Okay, fellow Candy Addicts®, it’s time for a road trip! If you live near Greenville, South Carolina, or plan to travel there before June 2, you should plan to stop by The Children’s Museum of the Upstate to see what appears to be an incredible art exhibit. Eight famous “paintings,” including the Mona Lisa and The Starry Night, are on display. The catch? The paintings are made out of Jelly Belly jellybeans — more than 10,000 jellybeans each! Even if you don’t consider yourself an art aficionado, I guarantee that you’ll recognize most of these pictures. And if you visit the museum, you’ll even get a chance create a jellybean mosaic of your own.

Jellybean art is nothing new, but I’ve never had the chance to see it up close and in person, and it weren’t for the minor complication that I live on the other side of the country, I’d have been to see this display several times already. Fortunately, for those of us who are forced to be armchair travelers when it comes to this display, Jelly Belly has an art gallery section on their website that lets you see more images of the jellybean replicas. Check it out!

• Children’s Museum of the Upstate
• Jelly Belly Bean Art Collection

When it comes to jellybeans, it’s hard to compete with Jelly Belly’s multitude of flavors and all-around deliciousness. Still, each year at Easter, jellybean assortments start popping up all over the place. When I spied the display of Trader Joe’s Gourmet Jellybeans, which are made “with colors from fruit & vegetable sources,” I knew I had to try them out. After all, how can I claim that Jelly Belly is best unless I’ve personally sampled all the competing brands?

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You know, it’s my job to think about candy and candy news. Thanksgiving weekend is not traditionally a candy holiday, but what a perfect weekend this is for candy. It must be the time of year coupled with the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I, that got me thinking about Bertie Bott’s Jelly Beans and our review of them. Trying those awful beans with my brother reminded me of being a kid and daring each other into eating and doing stupid things. We once talked about trying out for Fear Factor but realized pretty quickly we’d both be done in by the gross foods. It’s funny what brings a family together – bonding over candy. I think that’s what makes candy so appealing to so many people.

A great example of this is Candyman: The David Klein Story showing 11/27/2010 on the Documentary channel at 8 PM, EST and PST. If you’re like me, you’ve probably never heard of David Klein, until now. In fact, though he invented the Jelly Belly jellybean, he isn’t even mentioned by name on Jelly Belly’s website under company history; he is referred to only as “a Los Angeles candy distributor”.
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I love a good gift as much as the next person. However, I really prefer functional gifts. Not that I don’t appreciate the thought, but how many basket-fulls of perfumed lotion can one person stand?! Well, Ooh La La Candy is the answer to gift giving. A sweet sentiment (pun intended) AND a tasty treat makes for a good gift. How can you go wrong with popular candy mixed with some good design/packaging?

Given my predilection for useful gifts, it is needless to say that I was looking forward to seeing if Ooh La La Candy could meet my gift-giving needs. I quickly noticed the dual purpose of the “cupcakes”. Gift + sustenance! The cupcakes are crafted from candy which means one of my favorite things is being made from one of my other favorite things! The Sweet Stripes cupcake consists of black and white Sixlets (who doesn’t like Sixlets??) and is topped with a giant pink gumball. (Be forewarned, the anticipation will surely build because the packaging of the little cupcake is a bear to get into! They are securely attached to their individual, plastic cubes.) The other cupcake I tried was a PB&J Cupcake made with, yep, you guessed it, peanut butter chips and grape jellybeans. In lieu of a gumball topping the cupcake, this one had a peanut butter cup adornment.

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In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past year or so, the latest big food fad to hit grocery stores is… No, not bacon. Darn it all, why do you people always want to talk about bacon?

The OTHER big food trend of the past couple of years is the so-called “superfruit.” The theory behind superfruits is that certain fruits like pomegranates and goji berries contain high levels of nutrients such as antioxidants, which just might help to prevent cancer and other diseases.

Though there’s considerable debate about whether superfruits are really the disease-fighting powerhouses the companies marketing them claim they are, I guess any trend that encourages people to eat more fruit can’t be a completely bad thing. (That argument probably doesn’t hold water when applied to fruit-flavored candy, though.)

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