So Long Summer Sugar, I Hardly Knew Ya

The shelves have been filled with Halloween candy for weeks. I consumed my annual bag of Mary Jane Peanut Butter Kisses over a month ago. So naturally, it’s time for my Summer Seasonal Candy Review. I’ll keep it short, which is easy considering the total desert that was this year’s Summer Candy scene.  

The folks at Tootsie continue to impress, they seem to have a new specialty version of Dots or Tootsie Pop at least each month. This summer they introduced three Sour Slices Dots varieties: Grapefruit, Peach and Watermelon.  I’m a fan of regular Sour Dots, they have a great texture, sour factor and flavors. I was surprised to see a mainstream Grapefruit candy, so they earned bonus points for trying but its flavor was pretty tame and somewhat forgettable. The Peach Dots were good, but I found myself wanting Haribo Gummy Peaches instead. I didn’t pick up the Watermelon Dots due to a flavor aversion. 

Despite the lack of competition, Tootsie won the prize for most Patriotic candy with their 4^th of July inspired Tootsie Pops. The red, white and blue assortment included standard favorite Cherry along side new comers Strawberry-Vanilla and Blue Raspberry. The Blue-Raspberry was ok and certainly stained my mouth blue. I really wanted the Strawberry-Vanilla to rock but neither flavor was potent enough, I would love to try it with a vanilla Tootsie center. With all of the flavors of Frooties and with Tootsie’s adventurous roll out of new flavors I really hope Tootsie is working on some new combinations, oh the fun we could have. Be on the look out for the new Pop flavors (Green Apple, Pomegranate and Banana) which are being introduced via an interesting rotating strategy then vote for your favorite new flavor. 

When I wasn’t earning my Clean Stick Award this Summer, I was busy eating licorice. Twizzlers were on sale everywhere I turned plus they introduced three new products. The super fun Extra Long Strawberry Twizzlers hit the novelty mark, they were twice the length of a typical Twizzler. If you’re in the market for this extra long licorice I ran across some earlier this week at a Shopko. Also introduced this summer were Super Long Cherry Nibs, these are awesome! They are basically Nibs that haven’t been cut but having the additional substance really improves the Nib experience. If you like cherry Nibs you must seek these out, Target had them earlier today and instead of being marked as a Limited Edition they were marked as a New product, hopefully they are here to stay. A limited edition Grape Pull 'n' Peel was also around this summer, it was pretty nasty and not a good companion to the Cherry Pull 'n' Peel. It smelled like Grape Hubba Bubba but only offered a mild grape flavor with an odd after taste.

I’m disappointed to share that although we are approaching the holiday when people buy candy just to give it away, the Halloween candy I’ve seen this year is lack luster at best. Very few new product offerings and most are just pretending to be seasonal by changing the color of their packaging. I did see a Russell Stover Buzzard Egg but come on where is the creativity everybody? Hopefully this is just a momentary glitch in the sugar stream.

There is a fantastic Limited Edition candy on the market right now that you’ll want to get your hands on. The folks at Tootsie have knocked it out of the park with their Caramel Tootsie Pops, seriously yummy. Get yourself a bag before they’re gone and see if you can earn your Clean Stick Award too.