One of the new candies unveiled at this year’s All Candy Expo was this new twist on a classic candy: the Abba-Zaba Chocolate Cream center. When Brian told me about his find on the showroom floor I couldn’t help but respond by asking a gazillion questions about it. For me, a new addition to the Abba-Zaba family was big, big news.

The original Abba-Zaba is a sweet taffy with a stripe of peanut butter running down the center. There’s also a Sour Apple variety with the taffy carrying the flavor and the peanut butter center remaining intact. What I found most exciting about this new Abba-Zaba was the replacement of the peanut butter with “chocolate cream” (ok, so it’s really mockolate), which sort of takes away the consistent component of the candy. I was curious to see if this hurt the formula of the bar at all.

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It’s hard to believe that the world’s first combination candy bar is still an unknown name for most. I am referring to the GooGoo Cluster, which was made by the Standard Candy Company back in 1912. Like most classic and retro candy, they can be difficult to find unless you live in the region that is producing them. So in this case, anyone who isn’t living in the South is very possibly missing out on a very tasty piece of history.

What made the GooGoo Cluster so new in 1912 was, unlike Hershey’s and all the other large candy companies at the time, the GooGoo Cluster wanted to be more than just a solid bar of chocolate. Instead, the creators of the GooGoo made a mound of marshmallow, caramel and roasted peanuts covered in milk chocolate. Now that’s a candy with ambition! How the GooGoo got it’s name is shrouded in myth, since no one exactly remembers who was first to suggest it.

As the years have passed, the recipe for the GooGoo has remained unchanged due to Standard Candy Company’s strong ties to tradition. Even so, new varieties of the GooGoo have been added; the GooGoo Supreme with pecans instead of peanuts and the GooGoo Peanut Butter which replaced the marshmallow and caramel.

Ready to find out how they taste?

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Nestle’s Coffee Crisp is a bar that has a very dedicated fan base. When I first heard of it, it was though an online petition that was demanding it’s distribution back in the United States. I found it recently on the shelf at a convenience store I happened to be in, and I couldn’t help but wonder what all the hype was about.

It is described as a coffee center surrounded by light wafers and covered in milk chocolate. Sounds harmless enough, right? Unfortunately, I wasn’t ready quite for what I was about to taste.

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As you may or may not have heard, the FDA has recently announced that it’s planning on changing their definition of chocolate. The new rules that the FDA wishes to set will allow chocolate to be produced without cocoa butter (but still with cocoa solids) and be allowed to put “chocolate” on the label. I don’t know about you, but when I want chocolate, I want the REAL thing! It’s like making peanut butter with no peanuts!

Why is such a thing being proposed in the first place? Well, to be blunt, it’s cheaper for manufacturers to use vegetable/tropical oils and trans fats in instead of cocoa butter. Obviously we, as consumers, aren’t being considered here. As Candy Addicts I’m sure we’ve all tasted this “mockolate” before, and it’s gross.

What can you do to help? Simple, just visit the Don’t Mess With Our Chocolate site and/or Cybele’s Candy Blog. Both sites have great ideas on how to spread the word and do you part to save our chocolate. Chocolate is perfect the way it is. Let’s keep it that way!

• Don’t Mess With Our Chocolate
• Cybele’s Candy Blog coverage

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