America… your candy sucks
I’m sorry.. but it has to be said. Consider it tough love from your Canadian neighbour. How do I know this? Well… my wife has friends in the States and on rare occasions we do a snack swap. We got a bunch of Canadian snacks together (ketchup chips, Caramilk bars, Eat-more bars, Kinder eggs, etc…) and sent them off and in exchange we got a…
Zero Bar
Cherry Mash
Whatchamacallit Bar
100 Grand Bar
Heath Bar
Baby Ruth Bar
Pay Day Bar
and something called a “Chick O Stick” o_O
Well, we sampled everything and came to the same conclusion. They all tasted extremely cheap. I’m talking like they we bought a bunch of these from the dollar store. The Zero and Cherry Mash tasted like the chocolate you get at easter. You know… like you can taste the wax in it. The Whatchamacallit was… um… interesting. The 100 Grand actually wasn’t so bad and the Heath was quite similar to our Skor (but cheaper tasting). baby Ruth was like our Oh Henry! and Pay Day was… strange. No chocolate in that one… just nuts and caramel. It wasn’t bad… just different.
Then there was the Chick o Stick. Good grief, what can one say about this thing. It’s orange… it’s… um… a stick… it’s crumbles when you eat it and has toasted coconut rolled up in it. It looks sort of like a turd. Sort of… It tastes like peanut butter… sort of. And it’s currently the last piece left from what was sent to us because no one wants to eat it.
The next day I went to work and asked one of my US co-workers “How and Americans get so fat off candy that tastes like crap?” He laughed and asked what I had received from our friends, then proceeded to say some of those where pretty good. o_O He then gave a pretty good reason for why things taste the way they do South of our boarder. He said, as sad as it is, a lot of American’s don’t care about food quality. What they do care about it getting a lot of it for as little as possible. “How much of that can I get for a nickle” is how he put it. He also said that most don’t even realize that they’re eating crap, it’s so far to Canada or Mexico that they’re just stuck with what ever the companies make them. He also agreed that a lot of what we have up here does taste better.
After I heard that I felt sorry for central US people. Not ever really knowing there is better confections then what they get at the local store. I seriously tempted to do a snack swap with others out there that are willing to do so. I’ll send some tasty Canadian treats and you try and convince me that there are snacks out there that are of decent quality in the States.
Anyone up for the challenge?
Play Asia
March 8th, 2010 at 3:28 am
WHAT!! You didn’t like the Chic-O-Stick!? I love em! The rest of the candies I’ll admit are meh. I do live in central US and am curious about other countries and their foods.
Anyways, I’m so up for that challenge. I’m sure we have something that will tickle your taste buds. 🙂
March 8th, 2010 at 4:31 am
I’m sorry, dude, but you really got the short end of that stick. Can’t say whether or not all of our candies are “strictly” US or not, and I’ll admit as a general rule of thumb American’s are willing to buy cheaper stuff, but we do have some good stuff here, as far as I care.
Your friends didn’t send you any Hersheys, which is one of the most popular candies I assume anywhere. Those are fairly cheap – you can get three for a dollar, or better, if you know where to look – but if you’re willing to pay the extra price, the Cadburry Milk Chocolate Bars are much better. They also come in different flavors, such as Dark, Fruit and Nut, etc. But that’s more or less the “luxurious” simple Chocolate bar.
At least in Texas, most people I know, unless they’re pretty old, won’t even acknowledge most of those as candy. Over here, you’ll find:
Chocolate-
Twix (a type of cookie covered in caramel covered in chocolate)
Reese’s (peanutbutter in chocolate)
M&Ms (candy coated bits of chocolate)
Peanute M&Ms
Hershey’s – Milk, Special Dark, Cookies n’ Cream
Cadburry’s
Snickers (nougat, caramel, peanuts, covered in chocolate)
3 Musketeers (nougat covered in chocolate)(Apparently your Milky Way)
Milky Way (nougat and caramel covered in chocolate)(Apparently your Mars Bars)
Caramellos (caramel inside bars of Cadburry chocolate. Sadly not very popular, but very delicious)
Butterfingers (peanut brittle covered in chocolate)
Mounds (Coconut covered in chocolate)
Almond Joy (mounds with an almond; note that neither of these are popular, though AJ is more popular of the two, and both are delicious)
KitKats (chocolate covered wafers)
Crunch (more or less a chocolate bar made to be extra crunchy)
Dove Chocolate (more fancy chocolate)
Non-Chocolate:
(If you want descriptions of any of these, google them, as it’s harder to describe most of these. Then again, you probably have many of them, under same, similar or different names.)
Skittles
Starburst
Now n’ Laters
Dots
Twizzlers
Red Vine
Various brands of gum, breath mints, and regular candies like gummy bears
To be honest, I think more or less any given candy bar made by a major company is going to be available most anywhere, but possibly by a different company (Nestle and Hershey’s swap certain products in and out of the US) and under a different name. Of course, quality applies – Bar the US, places with more loose change would be able to afford better candies – but I think most of it is regional. I’m well aware of things like Baby Ruth, Heath Bar, Pay Day, 100 Grand, Whatchamacallits… I’ve had a few over the years. But they aren’t nearly as popular as the ones I listed – particularly the top ones, as those are memory recalled instantly – at least not in the areas I live. It’s really just a where-do-you-live thing with foods.
Also: I’m certain that America has candies that could knock the socks off anything else in the world. You’d just have to pay through the nose to get them, so they’re not exactly ‘popular.’ Such is how America lives. =D
March 8th, 2010 at 8:39 am
Contrary to what Podoboo says, most U.S. snacks do suck — even most on his/her list. I am fortunate enough to have fairly easy access to foreign snacks. Since I have family both in Europe and in Japan, I have had many opportunities to try their various foods and snacks. I can confidently say that the average European/Japanese snack is better in not only taste, but also quality and price. In fact, my wife is foreign, and she constantly complains that our snacks are both sub-par and expensive (for the quality). Yet, there are U.S. candies that are wonderful — for example Ghirardelli’s chocolates in San Fransisco. However, most of the best candies that we can get here in the U.S. are imported. If you go to a fine food store (not a foreign food store), there are roughly 4 imported candies for every one domestic. Even Ghirardelli’s could be considered semi-imported — it was founded by an Italian immigrant and is now owned by some Swiss chocolatier. Contrast this with fine and even average food stores abroad, there are almost no American candies on their shelves. To be fair, my wife (her family too) loves Twix, and there are some good candies to be had here in the U.S. However, that does not mean that on average U.S. snacks are anywhere near the level of quality that other countries’ snacks enjoy.
On another note, I am not sure that Oh Henrys and Skor are limited to Canada. I have not bought a chocolate bar in years (to be fair to Podoboo, it is possible that the quality has improved since then, but I doubt it), but I remember that we used to have them here. In fact, Skor was one of my faves. Yet, the availability may be limited to certain states. I grew up in Michigan, which may account for why they were available in my town. Maybe I will have a look at my local store to see if they have a Skor here — a sudden urge to have one has come over me.
March 8th, 2010 at 7:27 pm
You think our candy sucks Joe? Check out http://www.bad-candy.com and be happy you have American snacks to fall back on.
March 8th, 2010 at 10:23 pm
Sadly, I can’t take Joe up on his offer. Why, you ask? I live on the western bank of the Ottawa River. Anyhow… Someone described something called “Caramellos”. Sounds like a Caramilk Bar to me.
April 23rd, 2010 at 9:06 pm
[…] with friends. Some of our Canadian cookies and treats for some American ones. The results where lack luster. I proclaimed that all American candy sucks, put forth the idea of snack swap (a concept I […]