Unless you’ve been living under a Pop Rock, you’ve heard the pop tunes of Katy Perry — maybe on your radio or maybe your kids have been singing about “California Gurls” or “E.T.” On the cover of the latest issue of Rolling Stone, Katy Perry has donned a Hershey’s Kiss bra. I’m sure there are some folks in Pennsylvania thanking the artist for putting their chocolaty treats on the minds of tweenyboppers all over the planet.

• Rolling Stone

• Hershey’s

• Buy Hershey Kisses

One pilot began to send his candy rations down to the children of Berlin, tied in tiny parachutes made of handkerchiefs. Gail Halvorsen, the pilot who dropped candy from his plane, would wiggle the wings of his plane as he flew over Berlin so the children would know there would be a candy drop. The German children began to call him “Uncle Wiggly Wings.” He would drop chocolate bars, gum, and raisins.

Halvorsen’s superior officers didn’t know what he was up to, but when they found out, they called him into the office. He was afraid he’d be court-martialed, but instead, his Lieutenant told him to keep doing his project, which became known as “Operation Little Vittles.” Eventually, the American public heard about Halvorsen and began to donate candy and handkerchiefs to the cause. The Confectioners’ Association of America donated large amounts of candy, and American school children tied candy to handkerchief parachutes.

Halvorsen has been credited with making a huge impact on German-American relations with his act of delivering candy to children, and for creating a positive perception of Americans to Germans, who had been at war with Americans during the years of World War II. Even recently, Halvorsen’s example has been emulated by the U.S. military, and they have dropped toys, teddy bears, and soccer balls to children in Iraq.

• The Candy Bombers – Video
• Gail Halvorsen – The Candy Bomber

Image: Public Domain and made available via Wikimedia Commons

Great for the special person in your life, or just to add some sweet fun to any room, our new Jellio Seat Hearts are the perfect way to show your romantic side. Choose from “Love You”, “Be Mine” or “Hug Me”.

Colors:
Pink, Plum or Yellow

Size:
24” wide x 20” deep x 17” high.

Materials:
Vinyl over foam. wooden legs

Jellio makes the kind of cool furniture I just wish I had the money to buy. Be sure and check out all of their other cool furniture too.

• Jellio Seat Hearts

If you’re at a loss for what to get your sweetheart this Valentine’s Day, don’t worry. Just drive over to your local Target or other big-box all-purpose store or pharmacy and check out their special seasonal section, which is full of tons of great candy choices. Whether you prefer your candy romantic, sweet, silly, or weird, you should find a great selection at discount store prices. Check out what I found.

Romantic Candy

Target had tons of great choices for romantic candy, and almost all the options cost no more than $10. At the top of the page is a ruffly box of Russell Stover chocolates. If your gal is slightly girly and romantic, she’ll probably love this box!

Of course, there were tons of other heart-shaped boxes of chocolate:

This box of Dove chocolates has a less-traditional shape, and is filled with delicious Dove chocolate hearts. If your sweetheart is a chocoholic, this will do the trick.

I like these boxes that look like candy hearts with messages in Spanish. They’re also filled with Russell Stover chocolates.

Or, skip the heart-shaped box of bon-bons and get a candy rose. The Toblerone box is a standard Toblerone with a cardboard rose on the box, while the Dove box has a rose made of candy coming out the top. A tip from a lady to guys who need some help choosing a Valentine’s Day gift: this is a sweet gift, but because it’s smaller, make sure you tuck something else in with this one, like a gift certificate for a pedicure.

Manly Valentine Candy

There were several fun candy options to give to the manly men in your life! How about a candy tackle box?

Or, if your man is a little more of a player, you could gamble on some Lucky in Love candy poker chips.

For your handy man, here are some milk chocolate tools. I might go back and get these for my construction-obsessed son.

Valentine Candy for Kids

Target has some fun offerings for kid valentine candy. I would have loved to get these Fun Dip valentines from a classmate back in grade school!

There are a couple different candy jewelry kits, which are perfect valentines for your little girl.

No Valentine’s Day is complete without a few boxes of Sweethearts. Have you tried the Glam version?

These Star Wars Clone Wars heart-shaped lollipops are so cool! Hearts + Star Wars = Love.

I think these gummy candy skewers are cute — especially the cupcakes!

These heart-shaped boxes of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups Miniatures come with a cute stuffed cheetah, which many kiddos would love. Or, if you want to give some special Valentine’s Day candy to a friend, co-worker, sibling, client, or someone who you don’t want to send the wrong message to, this would be a good choice.

Fun & Fantastic Valentine Candy

At first I thought this was a Valentine’s Day Voodoo doll, but when I looked at the tag, it said the toy was a “monster.” Hmm, a Valentine’s Day Monster, huh? Slightly creepy-cute, and completely perfect for your teen.

I got this Wonka Scrumdiddlyumptious Chocolate for my family to try. How could you not?

Don’t wait until Easter to get your Peeps fix! You can get marshmallow hearts and “I heart you” candy right now.

I’m a huge fan of candy sprinkles. They make everything more fun! My favorite of this group are the pink pearl nonpareils (although, the X’s and O’s are pretty cool, too). If you are the baking type, make your own Valentine’s Day sweets, and add special sprinkles to make your goodies that much more fun.

Slightly cheeky, this Spin the Bottle candy gift sends the message that you want to have a fun time with your sweetheart on Valentine’s Day.

For some reason, you don’t see strawberries together with chocolate candy bars that often. In fact, these Ghirardelli Dark & Strawberry squares might be the first ones that I’ve ever seen!

This virtual tour of Target’s Valentine candy aisle should give you some inspiration about which sweet treat will be perfect for your valentine. Which of these candies caught your eye? What are you getting your sweetheart this year? Which candy do you want to receive?

If you knew me in real life, you would know that very little shocks me. I’m one of those people who finds things like comic strips and stand up comedians funny, but rarely laughs out loud. Every once in a while, though, something comes along which makes me not only laugh, but laugh long and loud enough to justify sharing it with my friends. In this case, as the cause of my endless laughing was a candy, I felt compelled to share it with the wider Candy Addicted world.

I am, of course, talking about gummi lighthouses.

The thing that perplexes me, of course, is that I have no idea why anybody would think about making a gummi lighthouse in the first place. The whole gummi animal thing makes sense to me – fish and bears and little tiny people are kinda cute. Gummi fruit is a total no-brainer – because it makes logical sense to make a candy look like the flavor of fruit it is. Random shapes like rings and squares and soda bottles also make sense. Lighthouses? Yeah. Not so much.

One wonders if this is some sort of subliminal message. (You’ll have to click on the link below to see what I mean.)

For the purposes of not harming small children in the making of this article, a photo of the actual product can be found at this link:

• Gummi Lighthouses at joeydevilla.com

(Thanks to Bob at http://pfdebate.com for the tip – no pun intended)

Bertie Bott and Beanboozled have nothing on these beans.

Is there anything sweeter in this universe to look at than George Clooney’s beautiful mug? (Ladies, am I right?) Well there is one thing, it turns out, thanks to the Jelly Belly Candy Company. The gourmet jelly bean manufacturer commissioned artist Roger Rocha to create a mosaic likeness of the Academy Award winning actor using 10,000 of their tasty little beans. And the two-time “Sexiest Man Alive” has never looked so delicious, featuring Cotton Candy cheeks, Buttered Popcorn highlights, Cantaloupe laugh lines, and Coconut teeth. Really gives unprecedented meaning to the notion of “eye candy,” huh?

The artwork – and generous gift to female Candy Addicts the world over – was on display at Jelly Belly’s gifting suite at the Luxe Hotel in Beverly Hills for the duration of Oscar week, where it was to remain until its donation to a charity of Clooney’s choosing. On an unrelated side note, all of my paperwork for nonprofit status has been filed.

A little research quickly revealed that Jelly Belly has a history of bean portraiture, much of which is displayed in their online gallery. From “Famous People” and “Icons & Other Cool Stuff” to “American Historical and Political Figures,” there’s a little something for everyone here, but none make me salivate in quite the same way as the former TV doctor.

• Jelly Belly Museum of Bean Art

Case in point: Willy Wonka substituted cherry and lime with pineapple and mango in its popular Runts candy this past year with less than stellar response. Mango is a highly unusual flavor to see as far as candy goes, although I found the Runts version to be adequately pleasing. Pineapple, while usually popular enough, is executed horribly for Runts. Both the shape and the flavor are crude representations of actual fruit and it is not very pleasing to the eye or the tongue.

So why would Wonka replace two original (and in the case of cherry, very popular) flavors for two that lack the quality or recognition to fill their void? Who’s to say? Though the “¡Sabores Nuevos! Piña Y Mango” emblazoned on the package would appear to speak volumes about the decision to include these new flavors.

This isn’t the first time that changes have been made to the Runts lineup. In the late 90’s lime was replaced with two flavors, watermelon and blue raspberry (both originally from the short-lived Tropical Runts). So in effect four flavors were lost to make room for pineapple and mango. Another variation called Rock N’ Runts came a little later comprised of the offending pineapple, lemon, watermelon, raspberry, and grape.

While many find the substitution of lime and cherry to be a travesty, my aggravation goes a level deeper. To me Runts are the last bastion of the fruit flavor flag previously carried by Wonka’s legendary Wacky Wafers. There are many fruit flavored candies on the market, but none were as fine as the versions found in Wacky Wafers. Something that Runts shared with the now discontinued Wacky Wafers were the carryover of both the banana and the orange flavors (unfortunately, strawberry didn’t make the same transition).

Now if I were going to make a change to Runts, I would look to the past. I would reintroduce Runts with the Wacky Wafer lineup using those flavor versions of green apple, strawberry, watermelon, orange and banana. A change like this (although still omitting the much loved cherry) would be met with more open arms by the public at large than the inclusion of a poorly translated pineapple and the less than popular mango.

I can’t fault Nestle/Wonka for trying to cater to the Hispanic demographic as it continues to rise in prominence across the country, but there has to be a better way than experimenting (poorly) with such a popular product. Instead, embrace the past with a line of Wacky Runts with the flavors used in Wacky Wafers, and reintroduce Tropical Runts with Pineapple, Mango, Lemon, Lime, and Cherry. Sounds like a win-win situation to me.

• Play the Runts Collector Game
• Wonka Homepage

Buy Runts Online:

• at Candy Direct
• at Amazon.com

For a quick, sugary burst of instant gratification, you simply must check out the expertly curated collection of Peeps dioramas over at Asylum.com. We’ve long enjoyed the candy-related content Asylum offers (the other stuff is pretty good too, but who wants to read anything that’s not about candy, hmmm?), but this recent article earns them the status of Candy Darlings, no question. Collected therein are photos of Peeps in all kinds of crazy situations: Lord of the Peeps, Sgt. Peeper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Peep Jousting, Peep Brulee, and my personal fave, Peep Show.

If Asylum’s gallery of Peeps pics is just enough to cruelly tantalize you, don’t forget to check out Washington Post’s Peeps diorama contest. And if, after all that, you’re still craving a Peeps fix, relax. Peter Cottontail’s coming to make a marshmallow deposit any day now…

• Asylum’s Peeps Gallery
• Candy Addict’s Extensive Peeps Coverage

marshmallow, Peeps, Easter, photos

“Peeps Are A Girl’s Best Friend” is the title of the winning entry of last year’s Peeps Diorama contest. Yes, you heard me right. There’s such a thing as a Peeps Diorama contest. The folks over at the Washington Post have started this yearly contest showcasing the favorite Easter treat to test the creative skills of Peeps lovers alike.

The gallery of the diorama entries is truly impressive to look at with different themes ranging from social commentary to playful puns and pop culture references. It’s really fun to see how Peeps fans decided to use their favorite candy as an artistic medium. Don’t like feeling left out of the fun? This year’s contest is now open for submissions, so be sure to check it out. Please let us know if you plan to enter. Also, don’t forget to share which diorama from last year is your favorite!

• WashingtonPost.com’s Second Annual Peeps Diorama Contest Article
• WashingtonPost.com’s Peep Show Winner’s Gallery

Easter, Peeps, marshmallow, creative, funny