Retro Candy: The 8 Best Candies you ate as a kid
Remember getting to the Six Flags (or other roller coaster laden fun park) in the early morning, running as fast as you could to the “best” ride, getting in line and eating candy while you waited and getting on the ride just as the sugar hit? Well even if you didn’t do that like I did, you certainly had a favorite candy or candy bar. Here is a list of my favorites.
8 ) Swedish Fish
Why it was loved:
Swedish Fish were sweet and tangy with a flavor one can only describe as “red”. You could put a massive wad of them in your mouth at once and not be overwhelmed with the flavor. Your mouth never tired of eating them. Totally addictive.
Alternative way of eating them:
Nibble the tail off, then the head, then the body.
Negatives:
Stuck easily in your teeth. And not in places you could get at with a thumbnail (which, as a kid, was your only tool to work with in teeth-sticking incidents). Not enough sugar to get a rush either.
Best place or time to eat it:
After lunch. Swedish Fish didn’t fill you up, so you had to eat them after a sandwich, like the bologna one you smashed a bag of Fritos into.
7) Gummi Bears
Why it was loved:
Like Swedish Fish, Gummi Bears were sweet, but not too sweet and you could jam like 1000 bears in there at once. In fact, I’m sure more than once I and my friends had contests to do just that. But unlike Swedish Fish, they had all kinds of flavors, not just one. They also didn’t stick in your teeth as much, which was a bonus when you needed another fist full.
Alternative way of eating them:
Lick the back of them and stick them to things, like the wall or the underside of a school room desk. They made some kind of glue like substance that only a spatula or putty knife could get under. You could make all sorts of Light Brite type designs with them.
Negatives:
The black bear. Nasty licorice/anise flavored bear that haunts my taste buds to this very day. One would get mixed in with a fist full and you’d immediately know it. There was no way to get it out, it was too late. You could always try to pawn off the black bears onto your younger siblings, but that only worked once, albeit with hilarious results. As a bonus though, the black ones seemed to make the best glue, if you could tolerate licking them like stamps. In one such incident, friends and I put as many as 100 bears on the cieling of our cafeteria at school. Later in the day we came back to admire our handiwork only to find the custodian on a ladder with a putty knife cussing all children everywhere. I think I learned several new words that day.
Best place or time to eat it:
In class, as the black bears could be used for nefarious deeds.
6) Pixy stix
Why it was loved:
It was a tube of sugar. Flavored sugar. Instant, massive sugar rush. Came in two sizes: JustJittery and InstaADD.
Alternative way of eating them:
Mainlining? Pouring out a big pile and rolling in it? Seriously, there wasn’t really anything else to do with Pixy Stix. Just open one end and pour.
Negatives:
If the paper on the open end got wet with your saliva because of excessive drooling over the prospect of InstaADD, the sugar would not pour out easily any more. It would clump up and get all soggy. Then you’d have to try to make a new end, but at that point you’d be tearing it apart like a starving bear on a paper sack full of KFC. Your hands would become clumps of unresponsive clay which didn’t react nearly fast enough. Crying usually ensued.
Best place or time to eat it:
Some place it was ok to wig out at, like a skate board park, a padded room or just before parachuting at 10,000 feet. Another place was right before getting in the Bloodsport ring like Van Damme.
Pixy Stix lover.
5) Lick ‘em sticks/Fun Dip
Why it was loved:
Lick ‘em sticks (officially called Fun Dip) was Pixy Stix-like powder ALONG with a gigantic horse pill of sugar. You would use the pill stick thing by sucking it until wet and then jam it in the powder. After which you would lick the powder off the horse pill and repeat until insane. It came with 4 flavor packs usually and two horse pills. The mixing of the powder sugar with the stick sugar was the bonus. It was literally sugar coated sugar. But since it was a slower delivery method, you could keep the sugar high going a long time.
Alternative way of eating them:
Blow off the stick and just snarfle the powder. Eat the horse pill sadly at the end by itself like the remorseful junkie you are.
Negatives:
The delivery method was flawed - it was too slow - forcing you to abandon the proscribed lick then stick method, which you almost always had to do. And the stick wasn’t really all that tasty - it was more like a sugar paste that had a hint of sweetness. So once the rush wore off, you were left with the paste like horse pill. It’s really like being runner up at Miss America. This left many abandoned sticks.
Best place or time to eat it:
When you had extra time to kill and wanted that slow burn of sugar. Like waiting at the dentist’s office or a your sister’s piano recital.
4) Bottle Caps:
Why it was loved:
These little soda flavored bottle cap shaped gems were hard and crunchy, but easily pulverized into a yummy powder. The clear winner for flavor was the root beer cap. Also, the smell of the caps after just opening the package was great.
Alternative way of eating them:
Pop one in your mouth and wait for it to disolve slowly. Who had time for that though? I wanted that burst of root beer flavor as soon as my little fingers could pry the cap out.
Negatives:
There were never enough root beer ones and the orange flavored one wasn’t so hot. You had to combine it in your mouth with the lemon lime one and it kind of made fruit punch.
Best place to eat it:
The movies. I don’t think they sold these at the movies much, but they were easily snuck in and all your friends would try to beg the root beer ones off of you. They were good trade bait for pop corn or sodas.
3) Pop Rocks/Space Dust
Why it was loved:
Are you kidding? Pop Rocks, and it’s lesser known hippie cousin Space Dust, was a complete sensory experience. It was candy that exploded, sizzled and popped from the second it hit your tongue. They came in little packs like Kool-Aid and if you could stand it, the best way to eat them was to pour the entire contents of the package into your mouth. You could chew them making the explosions just that more powerful. You could let them sit in your mouth and let the fizz bore into your brain like a candy drill wielded by a medieval surgeon. My favorite, however, was to pour them all in, keep your mouth open and let them explode all over the freaking place.
Alternative way of eating them:
With a coke. Admit it, you wanted your buddy’s head to blow off or stomach to pop or whatever was supposed to happen when you combined the two. It never did no matter how many packages you combined. And the coke pretty much killed off the fizz. It was worth trying though. Over and over again.
Negatives:
Has anyone actually tasted the flavor of a Pop Rock? All I remember is the massive sizzle. Was there even a flavor at all? It says so on the package.
Best place or time to eat it:
Only good around others. It’s a very social candy. Without being able to show off your Pop Rocks to someone it’s really like drinking alone.
2) Giant Chewy Sweetarts
Why it was loved:
Giant chewy Sweetarts should not be confused with the more popular regular Sweetarts, which are also good. These massive sweet and sour lovlies had a consistency unlike any other food or candy on Earth. Biting into one was like eating a moonpie, firm and soft. But what ended up in your mouth would fall apart immediately into this grainy, powdery sugar gravel that had every possible combination of sugar, sour and flavor you’d want.
Alternative way of eating them:
Take the entire package and make a massive Chewy Sweetart sandwich thing. You could easily bite through it and the ensuing explosion of sweet and tart sugar gravel was like eating manna from heaven.
Negatives:
The sugar gravel would disolve too fast leaving you wanting for more too soon. You could easily rip through a sleeve of these babies in under 30 seconds.
Best place or time to eat it:
Some place you could taunt those who did not have any. For instance, church. Sitting on one side of your parents while your brother sat on the other, you’d slowly pull out a sleeve and wave it at him. Unable to yell or move for fear of parental retribution, your brother would mouth “GIVE ME ONE” to which you’d just smile and slowly unwrap one and put the rest back in your jacket. At this point your brother would know you did not intend to give him one which would get you the seething, loathing look and then the clenched fist punching a flat hand and the mouthing of “YOUR FACE”. Naturally this would only make you slow down and enjoy the Sweetart even more. Who says religion is bad?
1) Marathon bar
Why it was loved:
The granddady of all candy bars, the Marathon bar was a foot long braid of chocolate and caramel from the mind of God himself. Chocolate covered a twisted braid of caramel making a perfect combo that was neither bar nor candy but better than both. Biting into it was hard at first, better done with molar than incisor, as you had to kind of rip it away from the rest of the braid. Similar in fashion to how a cave man would eat a bison leg. Sometimes the caramel would stretch impossibly thin between the remaining braid and the bit in your mouth. The beauty of the Marathon bar was once in your mouth it wouldn’t disolve. It was like caramel gum that never lost its flavor. It scoffed at your puny attempts at mastication and laughed off your saliva. You could chew it forever.
Another reason for love was the TV commercials pummeled into my head during saturday morning cartoons. This cowboy would square off with another cowboy who said “I do everything fast!” Our hero would give him a Marathon bar and challenge him to eat it fast. Naturally, this was impossible given the fact the caramel took weeks to break down in the mouth.
Sadly, they are no longer made. Like all good things, it has passed. I believe it’s brief tenure on this planet was to remind all humans that life is fleeting and to savor every moment. You never know when it will be your turn.
Alternative way of eating them:
You could possible try to roll one up into a massive Marathon caramel gum ball. It wasn’t easy to do and could only be done if the bar had been sitting on the dash of your dad’s car in the hot sun at the beach. The ball of caramel was far to large to shove in at once most times and very difficult to rip apart. Best to stick with the standard caveman-esque method.
Negatives:
A minor negative was the chocolate could flake off a bit as it got elongated during the molar biting - stretch action. If you were careful, you could save most. The major negative was this candy bar wasn’t 20 feet long so I could wrap myself in it like an anaconda strangling a crocodile who is then forced to eat its way out.
Best place or time to eat it:
It was best to start eating at breakfast because it was going to take you all day to work through it.