My family members are all big fans of Jelly Belly jellybeans. (Well, the 1-year-old we’re not sure about. But I have a feeling…) And thanks to my older son – who could eat the multi-colored beans for breakfast, lunch and dinner – we’ve become near-daily consumers of Jelly Belly’s sour variety of beans.

As a matter of fact, we’ve even toured the Jelly Belly factory in Pleasant Prairie, Wis. Of course, “tour” might be a strong word. What we actually did was ride through a warehouse in a golf cart while wearing goofy paper Jelly Belly hats, kept safely far, far away from any actual manufacturing of the beans. But there was a bonus to the tour: At the end, we were allowed to sample all of the Jelly Belly company’s delicious flavors, one bean at a time. I prefer to eat them by the handful myself, but I will do almost anything for free candy.

So I am always happy to snarf down a new Jelly Belly product. And that’s how I ended up testing out a series of Jelly Belly Lollipops, known on the Jelly Belly Web site, though not on their packaging, as Lollibeans.

These look like a very large jelly bean impaled by a stick. About the size of a skewered Beenie Weenie, this is a rather odd shape for a sucker. The pop is 1.75 inches across and almost 1 inch thick. Yes, it is rather awkward to suck on. In fact, it’s almost impossible to civilly enjoy this treat without making a series of loud slurping and giant sucking sounds. Think of all the money being sucked out of your 401(k) account right now. Eating a Lollibean sounds about like that. Perhaps if they turned the sucker the other way around so you could enjoy it corn-dog style, it would be easier to eat.

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I love caramel. Anything dipped in it will do – apples, pretzels, onions… you get the picture. I still crave the old Marathon bar, the one with chocolate, braided caramel and a ruler on the back of the package. I rejoiced when Cadbury came out with a king-sized Caramello bar. At Halloween time, I eat the caramel discs that come with taffy apple kits and toss the apples. (Well, I don’t actually buy the apples, but, again, you get the picture.)

So I’ve been wanting to try Werther’s Original caramel chocolates ever since I saw the commercial on TV. Werther’s candies are marketed as treats handed down through the generations. They’re always showing some older gentleman (I hope it’s that kid’s grandpa) handing out candies to young tykes in short pants. There might be a little vaguely European candy shop where robust workers joyfully toil away on their sweet confections. (“I may be making minimum wage, but this caramel is off the hook!”) After eating their candy, folks generally hug, smile and live happily ever after. I don’t know if you can get this same feeling from a Twix bar.

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To me Godiva is like the Starbucks of chocolate. It’s a bit pretentious, often overpriced and it’s available everywhere, lurking in book stores, airports, hotels, even clothing stores.

But, just like Starbucks, Godiva knows how to deliver. The company’s chocolates are pricey but consistently good. The Godiva people also know how to saturate a market, just like their Starbucks friends: The chocolate behemoth has perfected the art of offering up the same product in hundreds of variations. From bars to liquors to cookies, there’s plenty of ways to get a Godiva fix. I’m waiting for the Godiva intravenous drip to dispense chocolate into my bloodstream 24 hours a day.

Now Godiva has created chocolate ‘pearls’ that come in a can. The company Web site plugs these with the tagline “Decadence goes mobile.” Please. Do we really need another temptation from these people?

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What do you do when you desperately want to love something, or maybe just tolerate it, but can’t? That’s the question I faced when I first bit into Chocolove’s Raspberries in Dark Chocolate candy bar.

The bar promised so much. I mean, look at the packaging. The bar is designed like a love letter addressed to you, the consumer. There’s a quaint raspberry stamp in the upper right-hand corner, a mock-gold embossed heart and lots of hugs and kisses. The romantics behind this treat have even printed a love poem on the inside gold wrapper. Fun, bright and hip. With packaging this classy, the candy’s gotta be great, right?

Well, the Chocolove raspberry bar is a lot like a first date that looks great sitting across the table from you. But when you dig a bit deeper, you realize that this “catch” doesn’t have a job and still lives with mom and dad. The Chocolove bar, alas, doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.

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Candy eating can be a bit depressing this time of year. Halloween is over, and the only thing left in the bottom of your kids’ plastic pumpkins are butterscotch Dum Dum suckers and peppermint Star Brites. To make matters worse, the winter holidays are still far enough away that it requires real work to find chocolate Santas and marshmallow snowmen to munch on. And eating candy should never be work.

What’s a person to do? It’s time to troll the local candy shops and specialty supermarkets for something other than the usual candy suspects you find in every gas station in the country. This searching led me to something quite amazing, Anastasia’s Confections Coconut Patties, an oddbird candy treat that features coconut, of course, dipped in rich chocolate. Being a fan of both Almond Joy and Mounds bars, I decided to give the Coconut Patties a try.

Well, Mounds – and Almond Joy, too – eat your heart out. These Coconut Patties have left you in their dust. Coconut Patties are that most pleasant of candy surprises: A treat that tastes far better than it looks.

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