Candy of an Era Past

It's sunny and finally like spring out there and who wants to think. So I decided instead to write about candy.

I think that since I was a child candy has changed but I wouldn't say there is more variety. Maybe some but overall there are just more chocolate bars, all a confection involving chocolate and nuts or chocolate and wafers. A few exceptions are the Lowney's Eat More bar, molasses and nuts (okay so nuts are also a big part). I loved the Eat More's for their chewiness. Over the years I think the nut content went down some and the chewiness lessened.

The coolest items were these wax thumbs or lips. They were made of some sort of soft parafin wax (probably cancerous for all we knew) and filled with a sweet juice. You would bite into the wax and suck out the juice and often chew the wax, sometimes with the juice in your mouth so it would mix together. Maybe I swallowed the wax and maybe I spit it out; I don't remember but it was sort of like a chewier bubble gum.

Gum itself hasn't changed a lot. Different flavors, soft, hard, coated like a gumball, a stick like Wrigley's or filled with jelly. Oooh, gold mine gum (gold nuggets in a cloth bag) and bubble gum cigars (pink, green and yellow). Most of these still exist as do jawbreakers. I think there was less of what I would call the adult gums then except for Wrigley's, and that particular brand I haven't seen in a while. If it's still made they don't seem to come in the stick packages like they used to. But then, I don't like chewing gum much anymore because some types stick to my crown and the texture is...meh.

We used to be able to get packs of candy cigarettes (also gum cigarettes) but I think they were discontinued as being politically incorrect. There were two types, one at least had Popeye on the pack. The one type had almost a slightly fruit flavor and more chalky in texture though not chalky in flavor (akin to but not as acidic as candy necklaces) and I preferred it. The other was a harder, shinier white candy with a red tip. It was crunchier but not as flavorful.

There was also this long (like a ruler) flat piece of taffy or nougat, usually in the Neapolitan colors/flavors of vanilla, strawberry and chocolate. Something else was stringy and I have visions of pulling off the strings of sugary goodness but I have no idea what it was. There were of course various licorices, including black licorice pipes and cigars, and strawberry shoestrings, which somehow tasted the best. And Necco wafers (still available in the US), each color tasting differently. The purple (lavender?) and black (licorice) and brown (chocolate) were the best. And of course there were Cracker Jacks, carmelized popcorn with a prize inside. But even better, Pink Elephant popcorn, sweet and pink and with some sort of cool prize.

Those were the corner store variety of candies. Oddly I really don't remember the chocolate bars. There were still candy counters in the department stores like The Bay and Sears and Eaton's. Chicken bones were peanut butter flavored, crunchy candies. Jordan almonds were nearly hard enough to crack teeth with the hard sugar coating. I was never big on jellies, jujubes or gumdrops but there were these orange and lemon slices, gumdroppy, sugared and with a rind like the real fruit but just harder sugar. The best part of these was that they had a tang like the real fruit. In later years they degenerated to just being sweet. And there were the little ice cream cones with a marshmallow in them.

Once in a while you can still find these things in a larger supermarket but they're getting rarer. Which makes me believe we're getting down to just varieties of chocolate bars. There are still chocolate shops, and a few more than there used to be. My favorite chocolate memory was of these Easter eggs my mother would give us. They were about the size of my hand, decorated in hard, sugar icing and when cracked open, had about four or five real chocolates in them. They were made by a chocolatier in Calgary and they were beautiful. I've seen some mass produced versions of late but they're not the same.

Many of the corner store items still might exist. There is one store (with two locations) in Vancouver called the Candy Aisle. They specialize in nostalgic candy though sadly I don't see most of the ones I remember. http://www.candyaisle.com/index1.html And one aspect of nostalgia that's long gone is cost. Ahhh, the confections of yesteryear.