Old Time Candy has quite a nice selection of obscure or old-fashioned candies with cult followings. And their site has useful information. For instance:

Necco Wafers come in eight flavors:

yellow – lemon
orange – orange
white – cinnamon
pink – wintergreen
purple – clove
green – lime
black – licorice
brown – chocolate

I mention this because I’m addicted to the yellow Necco Sweetheart Conversation Hearts right now. That link will take you to a very interesting history of Sweetheart Conversation Hearts. Then you’ll get sucked into the site, then you’ll remember when Miss Piggy was on the Martha Stewart Christmas Special in 1995 and terrorized Martha with Necco Wafers (they were making a gingerbread house) and then you’ll forget all about me. Maybe you shouldn’t go learn more about Necco wafers until after you finish reading this post.

Incidentally, although other Necco products are on the list of kosher candies, the Sweethearts apparently are not.

According to the Necco website:

Necco products carrying the KVH-D or KD symbol are certified Kosher and Dairy under the Orthodox supervision of the Vaad Harabonim of New England. The Clark Bar is Kosher Dairy under the supervision of the Orthodox Union and carries the OUD logo.

I’ve forgotten why I was obsessed with finding out if Sweethearts are kosher, because I just found this:

We do produce custom conversation hearts (hearts with your own sayings). However, in order to purchase custom hearts, you must purchase a full production run of 3500 pounds. This equates to over 1 million tiny hearts!

We can print up to 80 different sayings on the smaller hearts and 37 sayings on the larger hearts. Sayings can be repeated. Each saying can be no longer than two lines of four letters on the small hearts and two lines of six letters on the large hearts. All sayings must be approved by Necco. The lead time for placement of orders on custom hearts is six weeks.

To find out more about custom hearts contact us.

For some sick, strange reason I find this much more interesting than ordering custom m&ms. That just seems so very 80s.

Incidentally, you can order Pop Rocks in bulk at the Sugar Stand. I don’t know what you’d do once you had a giant mound of Pop Rocks, but the possibilities seem endless. Or at least mildly amusing, but possibly only in theory.