> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.smdp.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Comeback, candy - URL: https://www.smdp.com/comeback-candy/ - Published: 2007-04-19T15:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-24T23:54:30.000Z - Author: Guest Author - Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import *By MEREDITH C. CARROLL* THEY JUST DON’T MAKE CANDY LIKE they used to. Unfortunately, very few of the sweets offered during my childhood are still available in sundry stores today. The newer stuff is far inferior to the candy of yore and kids are way more into Red Bull than Red Hots. It seems as though coffee, or more specifically, Starbucks, has replaced candy as the sugar of choice for today’s youth. It wasn’t until I entered college that it occurred to me to drink coffee. Coffee was only something my parents drank and then it was in their 8-ounce ceramic mugs with a drop of skim milk in the morning, with the beans ground by my dad and brewed in the kitchen. During finals or when pulling an all-night cram session in college, my roommates and I would occasionally go to Dunkin’ Donuts for 16-ounce Styrofoam cups filled with their basic house blend. These days, it’s not unusual to see 9-year-olds after school sipping 24-ounce travel mugs filled with Starbucks’ Banana Coconut, Tazo Green Tea with Melon Syrup, Double Chocolate Chip or White Chocolate Mocha Frappuccinos topped with whipped cream. But who can really blame the kids for foregoing the candy aisle when even the classics have changed? A bag of M&M’S isn’t just filled with brown, yellow, orange and green anymore. Blue is now a staple. A few years back they made them in black and white. At Easter, they roll out the pastels. Red was taken out of the mix in 1976 when it was believed the dye posed a health hazard. When that proved to be an urban myth, they re-introduced them in 1987, even though everyone knows the little red ones can’t be enjoyed because they have the taint of cancer on their hard candy shells. They make M&M’s Minis, M&M Dark Candies, M&M White Chocolate Pirate Pearls, M&M candy bars, M&M ice cream. The M&M people might want to talk to Lindsay Lohan or Paris Hilton about the dangers of overexposure. The basic Hershey bar isn’t what it once was, either. No longer does the brown paper wrap encase shiny, silvery foil. When I was little, there were few things more thrilling than opening up a Hershey’s bar first by unsealing the outside wrapper at its seam and then unfolding the foil slowly at a corner, like Charlie in the (original) Willy Wonka movie when he discovers he has got the final the Golden Ticket. Hershey bars are now sealed in a single layer. It’s a plastic wrap that’s brown in the middle and silver on the ends - obviously trying to look like the old two-layer system. The manufacturers would likely argue they’re saving trees or reducing waste. Blah blah blah. Some things are sacred. You can’t get baseball cards with gum anymore. The wimpy bigwigs at Topps and Fleer were apparently fearful gum imprints on the cards would tarnish their value. But where else can you find powdery gum that’s jaw-achingly hard as cardboard with little to no flavor? One of my favorite things to do as a kid was kick back with a candy cigarette. The cylinder-shaped gum rolled in white paper and boxed in rectangular-shaped packs looked exactly like the real emphysema-causing things. If you blew out on the end, a tiny plume of sugar even flew out of the tip, just like actual smoke. The only candy slightly more fun (and still available in stores today) was Big League Chew. All hail Wrigley’s, the company missing just enough tact and sensitivity to create a product allowing kids to imitate the highly disgusting tobacco-chewing habit of baseball players of yore. Also still manufactured today are Hubba Bubba, Bubbalicious and Bubble Yum. The watermelon, cherry, apple and grape flavors haven’t changed a bit in 25 years. The artificial fruit flavors from each brand all have the same distinct taste. None resembles the actual fruits for which they’re named, but nevertheless, they’re entirely consistent across the brands in their real-imitation tastes and that they lose their entire flavor after roughly 90 seconds of chewing. Like Wrigley’s and Brad Pitt (according to former wife Jennifer Aniston), many candy companies were seemingly missing sensitivity chips when they named their brands. Nerds, Runts, Mega Warhead lollipops and Cry Baby extra sour gum were all the rage back in my day. If the confection trend moved along at the same rate, we’d now have the option of chocolate crack pipes, candy-coated birth control pills, Sprite-filled syringes and kits containing straws, mirrors and baggies filled with powdered sugar at gas station convenience stores everywhere. If candy is bad for you anyway, why not mix it up and make some of it downright criminal? Get a pair of wax lips and chew on that. *Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 19, 2007.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/041907.pdf?ref=smdp.com)