Nothing turns the mind’s attention to sweet treats faster than a new resolve to eat healthier. With that in mind I’d like to poll my readers (and their friends and friends of friends) on the worst excuses for candy. Fortunately for this blog, Halloween seems to call forth more lame candy than costume parties bring out the black cat and French maid costumes for women of a certain age, mindset and body type. Now this poll is not about taste buds, i.e.: I hatehate black licorice but other people like it, so be it. This is about really stupid candy – the candy that if left open, unsupervised, out of the sight of others, within arm’s reach, on a day when I hadn’t had a chance to eat for 12 hours, I still, (most likely) wouldn’t eat it. I don’t even have particularly high standards for calling something “candy”: it must be edible, have some level of sweetness, be deemed more of a treat than a trick when eaten.
My top 10 ”Worst Excuses for Candy” list, in no particular order:
- Buttons are sugar drops on spare cash register tape. Just eat your daily newspaper instead, you’ll ingest the same amount of paper but you’ll also be supporting a challenged industry
Candy buttons on paper - Stretchy candy necklaces are nothing more than sticky spit conveyances for neck and nape. Don’t we typically try to keep hair out of our food?
- Orange circus peanuts. They are as inexcusable in design (the shape is peanutty, but it’s orange), as they are mystifying in flavor, (it’s not peanut, it’s not orange)
- Wax lips (vampire, bad teeth or kissy style). Much more “candles” than candies” a typo probably landed them in the candy aisle in the first place, and the world just left them there.
Wax lips - Wax bottles filled with colored sugar water of dubious origins and flavor
- Corn Candy – unless you consider the fun factor of nibbling one colorful layer at a time. My suspicion was these are more than 50% wax, but no ingredient list would confirm it
- Peeps – I don’t care what toxic color or shape they take; you could roll them in M&Ms and I still wouldn’t call them candy because nobody actually likes to eat them; they are Easter’s fruitcake and they’re trying to take over the other holidays as well
- Those flying saucer things reminiscent of but less tasty than BB-filled communion hosts
Flying Saucer candy - Pop rocks – their appeal is the fact they explode in your mouth???
- Horehound Slugs, they exist, I assure you, and are the candy equivalent of Moxie soda. In fact, it is so medicinal tasting that if it really were medicine, the makers would have the good sense to add a lot of grape flavoring to try to make it palatable.
Horehound candy slugs
Now go ahead vote for one of these or add your own. Votes will be tallied by the end of the month. And you may also check back at that time to see if I actually ate any of these candies that I was forced to buy for my photo shoot.
©2011 Alison B. Colby-Campbell
Brain4Rent's Blog 
Gosh, there are so many candidates. But, since you said “ever”, I assume candy items past are legal entries. So I’d have to nominate candy cigarettes as easily the most insidious. As I’m sure you remember they were bubble gum wrapped in paper cylinders so as to resemble small cigarettes. They were flame colored at one end and also were coated in confectioners sugar so you could puff on them and (if you were good) blow circlets of sweet sugary smoke so you could practice for when you graduated to the real thing. Doubtless their manufacture was underwritten by Phillip Morris. Hey, it’s just marketing, no? Sadly they are gone now. The nanny state will have outlawed them because it says they are causally linked early teenage smoking. Well duh! And if they wouldn’t have mandated all those obnoxious warning labels on the sides of real cigarette packs more people would be smoking and that would help reduce the rampant incidence of old age. But I digress.
Only a little less salubrious were the Hippy Sippy syringes. People said they promoted heroin use. Nonsense. The pointy end of the containers was so blunt all you’d get is a big bruise trying to shoot yourself up. Anyhow, they were on the market for such a short time, they really qualify only as ephemera and not a serious candidate for worst candy ever.
I guess there’s always rock candy, at once the simplest possible sweet and the most hazardous. It’s just recrystalized sugar on a stick. A colony of razor sharp shards of crystal sugar on a pointy wooden stick. Fall off your bike with that stick in your mouth and you’ll end up pithed like a frog in a high school biology class. Crystal meth is less of a health threat.
In the end I’m going to have to go with the candy cigarettes though.
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Warheads – which are actually just acid that burns your tounge. Also the ever popular candy cigarettes. I remember smoking those as a child. Thought they stopped making candy cigarettes but say them in a candy store in Mexico a few years ago.
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First of all, sorry my name is “Mom.” I was previously established on another WordPress site and cannot seem to change my handle without papal dispensation.
Secondly, I have to vote for wax lips. Definitely NOT candy.
On the other hand, Peeps are fantastic. Marshmallow treats will always be candy, regardless of the form.
Another weird non-candy are those gummy pop-culture figures, such as Sponge Bob’s Cabby Patties.
I am very much enjoying your blogs! And was delighted that you invited readers to comment/vote! 🙂
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how’d I forget they candy cigarettes, definitely belong on the list, but I don’t remember the gum, my memory was that they were kind of like sweet chalk
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The candy corn have disappeared from the bad candy bowl (I was not the culprit), suggesting someone in my house does not share my disdain for these. So that would leave room for candy cigarettes. Also heard from HillaryL. that fizzlers skittles need to be on the list because they are like a nuclear reaction in your mouth. Tried them and think it is more like a bad middle school chemistry experiment, the taste is a combo of vinegar, and dirty feet smell or perhaps dirty laundry, something very dirty. It was the only candy my guinea pig (aka teen stepdaughter) actually spit out immediately, glad to know someone’s still inventing bad candy and that my kid knows the difference….try it and post back your reaction
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was at a party tonight for Partner Promotions and two people came up to me, the first took me aside and said “Listen, I love peeps” then later another person came over to me and said “Ribbon candy’s the worst”… And I said defend your preferences on the blog. People don’t be shy, I love comments even when they differ from mine, Also loved that the conversation morphed into a group discussion of favorite candies…mine – by far chocolate Moritz Chocolate ice cubes, hard to find but worth the seach; someone said anything by Sees Candies (I love that candy too!), two other people remember buying candy at Sears some caramel dipped marshmallow and another chocolate block thing, missed that one, anybody else remember that….add your comments on favorite candies, too, if you’d like
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i love peeps, stale ones. the tougher the better. i remember sugar babies and the sugar daddy on the stick. how bout chicklets? what about pez? the candy still tastes terrible. i think i have some of the earlier dispensers. those were fun. yipes stripes gum. mary janes? hout bout those caramels with the cream in the middle, wrapped in cellophane. jujubes and dots, those candies tasted like wax.
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Thanks for visiting eileen, Sugar daddys must have been invented by dentists if they didn’t yank out fillins they certainly attached sugar directly to your teeth.But I liked mary janes and fruit stripes gum…Pixy sticks on the other hand – yuck!
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I’d have to say Non-pareils (sp ) cuz I’m so damn addicted to them
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Those horrible buttons!! I’d forgotten about them. You had to work hard to eat them. You also had to swallow a lot of paper– ugh!!
I think I made the mistake of trying a root beer barrel once. Fortunately there was a spittoon handy… : P
Very amusing post– thank’ee!!
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Root Beer barrels are wonderful. DAGNABBIT – Now I have to question your taste, unfortunately right after you “liked” this post.
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As I was saying, you just can’t beat a good rooty-toot-toot barrel… : )
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Ahhh you are the best
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Your blog exchanges with Mark brought me here.
2. They come in bracelet form, too… and I like them. They are more fun than delicious, including more adult, “mature” ways. I say they are better than that horrid abomination called Pez. Great dispensers, horrid candy.
4, 5. For some reason, I really, really like wax– the whole texture it imparts. Including beeswax or whatever they add to Dots, Gummi Bears, and the like.
6. I don’t necessarily *like* candy corn but I still hope it outgrows Halloween connotations. Thanksgiving, at least, deserves some candy.
7. Peeps endure because weird and sick people like me have hours of fun blowing them up in microwaves. The Internet has just made this even worse.
9. Yes
10. All the more horehound candy for me. It’s an acquired taste, I think. I wish I could find it without corn sugar again as I find cane sugar is a much better pairing for what I consider to be a mellow candy anyways.
Feel free to ignore me as I like the taste of green Chloraseptic, bitter root extract, and cough syrup.
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Hey Jaklumen…thanks for joining the discussion. I like warm pliable wax, once made an elephant out of it (not life size), but can’t bring myself to call it candy. And as for the peeps bowing up in the microwave, never tried it myself but it has some appeal. In my family, every holiday, heck ever day, has an official candy. We have these half dipped (dark chocolate) wintergreen (they’re pink) and peppermint (White) disks about the size of a silver dollar, every Thanksgiving, but chocolate always makes an appearance. But since the dispenser is what works for Pez, maybe is there was some sort of cob shaped dispenser, we could plug in the individual candy corns into it and make Indian Corn for Thanksgiving as well. Might be fun fillngng and then emptying the dispenser, and there is always a ton of corn candy left for 75% off at CVS after Halloween that could make a cheap centerpiece this way. In any event thanks for reading and writing and keep off the cough medicine ;o)
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