N Candy AA II: Round of 64, Flight 2
by Keckler
Updated bracket is here. Confused? Click here. Polls for Flight 2 close 11:59 PM ET on Friday.
1 Peeps vs. 16 Zotz. There’s no way I’m not picking Peeps to win this whole damn tournament. I mean, a candy that has not only spawned itself into new shapes every year (Bunting told me there are PUMPKINS now!) but has also inspired some of the coolest, craziest dioramas? That’s a beloved candy. And what does Zotz do by comparison? Makes you foam at the mouth. Essentially, it’s fruit-flavored rabies.
Peeps are clearly going to push all the way through, so we’ll have plenty of time to discuss our favorite recipes. For now, I’m keeping this short and sweet.
1 Peeps vs. 16 Zotz
- Peeps (78%, 702 Votes)
- Zotz (22%, 199 Votes)
Total Voters: 901
Loading ...8 Now & Later vs. 9 maple candy. There are a few candies that make me hork, and maple candy happens to be one of them. I know it’s a candy, but maple candy — whatever shape it comes in, be it maple leaf, Dutch boy or girl, or the state of Vermont — is waaaay too sweet. I loathe the stuff. My 100% Dutch dad is a big fan and bought a bunch of it when we road-tripped through Holland, Michigan. But then no one really ate it, and it got hygroscopic before the ants set in. [“Send it to me next time; I can put down a half pound in one sitting.” — Bunting] I don’t love Now & Laters. Never considered them an essential Halloween haul (Hauloween, heh.), but they’re all right. As long as you don’t try to chomp down on them too early in the sucking game, because those things will pull your fillings right out.
I know Now & Laters have brand name recognition, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see the tree slurpers pull off a sappy win.
8 Now & Later vs. 9 maple candy
- Now & Later (50%, 460 Votes)
- maple candy (50%, 453 Votes)
Total Voters: 913
Loading ...5 saltwater taffy vs. 12 horehound candy. I swear, I should call this “Stephanie’s Summer Vacation Candy Match-Up.” Whenever we stayed at Long Lake outside of Traverse City, Michigan, we’d get saltwater taffy in Leelanau and horehound candy when we went to concerts at Interlochen. (Bunting had to explain to me that horehound candy is the striped sticks of candy found at old-fashioned general stores. I only knew them as “the striped sticks of candy found at old-fashioned general stores.”) Selecting horehound candy is a lesson in old time-y flavors: birch, clove, SASSAFRAS! Love it. Meanwhile: saltwater taffy. I like it, yet it’s an annoying wad of stuff to get around. I think Phoebe said it best on Friends: “WHAT THE MOTHER OF CRAP IS UP WITH THIS STUFF? Is it gum, is it food? I mean what’s the deal?…[swallow]…Oh, it’s nice!” I’m torn, but I think saltwater taffy — as long as everyone out there accepts it as candy in the general sense — will move forward, leaving all the more sassafras sticks for me!
5 saltwater taffy vs. 12 horehound candy
- saltwater taffy (66%, 598 Votes)
- horehound candy (34%, 314 Votes)
Total Voters: 912
Loading ...4 Fun Dips vs. 13 Hot Tamales. I’m personally “meh” over this match-up. Fun Dips were rendered an unnecessary allowance expenditure once I discovered that the same stuff was stashed in my mom’s Jell-O packets. So you can eat the dipstick, big whoop. Hot Tamales are okay, if you like to have a box that is just one flavor and one flavor only. I think the novelty of Fun Dips will blow it to the next round, leaving Hot Tamales to burn with shame in their powdered-sugar wake.
4 Fun Dips vs. 13 Hot Tamales
- Fun Dips (69%, 610 Votes)
- Hot Tamales (31%, 275 Votes)
Total Voters: 885
Loading ...6 Butterscotch Buttons vs. 11 Smarties/SweeTarts. Classic old-lady candy meets classic Halloween haul. Man, Mathra would be pissed if I didn’t vote for Smarties/SweeTarts, since they are the only thing he requests at Halloween, but I do love me some butterscotch suck-candies. (“Suck-candies” — that’s what we called the Butterscotch Buttons, Root Beer Barrels, and such that my mom carried in her purse and doled out to us at the Children’s Theatre production of “The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins.” Don’t worry, we were quiet. We unwrapped them only under cover of applause.) I did love getting Smarties in my pumpkin, though. We used to pretend they were pills. What with that and my memories of candy cigarettes, I’m beginning to think I was a childhood junkie. [“Red and I used to heat our Smarties on a lightbulb. I have no idea how we figured out that this improved the taste a hundredfold, but once we had, we sautéed our Smarties every time. Perch a Smartie on a 60-watt; when a tiny thread of smoke begins to rise, the Smartie is done. Enjoy, and no fair suing me if your lamp shorts out.” — Bunting]
Apparently, this is a tough one for me, but I’m going to ignore the ranking and say that Smarties/SweeTarts smacks Butterscotch on its Buttons.
6 Butterscotch Buttons vs. 11 Smarties/SweeTarts
- Smarties / SweeTarts (70%, 651 Votes)
- Butterscotch Buttons (30%, 283 Votes)
Total Voters: 934
Loading ...3 DumDums vs. 14 candy buttons. Aw, now this is making me choose between two great loves! It’s true that — as Bunting reminded me — it’s nearly impossible to get a button off its strip of paper without a large amount of the paper coming with it, but how cute are those candies? CUTE AS A BUTTON! I love them. I love the idea of them, I love their colors, I love their lack of distinctive flavors, and I love, love, LOVE that your candy was measured by the strip. It’s like I was some sort of juvenile acid freak. HOWEVER, when DumDums landed in my plastic Halloween pumpkin (we graduated to pillowcases when we got greedier), I considered them the jewel of my haul. I wouldn’t even eat them right away. I’d save them. HOARD them. More than their flavors, I think I loved the wrapper patterns most of all. Also, DumDums were the only lollipops small enough to allow you to pull off a believable Kojak. DumDums will push on through, because who loves you, baby?
3 DumDums vs. 14 candy buttons
- DumDums (81%, 724 Votes)
- candy buttons (19%, 172 Votes)
Total Voters: 896
Loading ...7 Necco Wafers vs. 10 rock candy. Hm, flavorless cardboard disks vs. colored sugar on a stick. Toughie. No, I know Necco Wafers are beloved by many, including my mom, but I’ve never understood the appeal. However, how appealing is rock candy? Is the sugar even flavored? I suspect not. I think the Necco lovers will make their presence known and leave massive-chunks-of-sugar-on-a-stick stranded on the rocks. [“Necco is also responsible for those cough-syrup-tastic Valentine hearts. Candy fail.” — Bunting]
7 Necco Wafers vs. 10 rock candy
- rock candy (65%, 566 Votes)
- Necco Wafers (35%, 307 Votes)
Total Voters: 873
Loading ...2 Good ‘n’ Plenty vs. 15 gobstoppers/very large round candies. I’ve never understood the appeal of gobstoppers. I’m not patient enough to suck forever (hew) until I can finally crunch down and satisfyingly chew up the candy. Then again, Good ‘n’ Plenty are just licorice flavored bacteria rods, and I HATE black licorice more than I hate maple. If I had to choose, I guess I’d eat a gobstopper over Good ‘n’ Plenty, but I’m guessing it’s the pink and white bacteria that make it to the next round.
2 Good 'n' Plenty vs. 15 gobstoppers / very large round candy
- gobstoppers (72%, 636 Votes)
- Good 'n' Plenty (28%, 247 Votes)
Total Voters: 883
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Tags: food Keckler N Candy AA
I don’t know why this is, but the NCAA graphic – the woman at the dentist – scares me like crazy. THE EEEEYES.
FYI, horehound candy is NOT a generally applied term to candy sticks from Cracker Barrel or like places. Horehound candy (which used to be used for coughs) is its own flavor, from its own plant. Not a universal term for clove or sassafras or molasses candy.
Harrumph! What some dismiss as flavorless discs some others of us prize as subtlety, a pleasant break from pancreatic-shock sweetness. go, Necco, go!
To add, the wafers are way superior to the candy hearts. Better texture, better thought-out flavors.
Now and Later vs maple candy – meh on both, but I voted for maple candy, just because the Brach’s Maple Nut Goodies aren’t terrible, and Now and Laters are just low-rent Starburst that are far less chewable.
Even if I liked black licorice, which is my least favorite candy ever, I could not eat Good N Plenty. The pink ones get their color from K-Carmine, which is a food dye that is made from insects. If red gobstoppers use the same stuff, please have a heart and don’t tell me, thank you so much.
I have never understood the appeal of Necco Wafers – rock candy FTW just on aesthetic appeal. Now, if it were the dearly-departed Wacky Wafers (wow, this tourney is bringing back so many fond memories) that vote would have been a no-brainer. Man, I had no idea I was so devoted to the Willy Wonka field of candy until now.
Smarties are the poor man’s SweeTart, and I loathe them. It pains me to have voted for Smarties to support the SweeTart! Also, Gobstoppers are the Wonka variety, which are pretty small and wildly popular around here. Those giant jawbreakers? Not so much.
Agreed @Amanda. Horehound is its own flavor made from some sort of plant. The horehound plant, I presume.
Also, for the Canadian candy freaks out there, Smarties = Rockets, not the M&M like chocolates.
@Laura – I agree. I get a Kubrickian Clockwork Orange vibe from those eyes.
I’ve been emailing my sister about this one and when she looked over the bracket, she said, “Very large round candy? Could they not remember ‘jawbreakers?'”
Even though I know they’re going down, my love for Zots is undying. Green Apple Zots FOR EVAH!!! (Anyone else remember the ‘power paks’ of just the fizzy stuff? BLISS!) Thanks for including them.
Yes, agreed on the horehound front. I don’t think I’ve ever tasted it . . . but that was because my mom told me it tasted disgusting, and she is VERY particular about candy.
“Essentially, it’s fruit-flavored rabies.” I have never even heard of Zotz, and now I’m kind of happy about that. Ew.
I agree that “horehound candy” isn’t the generic term for stripy candy sticks. Around here, it’s used to describe a lozenge-y sort of candy made from horehound plants — it tastes a little like a root beer barrel. It was a staple of my school trips to Amish country.
@Laura, Leigh in CO – I also agree! My dentist phobia doesn’t help, but I forge on for the sake of having my candy-vote counted :)
And @duke, I am one of those Canadian candy freaks who had to stop and really think about why Smarties and SweeTarts were in the same grouping…. so thanks!
Some of us who HATE Peeps will vote for just about anything that’s not a Peep, so I have a feeling they may fall earlier than anticipated.
By the way, Keckler, did you see that the CTC is doing The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins again this year for their 45th Anniversary? Love!
@Amanda re: hoarhound
I blame Bunting for leading me astray/down the garden path/and all other bad things.
If Peeps make it to the next round I’ll put $10 in to the Fall Challenge. That’s right folks, every time you vote for Zotz you vote against children! Won’t somebody think of the children?
Oh man, I wrote that before I looked at the results. That race is a blow-out. I’ll have to pick a more competitive one for the next flight!
I’ve never had a Zotz (a Zot?), and I hate Peeps, but my daughter could eat pounds of them in one sitting, so I voted for the horrid things on her behalf.
I dislike SweeTarts; they require too much sucking and tear up the roof of my mouth. Smarties are superior, but butterscotch buttons remind me of my grandfather, so they got my vote.
My husband tells me that in middle school, a girl running for Class Presidents handed out suckers to everyone, saying: “Don’t be a Dum-Dum, vote for Janet!” She lost.
I would trade all of these and everything in the other bracket for a Hot Tamale; can’t believe they’re losing.
I can’t be the only Canadian experiencing culture clash on this, can I? Because round these parts, Smarties are like Canadian M&Ms. “When you eat your Smarties, do you eat the red ones last?” Ahem. Sorry. My point is, I appreciate that you included the /SweeTarts so I still know what we’re talking about.
Also, I’m sort of amazed at how many candies I’ve never heard of especially considering I don’t think I consumed any unprocessed food until I was about 10.
@Christy: I remembered “jawbreakers,” but where I grew up, they were gum.
Sorry about the horehound thing, I guess, but they’re going to lose anyway so who cares. Heh.
The only thing Necco wafers used to be good for was that you could use them in place of quarters on the Illinois toll roads. Now? They are good for nothing.
You know, I’d like to say that this entire bracket is a trip through my childhood, but I recently turned 40 and at the party I threw the centerpieces were big round vases full of Bottle Caps, Pixy Stix, candy lipsticks, candy necklaces, Fun Dip and M&Ms (if only Peeps came individually wrapped). So I guess not so much a trip down memory lane as much as my weekly shopping list.
Uh muh guh, candy lipsticks. Awesome idea that, if memory serves, was kind of a letdown execution-wise. Then again, my friends and I used to lick strawberry Chapsticks. Kids are such junkies, seriously.
Also, WTF, rock candy?
Maple candy – it’s gaining!! Come on, my northeastern North American comrades, vote for Our Candy!
@Lynne: I crunch them very fast.
@Sarah D. Bunting: It’s not that rock candy is so wonderful – unless it’s that long stick candy sold at every pier & great house gift shop in England – but that Necco wafers are so revoltingly vile. And I know that’s a redundant statement, but that’s how nasty they are. Ick to the nth degree.
Now and Laters must be a dentist’s dream. I remember one time seriously thinking I was never going to get my mouth open after trying to chew them. I thought either my teeth were going to come out, or I would have to eat through a straw for the rest of my life.
My mom grew up in the UP of Michigan and can eat saltwater taffy all day. It’s one of her favorites.
Also, i’m the complete opposite as @Em; I like Smarties much better than Sweetarts. I still them from the kids all the time.
OMG, Peeps – I have always loved Peeps, and looked forward to getting some in my Easter basket every year and having to make the delicious decision about whether I preferred the chicks or the bunnies. However, their ubiquitousness (ubiquity?) has almost made them less attractive – it’s just not as special when there are Peep pumpkins and turkeys and snowmen and Christmas trees and Valentine hearts, etc., etc.
I voted.
Honestly though, this part of the bracket is not doing it for me, with the possible exception of Peeps. Not so much for the eating of them, though I do enjoy a yellow birdie peep around Easter. But because my sisters and I started a yearly tradition of sending each other stale peeps who had met an unfortunate end with the help of some evil presence known as The Peepinator. My favorite one so far arrived in a ziploc stabbed through with a pair of children’s scissors, and some red food dye for effect.
Sick, I know, but incredibly hilarious!
How can a good Dutch girl NOT like maple sugar candy?
I am still offering “suck things” to Pa Keckler on our many road trips. Horehound in the form of lozenges was introduced to me by my mother (Grandmother Keckler). It was considered a digestive, a health thing.
Maybe it is a generation thing, but Necco wafers are wonderful. Try the all chocolate ones. They have much more flavor than the message hearts.
I agree with DriverB, my heart is not quite in this part of the bracket. My vote for Zotz was more of a vote against Peeps, and so on. Though I do love me some maple candy and Smarties.
On the horehound subject, I saw mention of Cracker Barrel. Cracker Barrel actually includes a horehound flavor amongst its striped candy stick things. Not that I have had one, as I prefer to put my ten-for-a-dollar toward as many citrus-flavored things as I can get.
Kids totally are junkies. I miss those days, strung out on Lemonheads while playing Super Mario Kart.
Necco wafers got my vote just because when you break the white or green ones in a dark room, you can see them glow.
I voted for horehound based on the definition given here, but actual horehound is a vile abomination. It tastes like the kind of medicine that makes you decide you’d rather just have the illness. The only time I’ve had it is on historic house tours when at the end, in the kitchen or pantry, they give everyone a piece of candy and you’re a kid so you think, “yay! Treat!” but really it’s a nasty TRICK and then they can say, “See! This is how bad kids had it back then!” And then a few years later your parents take you on a tour of another historic place, and you try the horehound again just to see if it’s as bad as you remember. It is.
Yes, the candy lipsticks are most definitely an execution fail (guy friend of mine: “Why are there tampons in that centerpiece?”), not to mention horribly bad for the environment. However, the candy in them is, in my opinion, the best of the compressed sugar options. Candy necklaces are no longer Smartie-like, they’re more like the Fun Dip sticks with a colored coating on top and are pretty gross. The candy lipsticks are more flavorful than Smarties, and not tart like SweeTarts, which I don’t really like all the time. There was quite an argument among my sister, my mother and I over who would get the bulk of the leftover ones.
I’m sad that I’m just now hearing of the lightbulb method of cooking smarties. In the CFL era, I’m afraid I’ll never have the chance to try it out.
@DriverB, you and your sisters are my kind of people.
We “accidentally” (i.e., while drunk) discovered the joys of toasted Peeps one Easter, and while the un-flamed versions are joyless, stale excuses for marshmallows, the magic of fire turns them into little browned chicks of deliciousness. It’s obvious really: it’s a toasted marshmallow PLUS ADDITIONAL SUGAR. Awesome.
Also, I suppose on a related note, seven or eight years ago I hid dozens of Peeps throughout the office of a co-worker as a joke. The person who had the office AFTER him found a couple that were particularly well-hidden years (years!) later. They appeared just as fresh as the day they were born. Mmmm, yummy preservatives.
I, too, remember horehound as a particular flavour (well, “flavour”) of hard candy. I believe horehound candies were an early form of throat lozenge; an infusion of the horehound plant was recommended for sore throats. (I almost said “a tonic for throats.” I was born in the TWENTIETH century, I swear! God.)
I have only heard of some of these candies, and some of the others sound sort of nasty, I have to say. But, like a few others, I have to remind myself that the “Smarties” above are not The Real Smarties, of which your M&Ms are but a pale imitation. (Apparently in the UK, Smarties are / were orange-flavoured chocolate in a candy shell. Any UK TN members care to weigh in?) The Rockets we have here are sugary pastel disks of no particular flavour. Scarily addictive and yet disgusting.
Smarties and Bar Six (does anyone remember Bar Six but me?) were the touchstone candies of my childhood. (Well, those and some red menthol-and-eucalyptus cough drops that my gran always had in her purse. I think only my brothers and cousins and I considered Throat-Ease edible, to say nothing of ever treating them like candy.)
How cool is it that Ma Keckler has weighed in on this important question?
Neccos are food of the gods! Ambrosia! I will take all the Neccos that you wafer-haters don’t want.
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm chalky goodness. Now I’m off to pick up a roll or 10.
@MaryAnne: I agree with you about the over-abundance of Peeps. Peeps, which I dearly love, belong to Easter – defined as the time from the day after Valentine’s Day until about a week after Easter Sunday. Peeps for other seasons are kind of like the final two seasons of The X-Files: I prefer to believe they do not exist.
I also love Necco wafers, and am hoping for a last-minute surge over the rock candy (which is boring, boring, boring).
Re: flavour of rock candy. If memory serves right, it does have flavours – but I haven’t seen any of the stuff in a while, so I can’t be completely sure.
But seriously, how hard would it be to add flavor to that stuff? I mean, they can dye it pretty colours easy enough.
@Ix: Rock candy definitely has flavors. Growing up in Philly, “the shore” meant Delaware for my family (Bethany and Rehoboth beaches) and I remember a saltwater taffy place that had lots of different kinds of rock candy, in addition to taffy and fudge. The fudge also had flavors; my favorite was and is the maple fudge, which is partially why I voted for maple candy. I love fall in part because I like the spicy-sweet flavors associated with it (e.g. pumpkin spice lattes at Starbucks), and I include maple candy in that group.
I’ve never heard of horehound candy; it sounds kind of dirty.
“Fruit-flavored rabies”! I nearly giggled myself to death at that. Zotz was one of my favorite candies as a kid (along with Pop Rocks).
A fellow that rides the commuter train with me has been plying me with Smarties (oh joy!) and SweeTarts (also enjoyable) in a bid for my affections. Poor man, he doesn’t realize that I’m only about the chalky sweetness…
And FunDip — one of my coworkers bought a Halloween-distribution sized bag of FunDip packs in two flavors and brought it to work. Needless to say, we mature, professional adults immediately reverted to age 10 with blue-green or blood-red tongues and teeth.
Horehound vs. Salt water taffy = the choice from hell! Love them both. I read somewhere that people either love, love LOVE horehound or hate it utterly… there is no in-between. Count me among the former.
I think horehound falls near black licorice on the love-it-or-hate-it end of the scale of candy popularity. I happen to like weird candies that taste like medicine, as well as the old-fashioned stick candy, so I voted for it on both fronts.
I do also love black licorice, but only if it’s salty (thanks, Amsterdam!). I gag at the candy-coated licorice messes like allsorts or Good’n’Plenty. You can’t see it, but I’m shaking my fist at my monitor just at the thought of them.
@Sandman: only the orange-shelled Smarties contain orange-flavoured chocolate here in Blighty. The rest are just milk chocolate in a coloured candy shell. Though when the blue-shelled ones were introduced when I was about nine I spent a long time insisting to my friends that they had a distinctive flavour. What I thought it *was* (scarab beetle?) is anybody’s guess.
Sometime around six months into my last pregnancy, I sat on the couch and ate six packets of Fun Dip in a row. Then I panicked and thought “Oh my god! I’ve poisoned my baby!” Yeah. It took me almost three years to eat another packet of Fun Dip. Good stuff…
I would bet there’s a pattern of votes … that people like me who like Pixy Stix also like Fun Dip and Smarties and maple sugar candy and rock candy and candy buttons. I kind of lump those all into the same glorious category of “very thinly disguised pure sugar”.
Heehee @Jenak – in reviewing my choices, I totally fall under your glorious category. I will even admit to sometimes eating the hard lumps out of the brown sugar rather then breaking them up with a fork when I’m baking.
So happy to see my maple candy winning, even if it’s only by 9 votes. Rest assured I will keep an eye on it and totally cheat by clearing my cache and voting repeatedly to make it win at least one round. (Hey, we all have our fight-to-the-death favourites. I am not above stacking the deck.)
Zotz forever!
“I will even admit to sometimes eating the hard lumps out of the brown sugar rather then breaking them up with a fork when I’m baking.”
@Hellcat – I am SO glad that I’m not the only person who does this!
@Hellcat and @mspaul – I do it too! Delicious!
What kind of evil makes the nostalgia/I Love Candy So Old Most Kids My Age Don’t Actually Recognize It As Candy fans choose between Horehound (which is actually a specific flavor of those general-store sticks – kind of herbal, since it’s really an old sore throat/cough remedy but awesome enough that if you buy me a half-pound bag I will do the guarding with my life/hissing at passersby thing with it, plus it kind of tastes like root beer) and Saltwater taffy?