Yes, finally a board game based on snack food. And why not? There are board games based on strategy, knowledge of other specific topics like sports or music or all trivia ... it’s about time someone leveraged snacks into a game for grownups (let’s face it, you can’t play CandyLand all your life).

Here’s a game called Eat It!

EAT IT! is a fun game to play with friends and family. The questions are diverse, encompassing today’s Snacks & Sweets as well as the ones that you grew up with. On your way to becoming the EAT IT! Superstar, we are sure that you will relive childhood memories and even munch on a few of your favorite Snacks & Sweets!

It’s going on my Christmas wish list and I’ll be putting together a full list of gift ideas for candyphiles later this week. See article here ... found via Slashfood.

Candy makers are calling on the USDA to allow more sugar imports. The recent hurricanes have damaged the sugar crops in the United States and sugar reserves will fall to 70 year lows within a year if the quota is not changed.

The National Confectioners Association, which notes that sugar prices have doubled in the past year, wants to boost the import quota by one million tons.

If you’ve ever gotten a hold of a Coffee Crisp in Canada or the UK but you live in the States, maybe you want to be able to get a hold of them more easily.

Check out the CoffeeCrisp.org. They’re mounting a campaign to urge Nestle to release the coffee flavored crisp bar nationally.

I tried one. I thought it was a little sweet, but not bad and I can see how it might have some fervent followers. See my original review here.

Related Candies

1. Nestle Crunch Cappuccino Stixx
2. Cafe Select Chocolate Coffee Trios
3. Pocket Coffee
4. Coffee Beat
5. Coffee Crisp

Yes, more good news from the candy science front. Not only is chocolate a health food (something that I’ve been espousing since I was in high school and did a term paper on it with that thesis), but sugar may ease stress hormones.

Scientific American reports on a recent study where rats were given twice daily doses of water - either sugar sweetened, dosed with artificial sweeteners or left pure.

Rats, like humans, love sugar. So it comes as no surprise that during two weeks of training for a recent lab experiment, the rodents queued up twice daily for small doses of sugar water. What researchers did not anticipate was the apparent effect of the sweet stuff on their stress levels: when they placed the rats in stressful circumstances at the end of those two weeks, the animals were less agitated than expected.

Multiple blood samples taken from the rats showed lower levels of stress hormones known as glucocorticoids than those that were given a saccharin solution or just plain water before being subjected to psychological or physical duress, according to research presented yesterday at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Washington, D.C. “We actually found that sugar snacks, not artificially sweetened snacks, are better self-medications for the two most common types of stress—psychological and physical,” explains Yvonne Ulrich-Lai, a postdoctoral fellow in psychiatry at the University of Cincinnati who led the study.

Have a look via this link to the article.

Whew! I know I’ve been promising this since I launched Candy Blog, but here it is. I engaged Hop Studios in Vancouver for the redo and brought both my blogs into one place. Yes the design is pretty (thanks go out to Susannah Gardner’s special skills) and the code/layout is super awesome (thanks go out to Travis Smith).

Why change? Well, the old blog template was used by at least 83.6 million other blogs and when you land here, you shouldn’t feel like you could be anywhere. I wanted more CANDY PHOTOS! (Hit refresh to get another treat… well not too many times, there are only five right now.)

Second - we’ve got categories! We’ve got search! Now you can find out what I thought about Pocky last spring or White KitKats last summer. I’m still working on the categories, but at least now you can see all the ratings in one place.

Third - if you notice something wonky, post here in the comments and I’ll try to figure it out. I’m not completely moved in yet. Some stuff is still in boxes, but if you click something and it doesn’t go anywhere, lemme know.

I know I’ve mentioned before about Halloween being the start of candy season, and I think I need to clarify what candy season is:

Candy season is the time of year when candy is not only widely available to people under the guise of celebrating a particular holiday, but it’s also packaged for said holiday. Because of this seasonal packaging, it all goes on sale the day after the holiday is over. As I spent a great deal of my young adulthood devoting my finances towards my education, keeping up with the sugar habit without breaking the bank was very important. The fact that candy season mirrors the school year is especially important.

The day after Halloween, I’d always go to the store and stock up on half-off candy, the same with Christmas, Valentine’s Day and finally Easter. The holiday candy would get cheaper and cheaper, and of course would be less and less desirable. But who can resist at 15 cent bag of candy corn?

Even though I have a good job now, I still shop the half-off sales (though I don’t necessarily go out the day after). But now I’m not the only one who does that, so the discounts right after the holiday are no longer as deep.

So, if you come to my door tonight, you’ll get this fine candy that I paid full price for (well, some from the 99 cent store and some from Target’s sale with “lowest prices of the season”). I’m giving out assorted Hershey’s fun sizes, 100 Grand bars, Tootsie pops, Smarties (American) and Skittles. I like to give out a variety, with some chocolate items (which are coveted) but a fair share of non-chocolate/nuts for the kids who can’t have it for some reason.

I don’t expect to have much left tomorrow morning as I start getting more generous as the night goes on in order to make sure I have as little left as possible. I don’t want people to think that I’m selfish with my candy!

Since I’ve gotten so many emails and comments about the new Target line of candy called Choxie, I thought I’d let everyone know that I went and purchased some today.

I’ll take some photos and have some reviews next week (or maybe the week after).

Also in the queue for review right now (in no particular order):

Choxie Hot Chocolate Bar
Choxie Chocolate Tiles
Choxie Spiced Caramels
Cadbury Dairy Milk Bubbly
Nestle Overload Peanut Butter Cups (Butterfinger, Crunch & Candies)
Trader Joe’s Slate of Bliss (Espresso & Cocoa Nibs)
Reese’s Candy Bars - NutRageous, SnackBarz, FastBreak & ReeseSticks
Haribo Mega-Roulette
Chupa-Chups Whistle Pops
Ritter Sport - Cappuccino & Rum, Raisin & Nuts
Karuna Manija XL
Vilniaus Pergale Dubingiai
Danutes Vaflinis pyragas
Sostines Kartusis sokoladas
Karuna Pieninis Sokoladas
Princas Pieninis Sokoladas
Veliuona Saldainis
Hershey’s Mocha Almond (Limited Edition)
Divine Fair Trade Chocolate
Equal Exchange Fair Trade Chocolate
Harry London Mint Cookie Bar
Abba Zabba
Toothache Candy
Craniyums

Okay, maybe that’s more than a week’s worth of candy ... and who’s to say that I won’t get something else and want to shoehorn it in there sooner.

Sorry about the temporary outage.

You could see the blog, even make comments but they weren’t showing up. Somehow I’d deleted my blog template, which meant that the blog could not take anything new without disappearing altogether.

So, I fixed that and the malicious pop-up ads that had invaded the site via a hit tracker I inserted. Very sorry about the pop up ads ... should I decide to put ads on this blog they will certainly not be for web scans that will ultimately put spyware on your computer.

I’ll have a fresh candy review in a little while.