If there were ever a case study for how the internet and fan passion can change marketing policy of a corporation, it has to be Coffee Crisp.

Made by Nestle, the Coffee Crisp is a wafer bar with a coffee flavored cream and chocolate-like coating. They’ve been very popular in Canada for years, but for some reason they were never introduced in the United States. For at least five years a web petition/email/phone campaign was circulating to get them in the States and those efforts have finally come to fruition.

At first Nestle responded by allowing American stores order the Coffee Crisp to carry in their stores, but they made no real effort to advertise or give any special deals (as is very common with other candies). Instead Coffee Crisp were often seen in stores near the Canadian border, large urban markets and on internet stores that catered to the obsessed.

If you want to know where to find your own, check out the fan site called CoffeeCrisp.org - they have a special page called Coffee Crisp Sightings. I still haven’t seen them anywhere (including the places where I used to see them before their official introduction).

You can also find info on their official website: Nestle-coffeecrisp.com

The packaging for the bar was changed a little in the past year (as was much of Nestle’s product line) but the candy bars you’ll find here are still made in Canada. I’d hoped that they’d change the recipe a little bit to get rid of the hydrogenated oils ... the bar carries 1.5 grams of trans fats. Some purists probably celebrate them sticking to tradition.

Previous coverage about the petition here and I reviewed the Coffee Crisp last year (a bar I found at a gourmet market ... I wasn’t really that fond of it).

Hometown Favorites is an internet based candy store with an excellent selection of hard to find candies. They’re one of the few candy stores on the internet that lets you order individual bars instead of full boxes.

However, their customer database has been stolen and now customers are getting phishing emails.

If you don’t know what a phish is, well, it’s an email that pretends to be from a reputable source like ebay or amazon or a bank that prompts you to visit “their” site and asks you to confirm your account details. It might look like the right site, but it’s really some nefarious folks looking to steal your login information, money or even your identity. Don’t fall for it.

If you have gotten one of these Hometown Favorites emails, it would look something like this according to The Internet Patrol:

?To update the credit card infomation details for your order, please select this link:?

When you click the link, it takes you to a very convincing looking page, which is a direct rip-off of the Hometown Favorites.com site, complete with the last four numbers of your credit card number and the expiration date prepopulated on the page. Then it asks you to put in your SSN (social security number) and date of birth.

If you do get such an emaill, you should probably contact your credit card company and cancel that card.

I hesitate to call this a new contest, but M&Ms is running a promotion for the new Dark M&Ms. On the second anniversary of the theft of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” from Oslo, M&Ms announced their commitment to finding the painting by adding to the current reward of $2 million. Now the reward has an additional bonus of 2 million M&Ms.

In case you were wondering how many M&Ms that is, well, it’s a lot. 2.2 tons. So if you’ve got that Scream painting sitting around taking up room in your house, just know that by returning it you’re going to have to make a lot more room for 40,000 packages of Dark M&Ms. Of course if you’re the one returning it, you’re gonna go to prison. But fret not! You can make your very own art with M&Ms.

Here’s the press release on the subject that includes information about consumer attitudes towards dark chocolate.

Guggenheim Museum, NY, NY: To herald the arrival of M&M’s Dark Chocolate, George Morrisey of Masterfoods, unveils a painting, which brings a bit of fun to a well known dark subject, Edvard Munch’s The Scream. The original painting was stolen on August 22, 2004 from the Munch Museum in Oslo, Norway. M&M’s is offering 2 million of the new dark chocolate M&M’S as a reward for the return of the painting.

UPDATE: Holy Moly! The Scream and Madonna (also stolen at the same time) were found! They were found by the police who have been systematically looking for the paintings ... no word yet if M&Ms is gonna send those couple of tons of candy to the cops.

UPDATED UPDATE: M&Ms has responded!

One of my fellow food bloggers roboppy at The Girl Who Ate Everything have visited the much awaited Max Brenner in New York City.

I got the chance to sample quite a bit of the Max Brenner consumer line last year thanks to a shipment from Michal and of course I’ve read up quite a bit on his locations in London and Australia.

About two months ago I noticed a lot of people visiting Candy Blog looking for information about Max Brenner and finding that review so I knew how excited people were about the impending opening.

Go take a look at roboppy’s review with spectacular (as usual) photos!

(If you’re interested in Max Brenner candies and can’t get to NYC, you can order from Chocosphere.)

photo by roboppy

I knew that Mentos was unofficially delighted about the geyser videos circulating on the internet (with over 5 million hits) as well as the appearance of it on CBS’ NUMB3RS series and later The Late Show with David Letterman.

Little did I realize that they’re looking to give it a little push to continue.

Mentos is running a promotion on a separate website called MentosGeysers.com  where they list all the stuff you can win for submitting the next great Mentos Fountain movie.

First prize is 1000 iTunes downloads and a year’s supply of Mentos (which they say is 320 rolls ... no word on whether or not Pink Grapefruit is among the choices).

Even if you just enter you get a cap, tee and towel!

Here are the full entry rules (hosted by youtube.com)

More on the story here.

Deadline is 9/30/2006

Be sure to leave a comment here with the URL of your entry!

So at the end of every month I give my webstats a little peek. It’s a way for me to check what people are thinking about and what they’re looking for. Most of all, it tells me why people come to Candy Blog.

So I thought I’d start sharing the top candy searches that lead people to Candy Blog each month:

1. m&ms
2. kissables
3. turkish delight
4. rockaleta
5. butterfinger
6. max brenner
7. choxie
8. razzles
9. marathon candy bar
10. ice cream skittles

Of course there are other searches going on out there on the engines that didn’t lead them here.

I went on vacation last week. All the posts from last week were “prewritten” so there’d be no interruption in reviews here at Candy Blog. It was an interesting experiment to see what I’d eat when I didn’t have the blog as an excuse and it turns out that I probably a little bit less candy (but had more desserts and far more cheese than normal). But now that I’m back home I thought I’d do a little digest about the new things that I tried that I probably won’t make full posts about:

Scharffen Berger Nibby Bar - I picked up this little 1 ounce bar in Healdsburg, CA at a Scharffen Berger store in the town plaza on my way north. Though I’ve said before I’m not a huge fan of Scharffen Berger for munching, this bar had a lot to offer. The nibs were crunchy and packed a powerfully chocolatey crunch and the chocolate was smooth and complex. It didn’t have the unpleasant acidic note that I complain about most of the time.

While we were there, they also gave us a taste of the new Kumasi Sambirano bar, which was really nice. It was much more fruity, it had some grassy and floral notes with a strong raisin taste to it, which balanced the normally sour taste of their chocolate. I also got a taste of the chocolate covered ginger pieces as well, which I was really looking forward to, but found that the acidic notes and the ginger spice really blended too well for me to have both the chocolatey experience and the slight burn mix in a satisfying way. I’m still curious about how the dipped figs would taste.

Almond Joy Toasted Coconut (Limited Edition) - I figured I should pick up the limited edition bars while I could and when I saw this at the market it seemed like the perfect bar for taking out on a hike. The inside is a dark and and creamy beige color instead of white and has a slight caramelized note reminiscent of toasted marshmallows. I’m not usually one for the Almond Joy, though I love almonds, because I find the milk chocolate a little too sweet for the coconut, but this was a nice change of pace.

Cashew Cookie Lara Bar - not technically candy, this is just a bar of mashed up dates and cashews. It’s sweet, a little creamy and kid of dry but wholly satisfying. I ate three of these during the week.

Almond M&Ms - I bought a “medium” sized bag of these for the trip, which is 11 ounces (sound pretty large to me!). They’re wonderfully crunchy with the crisp shell and fresh almonds combined with the super-sweet milk chocolate. The perfect snack.

Swedish Fish - these are great driving candies. We logged about 1,800 miles in the car, so a little pick me up to combat the hypnosis of I-5 was welcome. We ate them two different ways, chilled out of the cooler and then later heated from sitting in the car. I like them practically molten inside. But chilled gives them a nice chewy snap.

Pink Grapefruit Mentos - How could I resist taking a roll of these on the road with me?

Green Apple Mentos - these were rather different from the Sour Apple ones I had a couple of months ago and I prefer them. The Green Apple Mentos taste a lot more like apples than any other apple candy I’ve ever had - almost like apple juice. They’re nicely floral and tart. I’m not wild about them, but I’d finished the Swedish Fish already.

Citrus Hard Candies - I have no idea who made these, but there was a complementary jar of them in our room at the Hotel Rex and they looked like little slices of fruit. Lemon, Orange, Grapefruit and Lime. I pretty much emptied the jar. They were pretty and tasty and just the little pick-me-up I needed before all the walking around town!

It doesn’t seem like I ate much candy last week but there were desserts though, which I don’t always have. In Trinidad, CA I indulged in one of my all-time favorite desserts - a chocolate pecan pie with hot rum sauce at Larrupin’ Cafe. My husband had a lemon cheesecake that was also pretty darn good.

In Olema, CA we had a fantastic bread pudding with currants and a caramel sauce (that they added cardamom ice cream to for us instead of whipped cream) at the Olema Inn.

In San Francisco at Rue de Jacques in the Nob Hill area I also expanded my dessert horizons and tried a soft meringue in a strawberry soup that sounded good. In reality it was a piece of fluffed egg white on top of a too-sweet strawberry syrup. I would have preferred a more home-styled strawberry puree. But on the plus side, I can’t imagine that there were many calories for such a small portion and of course no fat. My husband had a warm chocolate cake that was practically flourless and not sweet at all but super-rich.

Of course the best dessert had to be the one that had the best ambiance (not that the rest of the places weren’t great!) were the cookies and brownies we had from the Bovine Bakery (Pt. Reyes Station, CA) that were served to us by our kayak guide on a small sand spit in Tomales Bay after we kayaked about two miles. We had some hot coffee and sat watching the waning light and low clouds as we waited for dark when we would see the natural bioluminescent bloom of the warmer side of the bay.

Tomorrow I’ll return a little more rested with the usual reviews and a rundown of a candy store I found in Windsor, CA (thanks to several reader’s tips) called Powell’s and a visit to San Francisco’s Ferry Terminal.

Overall, I give this vacation a 10 out of 10.

Cadbury may face formal charges in reference to the Salmonella montevideo contamination of their chocolate. Either the FSA (Food Safety Authority) or one of the municipalities that cover the factory of Cadbury may charge them for knowingly distributing food products unfit for human consumption.

Even though they recalled the offending product, Cadbury has been criticized for unsafe practices, including distributing their chocolate crumb to other factories for use before testing showed the it was safe, possibly leading to contamination of other factory products.

In the mean time the factory in question is being closed and completely cleaned, which may take months.

Cadbury’s sales are off since the recall notice. Nearly four times as many Salmonella montevideo infections were confirmed in the period that the contaminated bars were on the market than in previous periods.

Full story.