I remember my dad would bring home soda bottles from some store he'd stop at on the way home from work.

They were little plastic bottles filled about 1/3'rd of the way with a powder, and you added water, shook em up and drank em.  Those were cool!

And I also remember my grandmother would get these things that were like a sugar wafer, they looked like a cookie, but they were actually a candy.  They came in a long box, like you might buy mint patties in, and they were four or five different pastel colors.

Her & I have talked in the past about how good they were and how we wish we could find them somewhere.

I think a lot of times Candy is regional for some reason.  I know Charleston Chews are EVERYWHERE around here Trish.  Not uncommon at all.

There's a place on the net, at www.candydirect.com that has all kinds of nostalgic candy available for sale.  I bought my Dad some Zero bars there once because he used to go on and on about how he loved Zero bars when he was a kid and now they don't make them anymore.  Well, they DO make em, and that place had em!

I loved the candy cigarettes.  They were awesome.  They had the little red dye at the end to make them look "real".  They still have them, they just call them candy sticks and the red dye is gone.  They've gone PC. 

We used to get kinder eggs in Germany.  They still have them, but you can't buy them over here.  Well, not usually, anyway.  For those of you who don't know what that is, it's a chocolate candy shaped egg that is hollow inside.  There is a toy in the hollow portion.  Kind of like a egg shaped wonder ball with a toy instead of candy.  And the chocolate is way better than the wonder ball.  I heard it said that there is a law that you can't sell candy with a toy in it because it's a choking hazard.  They've sold them in Germany for years.  My mom, who is German, says it's just because German children are smarter than American children.  She's not one to mince words, either. 

Oh MAN, Swedish Fish are a steady part of my diet!

I just ate a bunch of them about two days ago.

But you GOTTA get em while they're fresh, the old ones are too gummy.

hahaha fun memory- this little old lady "MA" ran MA's candy store a block up from where I grew up. The front of her house was converted to her candy store. There were 2 grade schools and a jr high surrounding her store. For 4 decades, this little lady made her living pennies at a time, and her customers were 4 through 12 yr old. We paid her in buttons, foreign coins, slugs....she was so great. Anyways she was the introduction to swedish fish, candy cherrys, candy raisins, and bottle caps. I got so sick on bottle caps. the rootbeer flavored ones.

Anyways in the mid 80s the jr high and one of the other schools turned into schools for delinquent and troubled youth, and she decided to hang it up. She must have been 80 yrs old. She died 10 yrs ago, and my parents had friends who went to her funeral. They said they had never seen so many flower bouquets pack a church. Decades of our neighborhood loved and remembered MA.

        hmm , does 'eye candy ' count ?