Skittles-infused vodka is sooo 2008. This year, it’s all about the bubble gum-infused vodka! Toss a few pieces of your favorite gum into some clear alcohol, and a week or two later, you have a light pink alcoholic infusion that reminds you of your childhood (but is only for those of legal drinking age of course).

The bloggers at Taylor Takes a Taste recommend mixing bubble gum vodka with lemonade for a refreshing aperetif. They also recommend using your favorite vodka for this recipe, but being a cheapster, I would recommend using a less-expensive alcohol if you’re gonna flavor it like bubble gum. Choose your own adventure.

• How to make bubblegum infused vodka [via Craft]
• Lemonade Bubblegum cocktail recipe
• via Craft

I grew up near the East coast and made my fair share of trips to the beach as a youngster. One of my favorite spots was a local and popular restaurant, the Sanitary Fish Market. What could possibly make a kid actually request to go to a seafood restaurant? Salt water taffy can. Oh, the joy of sticky, sweet goodness. Sure, we were able to watch taffy being made at the State Fair, but it wasn’t nearly as good as the taffy from Sanitary Fish Market. That was the best taffy my 14 year-old self had ever had.

I grew out of taffy as an adult… or so I had thought.

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My family members are all big fans of Jelly Belly jellybeans. (Well, the 1-year-old we’re not sure about. But I have a feeling…) And thanks to my older son – who could eat the multi-colored beans for breakfast, lunch and dinner – we’ve become near-daily consumers of Jelly Belly’s sour variety of beans.

As a matter of fact, we’ve even toured the Jelly Belly factory in Pleasant Prairie, Wis. Of course, “tour” might be a strong word. What we actually did was ride through a warehouse in a golf cart while wearing goofy paper Jelly Belly hats, kept safely far, far away from any actual manufacturing of the beans. But there was a bonus to the tour: At the end, we were allowed to sample all of the Jelly Belly company’s delicious flavors, one bean at a time. I prefer to eat them by the handful myself, but I will do almost anything for free candy.

So I am always happy to snarf down a new Jelly Belly product. And that’s how I ended up testing out a series of Jelly Belly Lollipops, known on the Jelly Belly Web site, though not on their packaging, as Lollibeans.

These look like a very large jelly bean impaled by a stick. About the size of a skewered Beenie Weenie, this is a rather odd shape for a sucker. The pop is 1.75 inches across and almost 1 inch thick. Yes, it is rather awkward to suck on. In fact, it’s almost impossible to civilly enjoy this treat without making a series of loud slurping and giant sucking sounds. Think of all the money being sucked out of your 401(k) account right now. Eating a Lollibean sounds about like that. Perhaps if they turned the sucker the other way around so you could enjoy it corn-dog style, it would be easier to eat.

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I fondly recall candy cigarettes, both the gum and the chocolate versions, but I now wonder if it was some sort of ploy by the cigarette manufacturers to attract future users. Well, no matter! That was then, and this is now, and NOW there are wacky bubble gum cigarettes in interesting flavors from Archie McPhee.

I received four packs to review: Roller Derby (cherry-flavored bubble gum cigarettes), Captain Black’s Pirate (citrus-flavored bubble gum cigarettes), Hobo (campfire coffee bubble gum cigarettes), and El Diablo (cinnamon-flavored bubble gum cigarillos). Each box contains 12 pieces. The boxes, as you can see, sport appealing and quirky designs.

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One of the newest limited edition candies on the block are the Carnival Skittles. They immediately stand out in their playful yellow wrapper amongst all the other candies and I was lucky enough to find them in a convenience store that is close to where I work.

The package happily displays the flavors of a “carnival”: Bubble Gum, Cotton Candy, Green Slushie, Candy Apple, and Red Licorice. The smell of the opened package is very sweet and fruity and it’s hard to distinguish any of the flavors in the aroma. The candies are really pretty; whoever chose the colors did a great job with the color palette.

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