Canadian?!! I never knew.

Every so often I realize that a candy is missing from candycritic.org. These are often candies that I consider to be the classics, but for whatever reason they've failed to be posted on the site. I feel bad about missing out on classic candies because I feel like there are a lot of people interested in reading about their favourites. This week's new review is a classic candy that means so much to me from a nostalgia standpoint, Luck Elephant Popcorn. The thing is, today I learned that this is likely not the case for most of you out there. That's because Luck Elephant Popcorn is apparently a Canadian thing. I'd always assumed it was an American treat that we imported into Canada, however today I learned that just isn't the case.

Click here to read about a truly nostalgic candy for Canadian people my age.

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Learn more about my nostalgic journeys on Patreon as well.

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Amazing Candy/Junk Food Things That You Should Buy - Sweet Ice Cream T-shirt

Ice Cream Dream T-Shirt
by candycritic

Check out this sweet, simple ice cream t-shirt design.

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You can also follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook to check out any upcoming designs.

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Amazing Halloween Candy/Junk Food Costumes That You Should Buy - Peeps for Pets

I saw a photo of a small kid dressed up as a marshmallow Peep, and I thought I would feature that costume. They while digging a little deeps I came across this.

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Tom's Look At The Visual Side Of Snacks And Candy - Lucky Elephant Popcorn

Hey everyone! This time around, the item up for scrutiny has a strong attachment to my childhood. As a family, we used to head to the arena (now defunct but replaced in a different location with a bigger facility) for ice skating. I recall a big part of the outing came after the skating. When learning to skate a lot of time  is spent falling on the ice and trying to stay warm in the cold arena. The reward was a box of Lucky Elephant popcorn! I don’t recall if freshly popped popcorn was an option. In hindsight, a warm box of fresh popcorn would have been amazing!

But I digress...

As the Pop Art (pun intended) lettering below states, it was indeed a box containing pink popcorn. Essentially, it was caramel corn but coloured pink instead of the regular caramel colour.

As a kid, the popcorn was almost secondary to the excitement of the promised “FREE PRIZE INSIDE”.

At this point, it should be stated that these photos are not images pulled from a nostalgic, vintage candy website. The Lucky Elephant Pink Popcorn is still available in a package that is largely unchanged from how it appeared forty-plus years ago!

As a concession to modern times, the popcorn is now in a plastic bag inside the package instead of simply filling the cardboard box. Also, there is the  mandatory “Nutritional Information” chart, required on food products sold in Canada. Otherwise, the imagery looks much as I remember it from long ago.

I’m pretty sure I never looked at the ingredients back then but here’s what goes into making “Pink Candy Popcorn”.

As for the prize, instead of a cheesy, plastic doodad, there was a sheet of Spider-Man stickers. I think the young “me” would have been pleased!

Not only was it amazing to see Lucky Elephant popcorn still on the market, it turns out that the company is Canadian! I don’t know for certain if that explains the sticker sheet, but Sandy Lion is a major Canadian company that makes a range of stickers, many depicting licensed characters.

Finally, I thought it would be fun to share the French translation as it gives a classier air to this humble treat. In the days before I took French in high school, looking at cereal boxes was a fascinating glimpse at a different language. Such is life in the officially bilingual country that is Canada!

Tom

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Candy Critic Chris By Tom Yeo T-Shirt
by candycritic

5 Awesome Candy Themed Funko Pops - Part 5 - Marshmallow Peeps

Make sure to look back, because all this week we've been looking at awesome candy themed Funko Pops.

Of all the Funko Pops that we've looked at this week, this is probably my least favourite. First of all I'm not a big marshmallow guy, so Peeps are generally out of my wheelhouse in the first place. Secondly I find it a little strange that Funko decided to go with the Peeps bunnies instead of the classic chicks. While I don't hate this toy, I'm not really sure if it's something I'd put on my shelf.

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This Review Looks At The Colour Pink - Kit Kat Pink

Psychologically we often associate certain colours with certain flavours, and this is particularly true with candy. The problem with this comes about when candy companies try to make a candy that's themed to a colour. For some reason it's easy to theme a candy to a flavour, like strawberry, and colour it pink. But it's not so easy to theme a candy to the colour pink, even if it has a strawberry flavour. I've seen and tasted a few colour themed treats in my life, and most of the time it just doesn't work out. I'm not sure who's to blame either, is it that candy companies don't get the candy right, or is there something mentally that just doesn't click?

Click here to find out why I thought that the Kit Kat Pink didn't work.

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An Apparently Canadian Candy Thing

While trying to find a fun thing to post on this Wednesday's "Candy Thing", I thought I would search out something with a Canadian theme.  Today is Canada Day, the day we became mostly independent from England.  I thought I would search through the internets and see if there's was anything truly Canadian, and candy related (maybe a moose candy dispenser or something) that I could post today.  While doing my search I kept coming across something called "Canadian Mints".  Now I've been a Canadian all my life, and I've been writing about candy for many years, but I've never heard of Canadian Mints.  Is this an American thing, like calling cheddar cheese "American" even though it's British?  I'm thinking I may have to try and find a bag of these to review.

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A Pink Bunny Candy Thing

While looking at things to feature for Easter on the weekly Candy Thing post, I realized that the Easter Bunny may be the only holiday character that really doesn't have a gender.  That means that this slightly sexy Easter Bunny costume might actually be appropriate.  Personally I think it would be great if the Easter Bunny was a girl, after all there aren't that many holiday themed characters that are women.  However this costume doesn't really demonstrate how much this idea is a great step in the direction toward equality for women in the field of holiday characters.

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A Cool Candy Thing

So why is the world better for kids today than it was when I was a kid?  It can all be summed up with this t-shirt.  When I was a little kid there was an offer to get yourself a Nerds t-shirt.  To get this t-shirt you had to send a bunch of proofs of purchase, and a large sum of money (at least large for a 5 year old kid).  Then you had to wait 6 to 8 weeks for delivery.  There were no other options to buy Nerds t-shirts, stores did not carry candy themed clothing, you could only get it through the mail.

Well I saved my proofs of purchased and saved my allowance, and with the help of my dad, I sent everything away.  As it turns out there was a problem with the mail, and delivery of my shirt was delayed to twelve weeks.  I was a young growing boy determined to get my t-shirt.  The problem here was that I was "growing", and growing rather quickly.  By the time my shirt arrived it was too small for me.  I didn't know how to return the shirt, and my parents didn't really realize the problem. So I've never had a Nerds t-shirt that fit me, even though I saved for it.  I still have the shirt, it's very small, but out of principle I keep it.  Maybe I'll give it away to someone, maybe I'll see if it can be re-purposed into something I can use.

But this is why kids are so lucky today, a couple of click of a button and the Nerds shirt will be at your door in no time.

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A Cool Candy Thing

There's a lot of talk these days about gender and toys (particularly video games).  While women suffer the brunt of many of these gender relating products, I often find myself suffering as well.  Many candy themed items seem to be geared towards girls. Take a look at today's Cool Candy Thing for example.  It's a great little chocolate melting machine, and it comes with a set of molds wrappers, and fun stickers.  On a technical level it's very effective, and it looks like a lot of fun.  The problem is the fact that it's obviously designed to fit into a girls stereotype.  The pot is bright pink, all of the molds are the shape of cute little flowers, kissy lips, and other "girl" related things. And the stickers have slogans like "BFF", "Love" and some have cute little animal faces. It just seems like this toy isn't designed for my male ego.

Then I thought about it for a little while, maybe the problem is mine.  I like flowers, and I like getting kissed, I even like the colour pink.  Maybe the problem is that I immediately associate this with being a girls toy (although the girl on the box doesn't help, also the fact that it asks for Mom's help, and not Dad's), instead of imagining making these fun shaped chocolates myself.  So I've changed my mind, I'm not going to protest this toy, instead I'm going to put it on my Christmas list.  And if Santa is good enough to give me one, I'll post all kinds of fun pictures of me and my chocolaty creations.  This isn't a girls toy, it's a pink toy, and those aren't girly stickers and molds, they're whimsical and I can be whimsical too!

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Simple Candy T-Shirt

Simply Candy Shirt by candycritic
Find other Candy T-Shirts at zazzle.com

One of the simplest pleasures you can have in life is a beautiful swirled hard candy.  Bite sized, smooth, lasting about 10 minutes, it's a simple pleasure that no candy fanatic can do without.  The flavour can vary, from sour berries, mint, and sometimes tutti fruity.  You can have your chocolate covered, caramel, nutty clusters, your popping powder kegs, and your sticky, chewy fruity bits, today is a day for something simple.

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Gummy Bear 8-Bit T-Shirt

8 Bit Bear Pink Tee Shirts by candycritic
Look at 8 bit T-Shirts online at Zazzle.com

What could be cuter than a little pink gummy bear in 8 bit.  It's the perfect shirt for anybody who feels guilty about killing defenseless gummy bears on a regular basis.

Click here to check out all of the shirts we have available.

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Manner Store In Vienna

If you're unfamiliar with Manner, it's an Austrian candy company most well known for a chocolate wafer bar.  While you may have never tried a Manner wafer bar, the company has one very famous devoted fan, Arnold Schwarzenegger.  He apparently loves these treats so much that he tries to include them in his movies, you can see this if you check out some of the candy shelves in the Terminator movies.

While not hugely popular all over the world, in Austria they're a really big deal.  In fact Manner has stores all over the city of Vienna, and I imagine they have more throughout all of Austria.  The stores are clad in pink, and sell all kinds of treats.  The wafer bar is the main treat available, in about as many sizes and quantities as you could imagine, but they also have other sweet delicacies available.  I'm not sure if all of the other treats are made by Manner, but all of them appear to be made in Austria.

They also have a whole bunch of merchandise for those of you who either love the bar, or fall in love with the bar.   They had everything from pink jackets, nail clippers, pins, and my personal favorite these pink golf balls.

Best of all, if you go out to the main square (near the store I visited), one of the many horse drawn carts ready to tour tourists around the city is painted up with the Manner logo and Manner colours.  Man these Austrians really like these pink clad wafer bars.

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Cotton Candy Question

I asked a few people on Twitter and Facebook "What flavour is cotton candy?".  The consensus is that it's a flavour all its own.  However my friends Brent and Chris agreed that it's "sugar flavor".  Although there are many flavours of cotton candy available today, what flavour do you think is the basic carnival pink stuff?

Update: Since posting this I've had two more opinions mentioned:

Nina claims that the "Standard is the Pink Vanilla".

While Katie claims "It's cherry...standard issue cherry."

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Strawberry Pink...Things

These are strawberry flavoured crunchy ... things. They were in the chip aisle of the Asian grocery store, but are sweet, not salty like most chips. The thing that made me buy them are those little characters on the package: So Happy! and the strawberries: They Sparkle!

They turned out to be a little bland, very artificial (go figure), and very pink.

It's a Greek Review Kind of Tuesday

I got a lot on my plate today, but I didn't forget to post a new Greek review for the Greek Review-a-thon.  I don't have much to say about this little treat that I didn't say already in the review.  It's a pink cube, it has the letter "A" printed on it, and it's filled with chocolate.  How was it?  Well you'll have to read the review to find that out.

Click here to read the review.

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Look What the Easter Bunny Brought Me (part 2)

Pink Marc de Champagne Truffles. Emphasis on Pink.

The box has a fancy gold seal saying "By Appointment to Her Majesty the Queen ..."
I'm sure this is what Will & Kate will be eating on their honeymoon.

I served mine in a champagne glass for a touch of class.

They get their flavour from Marc de Champagne and rum. The outer shell is a white chocolate.

Remember Summer?

I love the way summer colours mix with the bright vibrant colours of candy.  I've attempted a few winter scenes in the past but they just don't go together as well as nature in full bloom, and a shinny sweet treat.

Click here to buy a copy of this photo.

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Candy Photos

This photo is a great example of how important colour can be in making a candy spectacular.

Click here to pick up a print, greeting card, or poster of this photo.

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Happy National Cotton Candy Day... Or Do You Call It Candy Floss.

I can never get it straight where people call it cotton candy and where people call it candy floss.  I prefer cotton candy myself, but I'm not against candy floss at all.  In fact I figure candy floss is a slightly classier way of saying it.  It sounds kind of turn of the century to call it candy floss, like I should eat it with a top hat and monocle.

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