Wednesday Sweets

A moderately slow day at work compounded by total boredom with the pithy sugar offerings around the office meant just one thing: let’s see what’s in the Walgreen’s candy aisle!

There’s always something new in the candy aisle. That’s what makes it so fun. Well, that and all the candy! I love checking out the newest incarnation of a snicker’s bar, or the latest take on Take 5. It’s new, it’s old, it’s all going to give me diabetes.

I found something both old and new. Behold the Necco Old-Fashioned Cream Drop. There was a lot appealing here. Necco is the oldest candy company in America, with its “only nostalgia could keep me alive” Necco wafer. The multi-colored throwback disc that supposedly boasts flavors from orange to clove to wintergreen, but really only tastes like stale. But wafers aside, I appreciate things old-timey, and this bag had Old-Fashioned actually written on the package (which makes me wonder, has the candy been called “Old-fashioned” since their inception? During what era were they the
result of some confectionary epiphany? I bet Marc Summers could tell me).

Right, so, Old-Fashioned Cream Drop. No clue as to what this was going to taste like. I assumed there might be some orange essence, as I’m inclined to judge a candy by its package, but nothing in the ingredients could confirm that. Just sugar on sugar. Noted.

They’re about the size of a small walnut. Here’s a pic with a miniature penguin, you know, for scale.


Taking the bisected view, it’s a little Haystack Rock-reminiscent, The contemplative frog agrees.


And how does it taste? I can’t really tell you. I took one bite, and though it seemed reminiscent of something, I was hesitant to investigate further because I was getting word from my pancreas that there wasn’t enough insulin in the greater San Francisco area to counteract another bite. Holy Sugar.

I’ve now left the bag for my co-workers to enjoy. I hope HR doesn’t come track me down for sending everyone off the rails.

(edit: after some reflective time, I remember what the damn things remind me of. Easter candy. Not peeps or jelly beans, but the other candy that was opaque and molded into soft shapes of bunnies and chicks and tulips. The assumedly cheap stuff that was there to fill up the basket. The stuff you wouldn’t actually eat unless you were a candy-deprived child who relished each morsel of sugar-centric holidays in the hopes that the candy could actually be there year-round. Um, thank god that wasn’t me?)