PROVIDENCE, RI – September 22, 2009 — “Glee” is a word often heard these days, thanks to the most highly anticipated television show of the season. In celebration of the “Glee” series on TV, Glee Gum is delighted to join FOX in offering ELEVEN winning tickets inside select packs of gum this fall!

Beginning Sept. 23, 2009, the “Your Ticket to Glee” sweepstakes offers gum-chewers aged 18 years and older a chance to win one of eleven fabulous prize packages. Ten Glee Gum packs contain vouchers for big prizes of yummy gum and “Glee” show merchandise— from hats and tees to autographed cast pictures. The eleventh Glee Gum pack holds the ticket to the super grand prize: a trip for two to Hollywood! The grand prize includes roundtrip air transportation, two nights hotel accommodation, and a $250 American Express gift card. How Glee-ful!

“Glee,” the genre-defying new musical comedy series, follows an optimistic teacher who – against all odds and a malicious cheerleading coach – attempts to save McKinley High’s Glee Club from obscurity while helping a group of aspiring underdogs realize their true star potential. Embraced by critics and viewers alike, the uplifting show with biting humor features a soundtrack of hit music from past to present. Tune in to “Glee” Wednesdays (9:00-10:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX!

While watching “Glee”, try chewing it too. Available in six sweet flavors, Glee Gum is all-natural chewing gum made without artificial flavors, colors, sweeteners, or preservatives. The secret ingredient is chicle, a swell, sticky tree sap harvested from the rainforests of Central America. Using chicle is a sustainable way to keep the trees of the rainforest standing, and to help the folks who work there to make a living. Plus, that’s how gum was originally made – and you know what they say when it ain’t broke! Packaged in recycled cardboard, Glee provides a great, green alternative to artificial gums.

With national distribution in specialty grocers like Whole Foods and Cost Plus, Glee Gum can be found from sea to shining sea. Who knows where “Your Ticket to Glee” will be?

For more details on Glee Gum and the “Your Ticket to Glee” sweepstakes, including complete Official Rules, please visit www.gleegum.com. For more information on “Glee”, check out www.fox.com/glee. In the meantime, chew Glee, watch “Glee” and go Glee-fully!

About Verve, inc., Makers of Glee Gum
Verve, Inc. is an independent, certified woman-owned business, dedicated to linking world communities and creating environmentally and socially responsible products. In addition to Glee Gum, Verve produces a line of all natural, educational Make Your Own Candy Kits for kids. Verve is a dedicated member of 1% for the Planet and Green America. Chew with Glee, naturally!

About “Glee”
Starring Dianna Agron, Chris Colfer, Jessalyn Gilsig, Jane Lynch, Jayma Mays, Kevin McHale, Lea Michele, Cory Monteith, Matthew Morrison, Amber Riley and Mark Salling, GLEE is produced by Ryan Murphy Television in association with 20th Century Fox Television. Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan are co-creators of the series. Murphy, Falchuk and Dante Di Loreto serve as executive producers, while Ian Brennan serves as co-executive producer. Murphy also served as director of the pilot.

GLEE™ & © 2009 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

• Candy Addict Glee Gum review

Yes, you read that right… $3,000,000.00. That’s a lot of zeroes. That’s Willy Wonka money. They say candy is one of the few recession-proof items and I believe it. It’s going to take a LOT of candy sales to pay for that domain name.

I am thoroughly unimpressed so far though – I can’t take anyone seriously that uses Comic Sans as their font. It will be interesting to see if they survive – it takes more than a good domain name to make a business and plenty of sites have thrived with terrible (or at least not optimal) domain names.

• Candy.com Sells For A Sweet $3 Million

Now that I have had some time to decompress, I can look back at my great time at the All Candy Expo and share with you what was going on and what I felt really stuck out in yumminess.

The whole Expo just seems overwhelming by nature. I mean, when the three of us met in the press room, there were at least a dozen different products that were “all you could take” just waiting for us to grab, conveniently place by an “all you can eat” ice cream freezer, and this is all in addition to the messenger bag of goodies we got when we signed in.

I remember walking into the Expo and just being amazed by all the candy around me. Everywhere you could see there were bowls of samples and servers handing out products. It was like walking into a Walmart stocked only with candy, and all of it was free. This seemed like the adult version of trick-or-treating, and before I knew it, I had already filled up a bag.

Throughout the three-day event, there were sessions exploring various components of the confectionery world, but I tended to skip them as most were geared toward distributors and buyers, and frankly, do you really want to know why chocolate is a solid product to invest in during a recession? Yeah, less talkey and more free candy givey.

So for three days my routine consisted of traveling the various areas of the show floor, mingling with the people running the booths, and filling bags upon bags with candy. Aside from the major candy distributors, there were smaller companies, foreign companies, and gourmet companies.

One of the best perks of the show is that you really do get to eat any piece of candy you always wanted to try. Often, I find myself in a supermarket staring at scores of products I want to try, but I simply don’t have the stomach/wallet to consume them all. At the Expo, all you had to do was approach your booth of choice and suddenly you could consume anything you wanted.

The coolest moment of the show occurred on the third day. You see, each booth constructs elaborate displays of their products and they’re just filled with all sorts of candy. None of the people working the booths really want to take all this candy back with them, so on the third day you’re essentially allowed to grab whatever you want… crazy, I know.

So how much candy did I grab? Well, after three days of hoarding as much as humanly possible (keeping in mind I had to take the Red Line up to Andersonville every day with my haul), the gross weight was 72 pounds! Thankfully, my awesome friend Jason, whom I was staying with, graciously accepted all the candy I couldn’t carry back with me to Austin.

I still haven’t had a chance to eat all the things I want to eat, so I can’t compose a definitive list of all the products I think you should try. But from what I did consume, here’s what I think were the all-stars of the 2009 All Candy Expo:

• Landrin Waferatto: I honestly didn’t want to like these. These couture chocolates are inspired by fashion prints and are supposed to appeal to women via beautiful packaging, so I assumed they would skimp on taste for presentation. I couldn’t have been more wrong. These delicious wafer truffles with a hazelnut center surpass even Ferrero Rocher.
• Choward’s Mints and Gum: I’m not really a mints or gum guy, so I was surprised to find myself in love with this small company. They produce staple flavors, such as peppermint and spearmint, but they carve a niche for themselves with an elegant flavor of violet gum and mints; truly unique, complex, and refreshing.
• VerMints: Again, here’s another product I thought would disagree with my taste buds. However, what makes these so tasty is the nuanced flavors they offer consumers. My favorites were the GingerMint variety, which tasted like gingerbread, but the Café Express was great too.
• Gimbal’s Cherry Lovers: The Gimbal’s booth people were just some of the nicest people on earth. They just kept giving me samples and samples of all their different products; however, the one that stood head and shoulders above the rest was their Cherry Lovers confection, a bag of heart-shaped cherry gummies consisting of nine different cherry flavors.
• Albanese Confectionery Gummies: I’m sure Albanese has great chocolate and whatever else they were offering at their booth, but the sad truth is that I was so impressed with the gummi line that I filled up on them before I could even get to the chocolate. Seriously, these are just some of the best you’ll ever try, particularly the sour ones, since the sour component is actually mixed in the gummi and isn’t just a coating.
• NewTree: This high-end, small company wowed me as my favorite of the gourmet products I tasted. Their Belgian dark chocolate is infused with black currant, apricot, and lavender, among other flavors, all of which succeed in remarkable fashion.

When I got the job writing for this site, very nearly a year ago, I was ecstatic. I’d have an excuse to try all kinds of exciting new candies and share my opinions of them with the world. I’d have a super-cool contract writing job that would also provide me with published writing samples for my resume. And maybe, just maybe, someday, I’d get to go to the All Candy Expo.

Now, I’ve wanted to attend the All Candy Expo ever since I heard it existed (like many people, from the Food Network show Unwrapped and that episode of The Simpsons with the gummy Venus de Milo.) It seemed like such an unlikely and far-away dream for your average writer and Candy Addict. But in the end, it came true!

I met up with fellow Candy Addicts Robby and Caitlin at Chicago’s McCormick Center bright and early on Tuesday morning. I knew I wasn’t in Kansas any more when, upon registration, I was presented with a big green tote bag – filled with candy! The press room wall was lined with full-sized chocolate bars and candies – Flings, Crackheads, and the new Skittles Crazy Cores and Fudge Snickers, to name a few. Robby and I immediately began to dig into the heap of freebies, which resulted in our being called newbies by expo veteran Caitlin. And, indeed, the sugar rush was only beginning.

What can I say about the All Candy Expo that hasn’t been said before? You’ve doubtless heard the ACE referred to as “trick-or-treating for grownups” or “like something out of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” or possibly “a diabetic’s worst nightmare.” I can assure you that all of these things are true. Imagine a giant auditorium all filled with candy companies, from the very big to the very small, all waiting to load you up with free samples of cool and exciting new products – more kinds of gourmet chocolates, gummies, mints, and even savory snacks like jerky and chips than you can keep straight in your head. I came away with an array of “nuclear sour” candies, caffeinated lollipops, new siblings for Reese’s Pieces, chocolate-covered sunflower seeds, and a whole lot more, all of which we’ll be telling you about in a lot more detail in the coming weeks.

In addition to sampling tons of new products, I got to hear all about Mars’ exciting new Real Chocolate Relief Act from their own press conference. I got to have lunch with some preeminent candy and food bloggers (even if they did spend the whole time talking about bacon rather than candy). And coolest of all, I got to meet and hang out with fellow Candy Addicts Caitlin and Robby.

In the end, my candy-fu proved weak – I lasted only a day and a half before I had to pack it in. (Too much sugar and not enough real food does not-good things to my stomach.) I didn’t even make it to the third day, when I’m informed that the candy companies start unloading full-sized items instead of little sample packs. That’s probably why my own haul clocked in at a relatively restrained 22 lbs (which didn’t feel so restrained when I had to lug it all over the airport later). Still, it’s more than enough to share with my friends, family and coworkers, write a bunch of reviews for the site, and even have a little left over for myself.

And though our coverage of the expo proper has ended, there’s still lots more to come. From new special editions of everyone’s favorite treats to brand new items, we’ll be providing in-depth reviews of all these candies in the upcoming weeks. Stay tuned!

So one of the biggest perks of coming to the All Candy Expo is the chance to see what products are on their way to market before everyone else. Here’s a brief list of the highlights of the show that you can expect to see in the upcoming year:

• Baby Ruth Crisp from Nestle
• Gummies (Sluggles and Puckerooms) and filled licorice (Kazoozles) from Wonka
• Cranberry Raisinets
• Tropical flavors of Chewy Lemonead and Friends
• Bonobo Turkish Taffy (returns to the market after 20 years)
• New Mike and Ike products by Just Born
• New M&M’s Premium flavor and packaging
• M&M’s Strawberried Peanut Butter and Snickers Nougabot from Mars (to tie in with the new Transformers movie)
• M&M’s Coconut
• Snickers Fudge Bar
• Sweetriot Unbars
• Banana Tootsie Pop
• Hershey’s Pieces (think Reese’s Pieces, but with York Peppermint Patties and a variety of other Hershey’s brands)
• Landrin luxury chocolates
• Sour Berry Bears from Surf Sweets

Stay tuned for reviews of everything we could get our hands on!

This trip is a first for many things for me. It’s my first time in Chicago, the first time at an expo, the first time I met Caitlin and Laurie in person (both so awesome), and the first time I have ever wondered if there is such a thing as too much candy.

I mean there is just a ridiculous amount here. After weighing my haul from yesterday, I came back with 38 pounds. 38! That’s like a small dog. And it’s only day one!

There’s a lot to talk about, but only so much I can write in brief, so here are a few highlights:

• M&M’s coconut will be debuting as a limited release this summer
• Snickers Fudge will be out in August
• Newest flavor craze could be cherimoya/guabana
• Smaller packaging is in

Those were the big things I think you should know before anything else, and when I get home this weekend, I’ll write something in length and mention the noteworthy products I sampled and what else to look forward to. For now, it’s back to the floor and even more candy!

Well, Day 1 of the All Candy Expo is officially over, so I thought I’d share with you the most amusing part of the day. At the Mars press conference, we got to see this very funny “public service announcement” featuring Neil Patrick Harris. It’s part of the Real Chocolate Relief Act we reported on a couple of weeks ago.

Just to refresh your memory: from now until September, Mars is giving away 250,000 free coupons for full size chocolate on Fridays at realchocolate.com. That’s a total of 7 million bars of free chocolate! In addition, there will be special events at various cities, and some great savings on Mars chocolate at your local stores. So go check it out and enjoy some good Mars chocolate – still mockolate-free!

It’s May, so you know what that means. We’re not talking about blooming flowers or May showers… no, May for Candy Addicts means All Candy Expo time! This year I’ve brought along Laurie and Robby to revel in the goodness of the Expo.

Today is the first day, and already I’ve discovered a brand new candy that has me absolutely over the moon. I’m not going to give away too much, but suffice it to say it’s like freeze dried ice cream but BETTER. If you know me, you know I love freeze dried ice cream, but I’m always thwarted by the price and the difficulty finding it. This stuff is not only better tasting, but hopefully will be cheaper and easier to find. I’ll write a full review later, but I’m totally stoked about it!

In a total coup (no, really, there was almost a fistfight) I also scored a box of the Star Trek Gummies to try, so keep on the lookout for that review soon!

More news to follow!

The economy sucks and pigs are being blamed for zombie attacks (wait, did I get that swine flu thing wrong?), but luckily Mars has come up with a way to help everyone out. No, they’re not bailing out any banks or handing out surgical masks; instead, they’re giving away free chocolate. And lots of it!

In a campaign unleashed on the world this past Thursday, Mars has started giving away full size chocolate bars to unsuspecting passersby, in addition to unveiling their Free Chocolate Fridays program at www.realchocolate.com. Through the end of September, you can register on Fridays to receive one of 250,000 available coupons for a Mars chocolate bar. You have to be quick, though – if you take more than 5 minutes to register, you won’t get it. Registration starts at 9am on Fridays and ends at midnight (assuming all the coupons aren’t gone long before).

So forget your money troubles and germophobia and go get yourself some free chocolate. What could be sweeter?

• Mars Real Chocolate Relief Act Website
• Mars Website

The last time I headed into Dylan’s Candy Bar it was for a fairly hideous Swedish Fish event. So, it was with some trepidation that I ventured back for a media get-together with Beth Kimmerle, author of Chocolate: The Sweet History and Candy: The Sweet History (among others). Thankfully, I was pleasantly surprised by how enjoyable the afternoon turned out.

The event basically showcased Beth’s crafty creations using candy. Some of the things were absolutely amazing (I especially liked the pretzel butterflies – see above), and all were great ways to find creative uses for candy as well as being fun to do with the kids. Beth is a big fan of Life Savers Gummies (who isn’t?) and a lot of her creations seem to utilize the tasty treats. One big thing I found out is that the packaging is changing for Life Savers Gummies – instead of that tubular thing that never seemed to hold quite enough, they’re now coming in small bags. They’ll still fit in your purse, but you get more. Woot!

When we left we got a gift bag containing the ingredients to make some of the creations. Now, let’s face it: these tasty candies are never going to make it past the “open package insert into mouth” stage of creation, but it was a nice thought. We also got some of the recipes highlighted at the event, and I thought our more ambitious readers might enjoy trying one out. So, without further ado, here’s the recipe for those gorgeous Pretzelfly Pops:

Add a little wing to your spring! Use pretzels and Life Savers to make these gorgeous butterfly lollipops that are sure to brighten your afternoon. These beautiful bugs are the perfect sweet treat for an afternoon tea party or baby shower!

To create 10 Pretzelfly Pops, you will need
1. (1) 16 oz. bag of thin pretzels
2. 80 pieces 5 Flavor Life Savers
3. 5 pieces colored licorice (for antennae)
4. 10 lollipop sticks
5. Small plastic bags
6. Parchment paper
7. Cookie sheet

Instructions
1. Preheat oven to 175 degrees.

2. Place Life Savers into small plastic bags, separating them according to color. Seal bags tightly and using an object with a flat surface, like a small pot, gently crush bagged Life Savers into small pieces.

3. Place thin pretzels on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper, arranging together in pairs so the pretzels look like wings. Insert a lollipop stick in between each pair. For best butterfly results, arrange so that your lollipop stick and two pretzel ends are touching. Leave ample room at top for licorice antennae.

4. Take the bagged Life Saver candy bits and carefully sprinkle them into the interior part of the pretzel (open space between the rods). Use larger clear pieces to fuse wings and lollipop stick together by placing directly on stick. Use generous amount of Life Savers pieces so they will gel together when melted to achieve the desired effect.

5. Once all pretzel wings are filled with Life Savers, cut 2” pieces of colored licorice and carefully place in top area. Be sure that enough Life Savers are used for proper effect.

6. Steadily place cookie sheet in the oven, making sure all pieces remain in place. Cook your creation for five to eight minutes (at 175 degrees), checking progress regularly to see that Life Savers are melting evenly. Once Life Savers are melted, take the cookie sheet out of oven and allow to cool completely. Once cool, gently take butterfly pops off of parchment paper.

If you make some, let us know how it goes! And keep your eyes peeled for more fun recipes coming soon!

UPDATE: A reader tried the recipe but had some trouble with the temperature. If you plan on making these, you may want to give yourself some extra time and experiment with the temperature if you have a problem. I’ll let you know if the recipe authors have an update on the temperature.

• Beth Kimmerle’s Candymonium

Buy Life Savers Online:

• at Old Time Candy
• at Amazon.com