My girlfriend loves what I call "junk candy." While I basically consider all candy that isn't top quality dark chocolate to be junk, she just loves Circus Peanuts, Good & Plenty and spice drops. And yet, I lover dearly, none the less. Go figure.

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Pop Rocks! When they first came out, they were only sold in a few cities for test-marketing, and we all tried to find someone, anyone who had access to them and could send them to us. Oh, the lucky kids who got boxes of them and sold the packets at a significant markup. And happy us who bought them.

I haven't had them for years, but I'd like to have some right now. Are they even made anymore?

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long ago, I LOVED fundip. I saw it in the store the other day, and got a packet -it TASTES LIKE SOAP! ugh!

My gran always bought the neco wafers, she'd offer me one, and I'd take it, and then wonder to myself, why anyone thought this was candy - I even tried giving them to my mom, who would politely refuse. Icky!

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Giant Sweet Tarts, a choccie bar called Liquid Four Flavours, and Pixie Stix.

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Jolly Rancher. I lived a few blocks from the Wheat Ridge, Colorado, factory, and my father did business with them, so we always had it around, and my father always got their experimental candies, which they handed out around the neighborhood. Among the best were caramel stix, which would burst apart in your mouth into a thousand glasslike shards, but then would turn into a chewy milk caramel. Also smoke stix, which were licorice flavored. Other flavors which are not made anymore were raspberry (great) tangerine (meh) pear (pretty good), of course the fantastic green apple, ice blue mint, spearmint (not a big mint fan) and a pretty good butterscotch. They have recently made some Mexican influenced candy, chile-mango and chile-tamarind. Good but not great.

Jolly Rancher remains my favorite non-chocolate candy.

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when i was a child - i used to love kisses candies. back in the day, i thought, they were much bigger than how they are nowadays.

it's been years since i had kisses candies. i like my dark chocolates anywhere from 80% and up.

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I have no idea what the REAL name for them was, but we called them "bubblegum bombs." They were basically gum-filled jawbreakers on sticks. Wish I could find them...my brother would freak.

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I used to like the Violets in the article picture a lot too...I found some in Walgreens a year or so ago and bought them out of pure nostalgia. I'm sad to say that they tasted absolutely terrible.

Other things I used to like: the various wax "candy" shapes that were filled with colored sugar water, Razzles (basically sweet tarts that turned into gum) and Tribbles. Tribbles were these strange cookie-like things that were about the size of M&Ms and packaged in a similar style bag. I recall really liking the chocolate mint.

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Most of my favorite candies from childhood now sport that **Manufactured on equipment that also processes peanuts** business, therefore they're only enjoyed vicariously. But maybe that's not such a bad thing considering all these sad posts about people returning to a loved candy to find it tasting terrible!


+ those sour cherry cola gummy bottles

+ pineapple flavored candy cane minus the hook sticks that were striped yellow, brown, and green [sold at the now-defunct hardware store!]

+ strawberry and chocolate creme filled wafer bar-rectangle things. I loved to break apart the layers gently as much as cramming the whole thing in my mouth.

+ chocolate-cream.filled koala cookies! the cookies were so crispy!

*also I dream of one day meeting someway to eat the chocolate shell part of the Cadbury cream eggs for me

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I grew up in Hawaii and when I first moved there in 1964 I was introduced to an snack more than a candy, but it should be a part of this category...they took a lemon, cut it in half, then put a preserved fruit called "Li Hing Mui" in the center of the lemon half and bit into this...all at once the taste buds were hit by the salty/sweet of the dry fruit against the sour tang of the lemon...what an experience for this 11 year old kid who had just move from Minnesota in the dead of winter to paradise! I like the experience of it but I haven't done it in about 40 years...I guess it's a chilhood memory to leave alone!

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Howard's Violets were my absolute favorite!! I remember the first time I found them as an adult in California (I thought they only had them in New York) I jumped around for half an hour in excitement.

Now, I have to drive 25 miles to get them, and it's SO worth the trip!

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