Canada Day Candy Commercial

 While Canada has had some amazing commercials for candy, I feel like for me, this is the ultimate piece of Canadian nostalgia. No kid my age could ever forget this song.

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It's Time To Look Back At A Couple of Classic Candies

Normally for In Hindsight I re-taste a candy I reviewed a while back and see if I still think it's the same. Today I've decided to not only taste a couple of classic candies I've already reviewed, but also compare them to each other to find out which one is better.

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Do You Eat The Red Ones Last?

This advertising campaign affected me so much, that I think to this day I save the red ones for last.

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Canadian Candy In The Media - Red Smarties

When I was a kid there was a strange obsession with eating red Smarties (British/Canadian Smarties). Frankly I always found the purple and brown ones to be the most fascinating. I'm probably stuffing a whole box of them in my mouth right now.

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Candy In The Media Halloween Edition - Gordon Ramsay Rates The Worst Things You Can Give Out On Halloween

I don't know if I've ever freaked out that much over candy I didn't like.

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This Week In Candy

One of the greatest friends anyone can have is a foodie friend. I consider myself extremely lucky, because I have many of them.  Some like to talk food, others like to act on it.  My friend Chris is one of those people who really likes to act on his food interests, and his foodie interests are really fascinating.  Chris likes to cook foods the old fashioned way. To be more precise, he likes to cook food the ancient way.  The other day I was over at his house for dinner and he made me an awesome dessert called Libum.  It's a very simple, yet very tasty ancient Roman cheese cake.  The flavour was really clean, and it warmed me up inside on the cool night that it was outside.  Chris apparently has more ancient cooking tricks up his sleeve, and I'm looking forward to trying them all out.

Over the last few weeks I've reported about a big shipment of lollipops from our good friends at Original Gourmet Lollipops.  The shipment was so big that I ended giving many away throughout the last few weeks. Then I had to try and figure out which of the many flavours I should review.  It was too big a feat for me to figure out, so I decided to ask around both in person and online.  So many people voiced their opinions that even after collecting all the data, I still couldn't decide on just one flavour to review.  I have managed to take this list down to just 5 flavours, so that means that every day this week I'm posting a new Original Gourmet Lollipop review.  So stay tuned to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Google+ to keep up with this week's Lollipop Review-A-Thon.

This week on Snack Facts (our Instagram feed), we're looking at Rockets... Or Smarties... Well that all depends on where you live really.  We're looking at those little powdery pill like candies that come in a cellophane tube.  Every day will post a new fun fact about this unique candy on our Instagram feed.  If you don't use Instagram, you can also follow Snack Facts on our Facebook page and our Twitter feed as well.

Part 1 of our Lollipop Review-A-Thon this week is a look at a classic malt shop drink, turned into lollipop form.  I love a good root beer float, and why can't I have one any time of the day, no matter how far I am from a malt shop.  So check out Original Gourmet Lollipops answer to my problem, and check back every day for another lollipop review in our Lollipop Review-A-Thon.

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Candy In The Media

Do you remember when candy commercials were really strange.  Sure there are a few M&M commercials that are weird, and certainly some Skittles commercials that could be called bizarre. The thing is, these commercial all have some kind of narrative, a strange story to follow.  When I was a kid you'd have commercials that were just random colourful images that didn't really tell a story, they just showed the candy in random situations.  This Smarties commercial from 91 is a great example of just that.

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Canadian Candy List - Part 7 - Varieties

Over the last few years I've been living away from my home country, Canada.  I've been traveling the world exploring all kinds of snack foods, junk foods, and sweets, but my heart is still in Canada.  I'm going to be back home for an extended period, and I've decided to compile various lists on the theme of Canadian candy and snacks.  Each week, for the next several weeks, I'll be posting a different list of Canadian candies I've reviewed in various categories.  Some of these treats may be available in other parts of the world, some are exclusive to the Great White North, but in my mind all of them are Canadian.

All over the world we're seeing candy companies produce treats (bars mostly) with limited edition versions.  I call this candy of treat, a "variety".  Some classic Canadian treats have also come out with different varieties, some are great, some not so great.

 Caramilk is most certainly a Canadian classic candy bar.  Most Canadians would probably put it in their top 10 list of favorite Canadian treats.  To attempt to affirm their Canadian status even more, Cadbury came out with a maple flavoured Caramilk.  You can tell by the review that it didn't really work very well, but at least I felt a little more patriotic eating it.

Click here to read the Caramilk Maple review.

I had a Mr Big faze in my life when I was a kid.  A time where this bar was the end and be all of my candy eating life.  It was short run, and today I'm not really a huge fan of these.  Adding more chocolate flavour didn't improve my opinion either.

Click here to read the Mr. Big "Double Dunk" review.

 This is probably the most Canadian variety of any candy ever.  Not only does it have a maple flavour, the log of fudge in the center was coloured red and white.  Canadians are not really known for being overly patriotic, but this bar is the exception to that rule.  Personally I would rather eat this than wave a flag any day.

Click here to read the Oh Henry "Oh Canada" review.

For a while Smarties got into the chocolate bar market (Maybe they still are, I haven't been paying attention).  For the most part it didn't really work out.  After all, the best thing about Smarties is the crunchy candy shell, and the fun colours.  They attempted to try to improve these bars by adding different centers (instead of chocolate) to the middle of the Smarties. Frankly I would have rather just had a handful of peanut butter Smarties instead.

Click here to read the Smarties Bar "Peanut Butter" review.

Americans don't really understand the pure joy of Cadbury products.  There's something really great about the way they take high quality ingredients, and occasionally do really creative and strange things with them.  These popping Mini Eggs are a great example of that.

Click here to read the Mini Eggs Popping review.


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Candy News

Here's a fun game to play, how many of these UK chocolate bars have you sampled?

A few weeks back I had a debate over weather or not you "have" to toast Pop Tarts.  Apparently toasting isn't the only option.

American's will soon be celebrating Thanksgiving, and here's a few strange dessert ideas to serve with dinner.

Apparently there are rules about how children are allowed to consume candy, crushing up their Smarties (the American kind) and snorting them is apparently not cool.

The fact that I'm a visual artist and a candy food writer makes these sketchbooks made of cocoa the perfect Christmas gift.

Good idea: Enjoying your sweet treats fresh out of the package.  Bad idea: Microwaving them first.

Have you ever wondered who invented the cupcake, or when the jawbreakers first hit the scene?  Well wonder no more.

If you want to keep up with all of the daily candy news that we come across as it happens, follow us on Twitter.

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Classic/Creative Candy Advertising

I think this advertisement is cute, and really creative, however I don't understand how one uses a Smarties tube as a gun.  It could be that Smarties tubes are kind of a new thing for me, since in Canada we got our Smarties from a box.  Did kids used to make things out of their Smarties tubes, because that would be awesome and I'd love to see some examples.

I found this ad here.

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Old Candy Critic Articles - How to be a Smartie Pants

I've decided to take down several old articles from the candycritic.org and re-post them here on the Candy Critic blog.  This week's article is one I wrote a while back looking at the difference between American and UK/Canadian Smarties.

It's about time someone got the record straight. Now you may have read some things on this site that just didn't make any sense to you. In fact, this was something that until I started this site didn't even know. Now your probably saying to yourself, get to the point buddy, I have other candy related things to read about. My point is this, what is a "Smartie". Oh you think you know, your sitting in your chair saying everybody knows what a "Smartie" is, don't they. Well, you’re partially right. Many people do know what a "Smartie" is, but depending on where your from, your answer might be totally different from another person. So I've decided to make it clear for everybody, strap on your... well what ever you wear when you eat "Smarties", you just might learn something.

I think the best way to start this is to explain the concept of Smarties as simply as I can. In this great blue marble we live on there are two types of "Smarties". There are those that are chocolate with a candy coated shell and ones that look like little sugar pills that are all stacked up and rolled together. Now some of you are confused, you are most likely people that don't live in Canada, because unlike many other countries Canada is blessed with both. Although if you were to ask a Canadian what a "Smartie" is, they would say the chocolate with a candy shell, but they would understand that there’s an American version too.

So now that I've completely confused you, here is a little profile of each treat:

The chocolate with the candy shell.

For all you American, this is what many people call Smarties.   These are similar to "M&M's" in that they are little chocolate disks with a candy shell. But, if you look a little closer you can really find a lot of differences between these treats. 

M&M tends to go with filling their treat with something special, like peanuts or almonds or whatever is in those crunchy ones. Smarties are more about flavoured chocolate in the centre. Smarties have just introduced a new flavour called Sundae, and when you get the giant Smarties the orange ones are orange flavoured. Speaking of Giant Smarties, size is something that they interestingly went on opposite sides of the spectrum. M&M's went tiny, while Smarties went giant. Both are great and each are worth trying. Other than that the colours do vary a little, although nowadays they each offer specialty colours all the time, particularly M&M's.

So this is how it goes, Smarties are a lot like M&M's; small, round disks of chocolate covered in colourful candy shells. They generally come in either a tube or a box and are great for decorating cakes. From what I know you can find this variety of Smarties in Canada and the UK wherever you buy standard chocolate bars.

The sugar pills wrapped in cellophane all lined up.

Some people know these treats as "Rockets" as well, but to many Americans if you say "Smartie" this is what they expect. These are the staple of every Halloween diet, as I've said in the past, "you will get a roll of these if you go out for Halloween". Not that it’s a bad thing. These tangy little treats are great; they have a tangy zip and leave a powdery feeling in your mouth. As far as variety goes these things don't really have much to offer, the only variation I've ever seen is really long rolls and really short rolls.

I guess if you have to compare these with another snack I might look in the direction of the "Sweet Tart", but really they are something of a unique treat. Having said that so many companies make a version of these that you do see them around a lot all over the world.

So there you go, if you ask for a "Smartie" in the USA, and you don't get what you expected, this just might be why. I hope you've learned something because learning about candy is almost as fun as eating it.

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Stuff I Want To Try

Smarties Gummies  - Smarties Candy Co. - I'm very curious to see how they wrap them. - Click here to learn more about this treat.

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Friday's Candy Links

Cadbury UK has just launched a couple of Creme Egg commercials with Olympic themes, I hope we see more of these in the future as they're really funny and very twisted. (Here's the first, and here's the second)

Smarties have been around for 75 years, I'm talking about the British/Canadian kind (bonus, this link also contains 10 cool facts about the candy as well).

Here's a quick history of breakfast cereals, a few of my favorites are excluded, but it's informative none the less.

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Friday Candy Video - Lego Candy Machine

I have to admit that although I really love Lego, I'm not very clever with it.  Sure I go outside the boundaries of the suggested builds, but I've never come up with anything beyond a custom space base, or castle.  People that build things that actually serve a function out of Lego blow my mind.  I particularly enjoyed this project only because it also dispenses yummy candy.

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Stuff I Want To Try

Mystery Smarties Mix Colors, Flavors - Made by: Smarties Candy Co. - Why: I like a surprise. - Click here to learn more about this treat.

Little Disks With a Candy Shell Filled with Chocolate

No, I'm not talking about M&M's.  Nope, not talking about Smarties (the British/Canada version) either.  I'm talking about my latest Japanese Degashi review for this weeks Japanese Degashi Review-a-Thon.  Sure they're similar to both of these treats, but they're different enough that I could fill 3 paragraphs into this review.

Click here to read the review.

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The Smarties Debate Just Got Strange

For those unfamiliar with the "Smarties Debate" it's pretty simple.  In most of the world if you mention the word "Smarties" people will describe a candy coated chocolate similar to M&M's.  If you mention the word "Smarties" to an American, they'll describe those round pill like candies one often gets on Halloween (some call them rockets).  The US has their own Smarties, and many have no idea that the other Smarties even exist.  To add a new twist to this debate, Ce De Candies the manufacturer of the American Smarties, has officially changed their name to "Smarties Candy Co."  This might get interesting.

Click here to read about the name change.

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This Month Is Peanut Butter Lover's Month

Here's reason number 12 to love peanut butter:

Peanut Butter Smarties Bar

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Smarties VS M&Ms

I've had this debate a few times myself, but it's good to see others taking interest in this the most important of debates. So what's better, British/Canadian Smarties or M&Ms. I think I may have to write a little more on the subject but for now you can read another's opinion.

Click here, read, and pick a side.

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Smarties Mix Up

I always knew it was a little strange having two sweet treats called "Smarties". One is a candy coated chocolate treat similar to M&Ms, the other are little rolled up powdery candy pills (some people know them as rockets). The thing is they share the same name, and now that candy boarders are starting to shrink conflicts appear to be starting.

Click here to read about a lawsuit dealing with this very issue.

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