Boring Candy Is Hard To Write About

Probably the biggest challenge I have with this website (candycritic.org) is writing about unimpressive candy. Unimpressive candy for me is neither really good or really bad, it's just fine. Sometimes a candy is simple, and kind of boring, but also not that bad either. I will often find myself restarting the writing process several times when writing a boring candy review. I'll try desperately to find an angle or a feature that's worth mentioning, but sometimes it's just not there. What makes it even worse is I don't have any reason to tell you not to eat the candy either. It's average candy, and it's the bane of every candy reviewers life.

Check out my latest candy review of a treat that's perfectly fine, but nothing impressive either.

Be sure to check out my Facebook, Instagram the Twitter right now as I'm going to be posting lots of bonus review over the next little while.

You can also pick up my book(s) all about the history of candy and snacks. It's called Snack Facts.

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Is Boring Candy Interesting?

These Nibs made me think a little bit about what makes a candy interesting. Bright colours, interesting shapes, fun textures? In some ways these Nibs get a check in each category, yet I wouldn't call them interesting at all. I might even go so far as to call these the opposite of interesting, but I wouldn't call them boring. It's as if these Nibs somehow manage to be so simple and dull that I'm totally fascinated about who would come up with this idea, how one could market these, and why they've been on the market for so long. I ate an entire giant bag of these Nibs trying to figure this out, and I had a really good time.

Click here to read more about this strange candy.

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Today's New Candy Review Is An Average Chocolate Bar

I always have a hard time writing reviews for candy that's very average. It's not that I don't like it, it just doesn't have anything interesting about it. When people ask me what my favourite candy is, I have two answers. One is that Kit Kat bars rank the highest on the site, and second is "something new". I can't tell you how many times I've reviewed the same candy over and over again, and each time I have to figure out how to explain how this candy is not very interesting. I'm thinking in the future I might just write a single "this candy is boring" review, and just put a link to that review every time I come across a decent, but boring candy.

Click here to find out why this candy was boring.

You can follow us on Twitter and Facebook to get previews  of all our upcoming reviews as well.

And why not follow our Instagram feed called Snack Facts to learn about interesting snack related trivia.

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Super Bowl 50's Candy and Junk Food Commercials

This year's collection of Super Bowl commercials is not the best I've ever seen.  It seems like the Super Bowl commercials are becoming a genera into themselves.  It used to be that Super Bowl commercials were innovative and creative, now they're just strange, shocking, and kind of boring.  It's been a few years since I've been blown away by a Super Bowl ad.  It could be a lack of creativity, fear from brands that invest big money into these commercials, or the fact that I'm an old man now.  Most likely it's the latter.

Just because they didn't impress me, doesn't mean I'm not going to post them.  Here's all of the candy/junk food related commercials I could find from this year's line up.  Since I didn't watch the game I'm not sure if I've missed any, and I'll ad any new ones if I come across them later.

Drinks:

This is pretty standard, it looks great, but it's not very creative.



Probably the strangest commercial this year.



This might be my favourite commercial, but only because I'm a comic book nerd.

Snacks:

Doritos had some kind of crazy contest where anybody could make a Doritos commercial and the "best" one would have a chance at being played during the Super Bowl.  Here's the three finalist:







Of these three, the Ultrasound commercial is my favorite.



Nothing's better than mixing candy with a rock star's ego.



While it's a funny, the concept of this Snicker's commercial is kind of old.



I'm not sure if this is making fun of extreme commercials or not.

Certainly there are some well made commercials this year.  Could I make a better Super Bowl commercial, probably not, but I'm still a little disappointed.  Maybe next year things will get better (more creative), or maybe the allure of making creative, over the top commercials for the Super Bowl might be going the way of the dodo.

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Candy In The Media

All this month on the Candy In The Media segment of the Candy Critic blog we're going to look at candy themed games for tablets.  All of the games will be tested on my Nexus 7 tablet running Android Kit Kat.  Keep in mind that I'm not really a gamer, so my past experience is pretty minimal.  I'll mainly be focusing on how easy it is to play, how it incorporates candy, and any tech issues that may come up.  We welcome your suggestions for games you think we should try out on future posts.

I can't say that I have a great deal of experience playing games on my tablet, I have a few games that I like to play either alone or with Allison.  I also have a few games that I've played, but since taken off my tablet because I was either bored of them, or I finished them.  I can say that all of the games I've ever played on my tablet would probably amount to less than 30.  Even with such a small amount of video game playing, I can tell you that I don't think I'll ever see a game that I hate more than Candy Maker.

I played this game once, and then thinking that there's no way that this is the game and I must of missed something, I played it again.  I couldn't believe how boring, and of poor quality this game was.  I tried to tell myself that maybe this game is designed for children, so that's why it's so simple.  Then I realized that if you're a child and you are able to hold a tablet, than this game is way beneath you.  The basic principle of this game is that ingredients fly in over the pot, and you tap on them to add them into the pot.  There are several ingredients, some that I'm pretty sure don't actually belong in hard candy.  After all of the ingredients are added (and there is no "wrong" ingredients you just add them all) a spoon appears and you stir the ingredients.  This is the most complicated part of the game, and it's remarkably simple.

After your mixture is prepared you pick a colour to add, then you poor your mixture into a mold that you selected when the game started.  You can see that the graphics of this game are really simple, and the animation is simply fades, and basic graphics.  There's nothing really entertaining at all.  It doesn't even represent a realistic view of how to make candy.  There are ingredients that don't belong, like large quantities of oil, and there's no thought towards tempering or heating properly.

 

At the end of the game your lollipop appears and you can decorate it.  You can pick one of 9 backgrounds and one of 9 stick colours.  Then you can add graphics to your lollipop, which consist of 9 random candy like images.  The thing is, once you've selected an image, you can't take it off.  You can move the graphics around, and you can add more, but you can't take them off.  Finally you have the chance to eat your lollipop, which consists of a shrinking/fading graphic that I learned in first year animation school. Maybe I am missing something about this game, maybe there's a detail that I didn't come across, and in that case I'm the biggest idiot.  But if this game is simply what I described, you're much better off just going out and buying yourself some candy.

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Happy Valentines Day!!!

I both love and hate Valentines Day treats.  I love them because I'm a big fan of chocolate and cinnamon (the two most common flavors associated with Valentines Day) and I hate them because I think creatively it's not the best candy related holiday there is.  While fine chocolates are great to get, it's a pretty obvious choice to give as a gift on this holiday.  Sadly, most stores support the idea of a box of chocolates and rarely give you more options.  Sure sometimes you might find a heart made of chocolate (realistic or classic heart shaped) but again it's the same old same old.  I want someone to introduce a new treat for Valentines Day, one that seems like it should have been obvious, but that I've never seen before.

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Candy Show News

Have you ever wondered what happens at a candy convention?  I can tell you, it's both spectacular and remarkably boring all at the same time.  The spectacular aspects are pretty easy to imagine, there's candy everywhere, there's cool looking booths, and there's often dressed up mascots running around.  The boring is a little surprising for most.  Candy is a big business, it makes a lot of money, so there are a lot of people wondering around in suits, making "deals", and generally not being fun.  Both are essential in a candy convention, however whenever I visit a candy show I choose to ignore the boring.

Click here for some video highlights from the Sweet and Snack Expo that shows off both.

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Little Japanese Coloured Dots

Some Japanese candies are really clever, some taste fantastic, other are down right terrifying.  These can easily be identified as one of the most mundane Japanese candies that I've ever eaten.  Sure there was a bit of thrill when I took my first bite, but that's just because I couldn't read the package so I had no idea what I was eating.

Click here to read today's Japanese Degashi review.

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Chocolate, Fashion, and Sex

Sometimes I really get a kick out of seeing how these three things can be used together. I've seen some great chocolate and candy inspired fashions, I've seen some sexy candy, I've seen a lot more than I've ever published on this site. The reason why I don't post it all can be exemplified in the article below. It's about a photo shoot from a "Top Model" show where they basically covered the models in chocolate. It's not creative and a waste of chocolate.

Click here to see the article (most pictures are NSFW).

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Boring Article About an Interesting Subject

Who would have thought one could possibly write a boring article about candy and Toy Story but here's the proof.

Click here to read it yourself.

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Read Between The Lines

The article bellow is about the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory having a first quarter meeting in the near future (tomorrow actually). Sure the content is going to be all about investing strategies, business improvements, and things that would bore the sock off of most people. However I'm sure that the catering at this meeting will be fantastic and well worth the 20 minute slideshow about stock dividends.

Click here to read more.

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You'd Think I Love Everything Candy Wouldn't You

Well you'd be wrong, in fact there is a whole bunch of things that I really don't think about that much in candy. Well I think about it, skim a few articles here and there, but frankly I don't really focus on the business side of candy. I think it's important because things like price and quality of treats depends greatly on this, but it's really boring to read about and when given the choice between that and tasting some new fangled ice cream I think the choice is clear.

Click here to read about the Confectionery report from Venezuela.

Click here to read about the Confectionery report from Slovakia

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I love Factory Tours

The only thing better than watching them is going through them… actually watching them is only marginally interesting to me, going through them is where it’s at.

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Halloween Census

I got this very boring looking, but interesting factual information sent to me from the US census about what people do on Halloween. Most interesting is the fact that the US census actually collects data on Halloween. I’m wondering if they have the numbers about how many people dressed as Michael Jackson in 1985? I know of at least one.

Click here to check it out.

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