I love to read the comments you guys post. It’s always great to see whether you agreed with my review or had a differing opinion I might not have have considered. I particularly enjoy the suggestions you leave.

On my article reviewing the expired 100 Grand Dark Bar, a fellow Candy Addict staff member, Monica, used her keen insight in my search for a great crisp rice bar, and she recommended I try Nestle’s Crunch with Caramel. I did just that and didn’t mind it as much as I thought I would. Having had my interest piqued in various Crunch Bar varieties from her suggestion, I then decided to try the Crunch Dark Bar.

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The other day I was in Manhattan and overheard a beautiful brunette say to her husband, “Oh Henry! Look! It’s 5th Avenue. U-No I’ve always wanted to shop there and eat all four of the candy bars I just inadvertently mentioned!”

Okay, so maybe that was a dream I had. Or something. But the point is that you can’t make up snappy street dialogue with your average set of four candies. I mean, try it yourself. “Oh Reeses Cup, you and your Nerds drive me, Whatchamacallit, ohh drat, Milk Duds.” See?

So I’m going to review all four of these oddly-named candies, but we’ll start with Nestle’s Oh Henry! bar. It comes in two sections, and they’re described on the label as “2 peanutty, caramel fudge bars in milk chocolate.” I must say that sounds good.

But what’s with the name?

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Not since the day that I first saw Men’s Pocky has a candy bar screamed Sexist! like the Yorkie Bar. And even in Pocky’s defense, the idea of a male-flavor has always been more confusing than it has been insulting. This is not the case with Yorkie, whose tagline proudly boasts “It’s Not For Girls!”

Maybe the makers of Yorkie, Nestle, don’t realize it, but girls are a very large component of the candy market. I mean, our wonderful staff is 75 percent double X chromosome bearing. So it would just seem odd to base a marketing campaign on such a blatant message, but hey, it’s a British candy bar and people in Europe can be a little… well… you know.

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Oh, Halloween! For a Candy Addict, it truly is the most wonderful night of the year.

As a kid, I would spend hours on the streets of my neighborhood, trekking from door to door to door, opening my pillowcase and shouting, “Trick or Treat!” in my neighbor’s faces in the hopes of collecting lovely chocolates and sweets. My sister and I had Trick-or-Treating down to a science: we’d mapped out routes, planned time schedules, and figured out ways to crisscross certain streets in order to maximize our candy-haul potential. At the end of the night, we’d usually end up with about 150 fun-size bars (and a few full-size bars, because believe me, we knew exactly who gave them out and where to find them).

Our post-Trick-or-Treating ritual was always the same; we’d dump our pillowcases on to the living room rug and start categorizing our candy into separate piles. Not only did this make it easier for us to decide which bars we wanted to trade (”I’ll give you 4 Kit-Kats for 4 Baby Ruths“), but it also made it easier to spot the most important candy bar in the pillowcase: the all important Halloween Gem.

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Crisp rice has always been a favorite staple of mine in the various niches of candy out there. Krackle, Crunch, and of course, 100 Grand all come to mind. It’s never been a candy I think has been fully pushed to its amazing potential, and since the retirement of the Caravelle Bar, I don’t think the world has had any close competitors to assume that challenge.

Regardless, I still like Krackle and 100 Grand bars a great deal (and to a lesser extent Crunch). I just always wished there could be something more to them. I would be willing to try anything that could give crisp rice bars the success they deserve. And in this case, anything meant purchasing the Limited Edition 100 Grand Dark Bar from a candy bin at the Dollar Tree Store, a product that had ceased to be marketed about two years ago.

Like so many candies I didn’t get to try, this one debuted while I lived outside of the U.S., and had made a quick exit before I had the chance to return. But the fact that it had long since expired did little to dissuade me from ripping open the wrapper.

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As Monica correctly alluded to in her love ‘em or hate ‘em candies, taffy is definitely a divisive confection. I happen to be a lover of this candy, ever since the days I journeyed to Catalina and discovered what taffy is.

As a product, taffy doesn’t really have a large niche in the candy aisle. Most people only know it in its small, saltwater form. There are, however, a few big logo names out there. Yes, both Airheads and Starburst are forms of taffy (a lot of people have an “oh yeah” moment when they hear this). But even if it might not be as popular as these other two forms, the most recognized brand of taffy out there is probably Wonka’s Laffy Taffy.

Most people identify Laffy Taffy with the small little pieces purchased as penny candy or in bulk that contain jokes (which I tend to find not funny) on the back. The small ones come in a variety of single flavors. This product also has two other forms. One is a taffy rope, which is essentially the small pieces just in a longer, rope format. The second is a spinoff product called Stretchy and Tangy Laffy Taffy.

The stretchy and tangy variety consists of about an eight-inch bar of taffy. I have seen it at various gas stations mostly, which is where I bought mine, and was curious about them to see if the stretchy and tangy part made them taste any different from their smaller counterparts. Since most of the seven flavors this product offers are duplicates of the smaller product, I chose the strawberry-banana bar, as it had no equivalent mini form.

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I buy candy with the intention to eat it, but might not get to it for months, at times more than a year. It’s simply because I have so much of the stuff, and I typically consume what will go bad the fastest first, i.e. chocolate and marshmallows, leaving gummi products and hard candy for last.

In the spring of this past year, I was browsing through a 76 gas station’s candy section in Los Angeles (located on Santa Monica Blvd. and Beverly Glenn). Gas stations are normally hit-or-miss for candy, but this one was a nirvana like I had never seen. It stocked over fifty Cadbury and other British confection items. Run/drive to it if you live in L.A.!

I voraciously whipped out my debit card and purchased a ridiculous amount of overpriced candy (when you factor shipping costs if you were to buy them from Europe, it’s actually not so bad). Most were chocolate bars, something the British excel at, but I did make sure to pick up Rowntree Fruit Pastilles and Rowntree Fruit Gums.

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Wonka’s Nerds have always impressed me because of their sheer boldness as a candy. With the exception of Pixy Stix and possibly Fun Dip (both Wonka products), few candies out there are as reckless about their conception as Nerds. They’re not trying to be molded into a particular shape, and they don’t look like a cute animal; they’re asymmetrical lumps of sugar and artificial flavorings that don’t apologize for their appearance.

Many people were never a fan of the candy, and I think it’s because of the premise of the candy itself. There aren’t complex flavors and multiple textures (unlike the Giant Chewy Nerds) and they do little to disguise their ingredients. Most of the people who do like them are children of the eighties and nineties, when candy was re-conceptualized to become more about sugar, sourness, and gimmick than true quality and simplicity.

As a teenager, I stopped buying these because, frankly, I had to start using my own money to buy candy since my parents wanted me to become a responsible adult. That wasn’t to say that I didn’t like them, but I didn’t want to waste my allowance on fruity aquarium pebbles when I could get something better with my money.

Recently, the Nerds line has reinvented itself by adding Nerds Rope and Giant Chewy Nerds to the market. Both spinoffs are great candies in my opinion, and so when I spotted Sour Nerds in the sale bin at my local H.E.B., I thought they could be the third great of a Nerds triumvirate.

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Every year, the internet spews out a million lists of overrated and underrated things. This band isn’t as good as your brother thinks it is; this movie was tremendous, even though only four people saw it; this book may be a best seller, but it’s pretty lousy; nobody appreciates the greatness of slugs, and so on and so forth. These lists can be annoying, as some people tend to hate everything that is even remotely popular, but at times the lists can also be incredibly validating: sometimes it’s nice to see a popular-yet-stupid thing get ripped to shreds, and even nicer to see an underrated gem get its due.

It’s with this in mind that I tell you, Candy Addicts, that the Nestle Chunky bar is the most underrated candy bar of all time.

Let’s start with the basics: a Chunky bar, (which got its cringe-worthy name in the 1930s, after inventor Philip Silvershein decided to name the bar after his granddaughter, who apparently was also called “Chunky” - for obvious reasons), is a slab of creamy Nestle milk chocolate, raisins, and peanuts. It’s a bit like a giant Raisinet/Goober hybrid, as if someone left a box of Goobers and Raisinets to melt atop each other and then re-harden into a trapezoid of awesome.

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A lot of people don’t like Butterfingers (I am kinda in the middle myself), but even if you don’t, it’s a candy bar you should appreciate for its uniqueness. Sure, it’s not as good as a 5th Avenue (before they started using mockolate), but it actually predates the Hershey version by thirteen years to be the oldest, most popular peanut butter candy bar on the market.

Over the years, Butterfingers have undergone a variety of changes. They were reinvented as Butterfinger BBs, Butterfinger Stixx, and Butterfinger Crisp (the best candy spin-off to date). Each version offered a new way of consuming the classic flavor with some twist. For those readers old enough to remember the 90s, you might even recall Bart Simpson popularizing the bar with his catchy slogan of “Nobody better lay a finger on my Butterfinger!”

Over the years, one spin off I often saw was the Butterfinger Giant tempting me from numerous candy aisles; however, I never bothered to buy one. I was actually a little confused by them, to be honest. The packing is similar to the über-large Crunch bars Nestle also produces. Since the wrapper reads “Butterfinger pieces in milk chocolate,” I was always left speculating if this was a flattened and large Butterfinger bar, like how Crunch bars are all the same taste, just varying in size, or was this a Nestle milk chocolate bar with Butterfinger pieces loaded inside?

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