Pop Rocks + Coke = Death!!!

     There was a candy store down the road from my house, well, actually it was a dairy store but I only went there for the candy. When I was a kid, I thought the candy section was huge! I was so proud of myself when I was old enough that I could go there without my parents. My friends and I would go down there and buy as much as we could with every dime we had.

Here are my top 10 favorite from back in the day:
10. Pop bottles. You could drink the juice inside and then chew on the wax bottle. I am almost positive that would make me gag now!                                              

9. Candy Cigarettes. (I don’t know if I can call them part of my top 10 because I only tried them once, but there’s a funny memory behind them!) One day we were at the candy store and my brother, John, bought a pack of candy cigarettes. They looked just like real cigarettes to me since I never really saw cigarettes up close normally. The box even looked real to me. The cool thing was that you could blow on them and a puff of “smoke” would come out its little pink end. We thought we were so cool puffing on them. Until we got home. My parents were not very impressed.  In fact, they took them away from us and told us that we should never pretend to smoke. It would make it seem normal to us and then we would think it’s okay and then someday we would want to smoke. Okay, I look back and think that was fairly dramatic, but it did make a point with me and I never wanted them again since then.

                                             (No picture of these because they are bad!!!!)

8. Bazooka gum and Chiclets Tiny Size. I put these together because they are both gum. Bazooka gum was cool because there was a comic inside and they were almost always different.  Chiclets Tiny Size were fun because you would pour a bunch in your mouth and they would all make a piece of gum together. The flavor never lasted very long for either of these.

                        

7. Tart n Tinys. My little sister really loved them. She and I were at the park by our house one day and she showed me how much she really liked them--she had stuck one up her nose! I threw her in her seat on the back of Mom’s bike and pedaled home as fast as I could! I’m not sure how they got it out but I’m so glad they did. We still tease her about that even to this day.

6. Tootsie Pops. It was considered good luck if you found one that had an Indian with a star on the wrapper. I’m not sure why that made them special since it really wasn’t that uncommon. My favorite flavor was grape!

5. Candy Buttons. I look back now and wonder why because half the time the paper would stick to the candy and you would just have to eat it that way. Good stuff, though!

4. Large Jawbreakers. These were not the average jawbreaker, they were huge, like the size of a fist. There was no way to fit one in your mouth and still, we had to try it anyway. The best you could do is lick on it until you were sick of it. I don’t ever remember finishing one, mostly because they were very bumpy and you could get a sore tongue very quickly.

                                                    

3. Pop Rocks. Pop Rocks + Coke = Death! At least that’s what we all heard when we were kids and nobody dared to try it! I laugh at how young and naïve we were and innocent, too. Pop Rocks were so fun because they fizzled in your mouth for a long time, but they also made your tongue turn blue or red or green!

2. Lik-m-Aid. There was nothing better than that white candy stick! Easily my favorite candy from my childhood, but it can’t be number 1 because I wasn’t in love with the packets of powder that came with it. They were very sour to me. I always thought they should make a package with a few of the Lik-A-Stix and skip the rest. Most perfect candy ever made. Often, I would just pour the powdered stuff in my mouth to get rid of it and then just eat the stick plain. Good times! I guess they call it Fun Dip now but, it will always be Lik-m-Aid to me!

1. Candy Necklace. What’s better than an elastic string of candy around your neck, ready to eat at any moment? I always liked to eat them in twos and the colors had to be the same! Once those ran out, I could eat the rest. It never bothered me that the wet, spitty string would snap me in the neck or that it would get sticky from it. Do you remember when you finally outgrew it fitting around your neck and instead it felt like a noose? That’s when you had to wear it as a bracelet. Don’t be fooled by these new candy necklaces that they put out these days where the colors are sprayed on the candies! The real candy necklaces were different colors all the way through because they were actually different flavors! The best ones, in my humble opinion as an expert in candy necklace consumption, were the Smarties brand.

Honorable Mentions:
Pez – what’s more fun than a piece of candy coming out of a toy animal's neck?
Zotz – these were awesome because they were fizzy inside
Ice Cubes – they were actually cubes of chocolate (my Mom loved these)
Razzles – candy that turned to gum (talked about and eaten in the movie "13 Going on 30")
Luden’s Wild Cherry Cough Drops – these were not candy but I ate them like they were!