ones in purple packages and the green apple ones wrapped in shiny green. What in the world happened to Zots? They were a pre-runner to the Pop Rocks.
Candy Bottles: Now I am not sure this is the official name of these. They were little wax bottles shaped like cola bottles and filled with various colors of liquid sugar. You simply bit the wax top off and slurped and sucked down the sugar formula. I did on occasion chew on the leftover wax bottle to get the remaining sugar.
Nestle Crunch: A delight that is still around, although it is paper thin these days-the thinness does not provide a whole lot of crunchie.
Candy Necklaces: There were also candy bracelets. You wore these around your neck or arm all day, biting off the candy as desired. They were little hard rounds of sugar stringed on a string in many colors. My mother despised these, as well. I wasn’t able to procure these as often as some of my pals.
Candy Cigarettes and Candy Cigars: These were around when smoking actual real cigarettes was still cool. Some were bubble gum. You pretended to smoke them until the taste drove you nuts and you chewed them up. They even came in a box that looked like a cigarette pack. We thought they were very cool.
Candy Footballs: There was a community store in my rural area called the Country Shoppe. They had a huge candy counter. These little morsels were similar to Hershey’s Kisses, except they were football-shaped and the foil wrappers were bright brown with a football design. They cost a penny each. I was a Pep Club member in high school. I used to buy these to decorate goody bags for whatever football player I assigned myself to in each season. My goody bags rocked, even back then.
Sugar Daddy: I think these may still be around. They used to be huge and you could suck and chew on the caramel on a lollipop stick for hours.
Sugar Babies: These are the smaller morsels that were much like the Sugar Daddy on a stick. I remember thinking as a child, “Well, where is the Sugar MAMA?”
Wacky Wafers: This was another Wonka delight. Wafers shaped in the fruits of each flavor. So much better than those slick Runts of today.
Bazooka Bubble Gum: We used to buy these as kids in bulk. I don’t know what we like better-the huge bubbles we would blow with tons of pieces in our mouth, or the little cartoons that come in each piece. I used to save those cartoons in volumes and save them in a shoe box. Wish I had them now-they might be profitable on e-bay. I believe the main guy was Bazooka Joe.
Grape Bubblicious: This mouth watering, drooling bubble gum made its appearance when I was I middle school, I believe. All girls had a pack of it in their brightly colored clutch bags, including me. You could smell someone chewing it a mile away.
Do keep in mind that some of these can be found online today, in novelty candy companies. Still, it just is not the same as picking and choosing–one of this, two of that, fourteen of that…
And I would like to note here, that for all the nay-saying, and I do recognize that some of it is true: I do still have my original teeth and have had only a few cavities over the past four decades. But in all fairness, candy and a trip to the candy counter was a treat-my parents did not keep it stocked by the bag in the house. We ate very little sugared cereal and had lots of wholesome meals. But oh the trips to the candy counter-times I will never forget.
So these days, I do not keep it stocked-but we take our children now and then to pick out what they want down at the local convenience store. Sadly, it is not quite the same, where you could get a Kits for five cents and a chocolate football for a penny. A dollar would give you a brown bag loaded with goodies. Hmmm-maybe that is what the cynical world needs now-a revival to the old time candy counter.
