All Candy Expo Day 1 – Brian

Monday, September 17, 2007 - by Brian

Wow – day one of the All Candy Expo is over and that was the most fun I have had in a long time. It was simply crazy. The place was HUGE – every candy company I have ever heard of (and tons that I hadn’t) were there. Amazing. We’ll be writing about and reviewing candy from the show for months to come (literally).

Some random thoughts from the show:

• Chewy Fireballs – As you know, I absolutely love Fireballs, and Ferrara Pan has just released Chewy Fireballs. OMG. Think of sour cherry balls, but Fireball-flavored. Awesome. Review to come. They also now have “Chewy Lemonhead and Friends” with lemon, grape, cherry, and green apple. Review to come.
• Soda Pop Top – great invention. Remove the top from your soda or water and screw on the Soda Pop Top instead. It’s a top, with a short straw through it. On the top of the straw is a lollipop with the top of the straw exposed. So you suck on the lollipop and drink your drink and the lollipop flavors the drink. Very cool idea. Review to come.
• Crunchy Gummies from the Albanese Candy Company – these have been around for a while but I just tried them at the show. Wow – they’re good. They’re gummies coated with little nonpareil balls. Great texture and super-tasty.
• Two different companies (Felfoldi’s is one) have milk flavorings in a straw – very interesting concept. The flavor stays in the straw in little flavor balls and you suck the milk through the straw to flavor it. Can’t wait to try them when I get home. Review to come.
• A company called Squibbles has a neat idea with Gummi Checkers and Gummi Tic Tac Toe. It comes with a foldout playing board and flattened gummies you use as checkers or Tic Tac Toe pieces.
• Dubble Bubble is bringing back the old Tongue Splashers Gum and calling them Painterz.
• Werther’s Caramelt is being test-marketed across the US in Walgreen’s. They’re not your typical Werther’s hard candy – they’re soft, like chocolate. Quite tasty – review to come. Werther’s also announced new Werther’s Original Caramel Chocolate and Caramel Chocolate Dark. These two are not typical Werther’s hard candy – they’re football-shaped and have a chocolate caramel swirl. Review to come.
• Too Tarts has new Melted Ice Cream spray candy in the same size and shape as their other spray candies.
• I got some Gimbal’s Lavaballs – hot cinnamon chewy candies – yum! Review to come.
• Jelly Belly has new BeanBoozled Jelly Beans – they are packs of two Jelly Belly flavors that look the same but one is a good flavor. Examples: black – either Licorice or Skunk; mottled orange – Caramel Corn or Moldy Cheese; mottled orange – Peach or Vomit; blue – Berry or Toothpaste; white – Coconut or Baby Wipes, etc. I tried all of them – Skunk is NASTY – it tastes like what I would imagine poop to taste like. Moldy Cheese was the only one I had to spit out. So much fun! These come out in January of 2008.
• Grillz – lollipop on one side, lips with blinged-out teeth on the other side. Review to come.
• Candy Matches from Felfoldi- who wants to eat matches? I don’t get it.

I never thought I would be so glad to eat a hot dog. By lunch time I needed some real food and was candied out. I never thought that would happen. We took a bunch of pictures and are working on getting them online once we get some bandwidth (see below).

Unfortunately, our hotel does not have internet access (but is supposed to) so I have to write this in the room then upload it to the site from the show in the morning. Not fun. Oh – and they only had two hangers for us. Definitely not a 5-star hotel, but it’s clean and close to the show.

More to come……

All Candy Expo