I'm Crazy Nostalgia Face. Gimmee Some Candy!

I came across a neat site: the Victory Seed Company Old Time Candy Store. From it, you can order all sorts of old timey candy (they're silly with it!). Here are some that brought back memories for me:

Chick-O-Sticks - Mmmmmm, I loves me the crunchy, coconutty, peanut buttery goodness of a Chick-O-Stick. They're just the right size for a quick, sweet snack. I remember Lea had never seen one, so I mailed her one, early in our relationship. She probably thought "why is this idiot sending me an envelope full of candy crumbs" but what the hell.

Bottle Caps - Probably my favorite of the Wonka candies. I remember when I was around 8 or so, and there was this obscure little mom and pop place about a block from us. I'd walk over there and buy candy, and more often than not, it was a pack of Bottle Caps. I would've frequented that place more often, but just across the street from it was Stone's Drug Store, which carried not only candy, but also model kits, and most importantly, a whole rack full of comics!

Candy Necklaces - We always had these things as kids, always wore 'em around our neck or wrist, and never, ever particularly enjoyed them. The problem is they didn't really have much in the way of flavor. Like Necco Wafers, they were just sweet without being tangy, fruity, etc. The ones pictured here are Smarties brand, so maybe they taste better than the other ones (for you Canucks, these are the American Smarties, which for you are "Rockets," not your Canadian Smarties, which are an M&M rip-off...

Lemon-Heads - Oooooh, I love all the Ferrara Pan "head" candies. Lemonheads, Grapeheads, Cherryheads, Appleheads, you name it. You get a box of these bad boys, you sit on the porch swing on a breezy summer day with your copy of Avengers #115, and boy, you got yourself one damned good time.

Fizzies - OK, this is one of those wonder products of our youth that we remember fondly, but that never really did pay off for us at the time. As I recall, they did fizz in water, and they did slightly flavor that water like root beer, cherry, apple, whatever, but it was hardly like drinking an actual soda. It was more like drinking rainwater that someone had whispered "root beer" into. Great idea, though, and a damned lot of fun for kids, especially in the old days, when all we had to play with were rocks and fear of persecution.

Necco Wafers - Christ on a cracker, don't eat these things. As mentioned above, they're just discs made of chalk with a little sugar thrown in to fool you. I'd rather suck the blood out of a racoons ass that eat a whole package of these. They didn't even look good, with their pastels colors and chalky disposition. They looked like a candy your grandpa had eaten as a child, and had hated, and truth be told, I think that's exactly what they were...

Nik L Nips - No, not a racist candy, but tiny wax pop bottles filled with fruity syrup. God, I loved these things. They seemed to be seasonal when I was a kid, though, so you couldn't always find 'em. I dug the fact that they came in a tiny cardboard package to simulate a six pack of soda. I think they were probably called Nik L Nips because they were original a nickel for the pack. These days? Seventy-five cents. Oh, well..

Slo-Pokes - For those times when a Sugar Daddy was just too high-falootin', a Slo-Poke would do just fine. It was a block of caramel on a stick; those candy scientists are geniuses! Of course, on a particularly hot summer day...well, then it turned into embroidery for your jeans, but what the hell.

Wax Lips - I bought a bunch of these over the years, and never really understood the point. You could wear 'em like big red lips (now there's some fun), and when you were tired of 'em, you could chew them like gum. Except they weren't gum, they were wax. How often have you been at home, maybe during a blackout, and said to yourself "Man, I'd like to gnaw on that candle for a while"?

I miss those days...I guess that's why a company like this can probably make out pretty good with the Gen X crowd...now if I could just get them to start making Freakies cereal again...