The Atkinson Candy Company is quickly becoming my favorite candy company. My love affair began with Chick-o-Sticks, then Peanut Butter Bars, and moved on to Long Boys. While I can think of many other manufacturers out there who produce great products, none come to mind who consistently create candy I love regardless of what it is.

So with their awesome track record on the line, I purchased a square of Peco Brittle from a local convenience store. I gotta say, Texans love them some brittle! Peanut, cashew, pecan… everywhere I go I see tons of brittle out here. Do I have a problem with that? I honestly don’t know since I can’t remember ever eating any sort of brittle as kid.

Well, if I were ever going to start eating it, Atkinson seemed to be the best place for such a journey to commence from. The name behind this candy reveals the type of brittle it is: Peco is a portmanteau of peanuts and coconut. Now, Atkinson does produce a regular peanut brittle, but I couldn’t find it. Luckily, I didn’t mind so much, as this whole “coconut can go into anything” craze I have discovered in Texas is starting to grow on me.

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I have to confess that before reading Jamie’s review of Chunky, I had only eaten one in my entire life. Why? Well, I think Stewie Griffin from Family Guy said it best:

“Yeah, that’s what kids want in their candy. Fruit. Why don’t you put sunflower seeds in the Ding Dongs while you’re at it?”

But because of Jamie’s professed love for this underrated candy, I bought one shortly after her review. Now, kids might not like fruit in their candy, but as an adult (sorta), I found my tongue had grown accustomed to the flavor I had once disliked.

I wasn’t in love with Chunky, but felt the two of us had patched up a hole that had separated us for so many years. I also believed that would be the last of our meetings. Boy was I wrong.

This past weekend, I popped into the Dollar Tree store to purchase some GooGoo Clusters. To my surprise, stationed right next to them was the new Dark Chunky. I was caught off-guard since I hadn’t heard anything about this product’s release. Though I felt Chunky was O.K., I wondered if dark chocolate was the missing element in the equation.

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Butterfinger and Crunch are the stars of Nestle’s confectionery lineup. They get more advertisements on TV and have each undergone various spin-offs over the years. Whenever I hear those candy brands, I think of a grouping of candy rather than an individual piece of candy. Their ubiquitous nature has rendered them undefined and associative.

In contrast, there is a Nestle product, easily my favorite Nestle product, which exists as the unacknowledged sibling to these candy bars. I am talking about the one and only Baby Ruth.

There isn’t a crisp variation, theater-sized box, or even dark chocolate counterpart to this classic. In fact, it hasn’t ever been redone (at least, not with any lingering spin-offs). You also don’t see commercials for this candy too often. But I believe I know why.

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The first thing my little sister said to me when I told her that I scored a gig reviewing candy went something along the lines of the following:

“So what sort of candy are you going to give me?”

I had not even written my first review, and she was already trying to milk the perks. Being the good, older brother that I am, or maybe just feeling guilty remembering all the stuff big brothers put their little sisters through when growing up, I send her care packages every now and then with candy.

When we spoke several weeks ago, I inquired if she had received my latest shipment. She told me she had and continued to explain how she disliked everything I sent her. Mind you, she and I have very different ideas of what constitutes tasty when it comes to candy.

She did explain that as a candy reviewer, I was letting down the general public and her by not devoting enough time to Reese’s products, her all-time favorite. I tried explaining that there were simply no new products to review. This fact failed to placate her. Knowing the wrath a little sister could release, I picked my battle and told her the next time I saw a new Reese’s product, I’d not only review it, but also send her a box of whatever it was.

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I recently took a week off from my regular job to visit the beautiful city of Montreal, Quebec. But that doesn’t mean I also neglected my duties as staff writer for Candy Addict. No, I made sure to keep my eyes peeled for a truly Quebec-specific sweet. But at first, I found only the same overpriced gift-shop candy you can find anywhere in Canada: cheap chocolate-covered almonds packaged as “moose droppings” and hard candies “made with real maple syrup” (read: 90% regular sugar and 10% of the good stuff). But then, while exploring Montreal’s Chinatown, in a hole-in-the-wall storefront, I discovered something truly unique at last.

(Later, once I’d had time to do more shopping in areas that weren’t 90% tacky tourist gift shops, I also found some great candy stores and artisan chocolatiers. But that’s a subject for another review.)

The white, wispy objects in the photo above, believe it or not, are candy. They’re called Dragon’s Beard Candy, and they were apparently a favorite sweet in China’s Imperial Court, making them over 2000 years old. Dragon’s Beard Candy consists of fine, hairlike filaments of sugar surrounding a center of (according to the stall’s owner) peanuts, coconut, sesame, brown sugar and chocolate.

We’ve actually reviewed them once already. But those were expensive and had to be shipped all the way from China, and these were cheap and freshly hand-made – the stall prominently featured a bin of nutty filling and a big lump of brown rock sugar. How could I resist?

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