Saturday, August 20, 2005

I want candy

A friend and I were talking the other day about Candyfreak. I agree wholeheartedly with the book’s central premise that the decline of the small candy manufacturer is a catastrophe. Taking the kids around on Halloween is depressing. They end up with a mix of 4 or 5 brands of candy, none of which is that interesting. In the book, Almond visits a number of manufacturers and tries lots of candy. Some of his highest praise went to the Valomilk, normally found only in the Mid-west. You can get it at Cracker Barrel, and if you are in Portland and are willing, you can go to Boise to get one.

While not as rare or as good as the Valomilk, I wish we could see more Cow Tales and fruit tootsie rolls. The Cow Tale is a cylindrical version of the Goetz caramel cream, which many people find vile. If the idea of eating a nine inch cream filled caramel tube sounds great, then you need one. They are best found in sad little boxes in sketchy gas stations.

The fruit flavored tootsie roll is almost impossible to find except as 1/30th the volume of a giant bag of candy. These are like Starbursts, except they are not hard, waxy or chemical tasting. They are so much better than normal Tootsie Rolls that I am surprised they are so hard to find.

2 comments:

Tripp said...

Yeah you are right about the ubiquity of the Cow Tale. I just wanted to talk about them.

I am on board with the orange candy slice/Valhrona sacred and profane thing, but I will draw the line at Circus Peanuts. On the other hand, I do get excited by the Lemon Head family of candies.

Tripp said...

I love the old names of the candies. I believe Cherry Chan was renamed Cherry Clan in order not to offend. I am not sure if they removed the slant eyed characters on the box though.

The only plus with the new boring names is now we have orange heads too. This is meager payment I know.