The word is out that Jay Leno is going to do a piece on tonight’s show about Halloween candy.

So tune in to see the latest along with guests Amanda Peet (from Studio 60), John Landis & The Spiridellis Brothers and musical guest JoJo.

The word is also out that they’re going to feature some gross candies, including the Lick Your Wounds candy scabs. In case they don’t decide to include them, here’s a YouTube video made by CandyWarehouse.com about them:

(Link to video if the embed doesn’t display.)

Today there was news of TWO candy companies swallowing up others:

Jelly Belly has released word that they’re buying Ben Meyerson Candies based right here in Los Angeles. Ben Meyerson is known for their Big Cherry and line of Sunkist Fruit Gems. The manufacture of the Fruit Gems seems like a natural fit for Jelly Belly and facilities will migrate to Fairfield and/or Illinois. Ben Meyerson is a third generation family company and seems to be selling as Robert Meyerson, the current head, is retiring. Link to full story.

Hershey also announced today that it’s buying Dagoba, the Ashland, Oregon based chocolate company. This is the third small chocolate company Hershey has bought in the last 18 months (Joseph Schmidt and Scharffen Berger are the other two). No word in the articles I read as to whether Dagoba will fall under the Artisanal Chocolates umbrella that was formed to encompass JS & SB.  Hershey has been making great strides towards more responsible cocoa growing, with their sponsorship of educational and outreach programs, especially in Africa. Hopefully their purchase of Dagoba will enable them to make Hershey the largest ethical chocolate company in the world (a girl can dream). Link to story.

Related Candies

1. Hershey’s announces closing of Joseph Schmidt & Scharffen Berger Bay Area Facilities
2. Hershey’s Website Inaccuracies
3. Rising Cost of Candy - A Brief Study of Hershey Prices
4. What Made Hershey’s Want to Change Chocolate?
5. What does that Hershey’s code mean?
6. Treat Trip: Jelly Belly Factory

Here’s a list of what brought folks to Candy Blog through search engines during the month of September:

1. m&ms
2. buttefinger
3. kissables
4. halloween candy
5. razzles
6. rockaleta
7. gobstoppers
8. reese’s
9. turkish delight
10. choxie

Again, just because that’s what brought then to Candy Blog, that doesn’t mean that these were the most popular candy searches lately it’s just what’s on Candy Blog reader’s minds.

Here’s how to decode the code on a Hershey’s wrapper. Hershey uses a two digit alpha-numeric code to denote the month and year of the expiration date. Here’s what the Hershey’s site says:

There is an ink stamped code on Hershey’s products. Within that code, usually at the end, there is a two character code that represents the year and the month until which the product is expected to be within its peak freshness. The first character is a number, (0-9) that represents the year. The second character is a letter, (A-L) that represents the month. A=Jan., B=Feb., etc. For example, a code of 7D is best before until April 2007.

My Hershey’s Twosomes Almond Joy (Limited Edition) bar has a code that’s on two lines:
1BE
7C K2

I’m guessing the 7C is the one I want, so that means that the bar is considered fresh until March 2007.

My York Peppermint Patties:
13NYU
6K

This would expire in November 2006, so I got in just under the wire.

A Heath bar:
14HR2
D 6L

This one would expire in December 2006. Just remember, L is the LAST month!

Related Candies

1. What does that Nestle code mean?
2. What does that Mars code mean?

Following up on decoding the Mars code, here’s the Nestle code, thanks to Reader Dave.

Nestle uses something called the Julian code. The first four digits of the code on the wrapper will give you the date the product was manufactured.

Julian code is rather difficult to read on the fly, but here goes: the first digit represents the last digit of the year. The next three numbers represent the day of the year.

My Baby Ruth bar says:
602557471 D/A

That means that it was made on the January 25, 2006. (That was an easy one.)

My Nestle Crunch bar says:
52941211 A5 7A

Hmm, anything that begins with a 5 sounds kind of bad in October. This one was made on October 21, 2005. Almost a year old.

My 100 Grand bar says:
5334574823 6L

Again with the 2005 ... but at least the second number “334” is pretty large. That’d be November 30, 2005.

A quick way to calculate the month is to divide the three digit number by 30. If you can’t do that in your head, try dividing by 10 (moving the decimal place once slot) and then by 3. For the last one it gives you the approximation of November ... which is probably all you really wanted to know anyway.

For the record, the true Julian day number is a lot more complex and tracks the number of days since 4713 ... kinda like stardates!

Related Candies

1. What does that Hershey’s code mean?
2. What does that Mars code mean?

As I’m often found eating expired (or at least past prime) candy, it was a wonderful comment on the Skittles Fresh Mint post that breaks the code on the package of Mars products. Reader Dave posted the code in the comments and I’m putting it here for everyone to use.

Here’s how do figure out when that candy was made:

The date of packaging is within the first three digits of the code - the first digit is the last number of the year and the next two are the week of the year.

So, the Milky Way bar I have in front of me says:
620AB02

That means it was made in the 20th week of 2006 - or sometime between May 14th to the 21st. Pretty fresh.

The Milky Way Dark I have says:
614EFELZ02

That means it was made in the 14th week of 2006 - or sometime between April 2nd to the 9th. Not bad.

This seems to work with Canadian Mars products too, as this is what the Mars Dark says:
535CFELZ03

That means it was made the 35th week of 2005 ... hmm, sometime between August 26th and September 2nd. That’s a little old. But I it must have been stored properly as it was still fresh and tasty.

The week of the year thing is a little tricky unless you have a payroll calendar nearby, so a quick and easy way to approximate the month is to divide the week by four (it gets less reliable the higher the number because there’s usually a fraction of a week left in the month).

The UK Mars bar I have simply has an expiration date on it (12-11-06). I’m not sure if that’s the European date style (November 12th, 2006) or the American (December 11, 2006) but at least neither of them have passed yet.

Related Candies

1. What does that Hershey’s code mean?
2. What does that Nestle code mean?

There are plenty of sites that can offer you info on all the gross and spooky treats for Halloween. I thought I’d offer up a series of posts that might help you make some more environmentally and socially aware decisions for Halloween.

It’s a good opportunity to give kids a special treat that isn’t necessarily full of artificial chemicals or results from a lot fertilizers and pesticides being applied to the earth. And just perhaps child slaves weren’t used in the creation of it. But who wants to be that house on the street that gives out toothbrushes or quarters or apples? There must be products out there that can satisfy everyone.

I’ll be posting for the next few weeks on the topic of different good tasting treats you can hand out to the kids, some that might even be affordable and available in your local area.

If you want a top-to-bottom approach for the whole Green lifestyle, Siel at GreenLAGirl is going to be helping me out by posting about the big picture. She started today with the first in her series. She’ll cover the politics of chocolate, organic and fair trade issues and of course positive changes we can all incorporate into our lives.

Here are a few of the organic and fair trade sweets I’ve reviewed to date. Not all are appropriate for handing out to Trick-or-Treaters, so I’ll make an effort to bring you more about those, but learning more about the brands that are available might help you make a decision at the store:

Endangered Species
Bug Bites & Bat Bar
Peanut Brittle & Rice Crisp

Equal Exchange
Espresso, Mint & Cocoa Nibs
Dark Chocolate Miniatures
Dark, Milk & Dark with Almonds

Green & Black’s
Maya Gold Bar
Espresso Chocolate
Ginger Chocolate
White Chocolate

Dagoba
Milk Chocolate Hazelnut
Dark Bars - Lavender, Roseberry & Xocolatl
Milk Chocolate Chai

Other Products:
Thompson Organic Chocolate Bars
Pure Fun Candy Floss
Divine Dark & Milk Chocolate

I’ll have some hard candies, lollipops and more chocolates soon!

There are some great candy webstores out there. And there are also that are not so great. I’ve been contacted twice in the past month regarding HometownCandy.com, which is run by the same company that runs JordanAlmonds.com and ebulkcandy.com. (I’m not doing any linking here where not necessary.)

The complaints I’ve heard are from people who place an order and never get their candy. Their credit card is charged but then nothing is shipped and of course their emails and phone calls go unanswered.

First, JordanAlmonds and ebulkcandy are not completely secured. Sure, when you put stuff in a cart and check out at either site, it is a secure page (that’s when you see the https:// in the address). But there are also prompts on JordanAlmonds to input your credit card on unsecured pages and on ebulkcandy. Bad form. You’re opening yourself up to someone else sniffing out your credit card number and other personal info.

Now, I haven’t ordered from either of these companies so I cannot testify one way or another personally. But here are the Better Business Bureau listings for them:

HometownCandy.com - 1 complaint which is unresolved. HometownCandy is not a member of the BBB.

JordanAlmonds.com - 7 unresolved complaints this year. Not a member of the BBB.

Former businesses:

EBulkCandy.com -  52 complaints, 4 resolved in Morrisville, PA. It’s not clear if this site is still in operation. It’s up, but doesn’t appear to have been updated this year. The have had several different locations, and each one has its own file with the BBB. Ewing, NJ (28 complaints, 2 resolved), Hamilton, NJ (1 complaint, unresolved), West Trenton, NJ (18 complaints, 3 resolved)

Also, go to Complaints.com and check any one of those business names.

Alexa and a domain name search reveals that ebulkcandy’s domain is held in the Czech Republic by the same contact info as HometownCandy but doesn’t show a direct relationship to JordanAlmonds (except for an address in NJ in common).

Now, for the record, just having complaints filed at the BBB does not make the company bad. Lots of large companies have complaints lodged against them (sometimes people go there first, without contacting the company directly). The key is whether or not the company is a member of the BBB and further, if they respond to and resolve the complaints. Volume has a lot to do with it as well. Even when you have 99.9% satisfaction, if you have 100,000 transactions a year you might have 100 unhappy people ... and if 10% of those don’t get a resolution through you, they’re gonna go complain elsewhere. It’s not just complaints that are important, but resolutions.

If you’re looking to buy something online and you feel a little odd, check around. It’s your money and your candy. Running a candy store is not rocket science. You put up a list of what you have, people order it and you send it out to them. There are lots of ways to screw it up (send the wrong thing, charge the card wrong, send it to the wrong place, pack things improperly), but lots of ways to fix it if you do make a mess. The fact that there are so many choices out there means that you can make informed choices.

The first thing to check for is a real address (usually found on their “returns” section), a real phone number and names of the people who run the company. Membership in the BBB, a Yahoo! Trusted Sites seal, a well organized site that uses the latest in web design and technology. Google the company and see if they have complaints against them. If you’re worried about it, move along, there are plenty of places to get candy.

So, if you’ve ever ordered from one of these companies, what was your experience. Good or bad?

UPDATE 2/22/2007: I got this email earlier today:

I have been asked by our Compliance Department to send you the following response regarding the complaints made against Hometowncandy.com:

Please be advised that as of February 1, 2007, Net Atlantic, Inc. terminated all Internet services to Ebulkcandy.com (a/k/a Jordonalmonds.com
and Hometowncandy.com) because of their failure to properly address unresolved issues brought to our attention.

Net Atlantic, Inc.
Compliance Department

This does not mean that the websites are gone, the obviously found other internet service, but it’s an interesting approach, getting the service provider involved.

UPDATE 4/9/2007: To everyone who has commented, I recommend contacting the New Jersey Attorney General and their consumer affairs department:

http://www.njconsumeraffairs.gov/comp.htm - (Use the OCP complaint form.)

Since I’ve never ordered from them, I’m unable to file a complain on behalf of a third party.

Also, there is a website called Consumerist.com that helps people get the word out about bad companies. I’ve contacted them, but I’m not able to offer a first-hand experience. Check them out and see if they can give this issue wider exposure. Try this site as well: www.ripoffreport.com.

UPDATE 7/2/2007: Some commenters have noted that the NJ Consumer Affairs office refuses to investigate, saying that it is a federal matter. If you’d like to file a formal complaint, direct it to the Federal Trade Comission, which investigates mail fraud (and now covers internet transactions).

This should be the correct form (do NOT enter your Social Security Number in this instance, as that item is only needed when they’re investigating credit report scams or identity theft. You can read more about the rules governing internet commerce on this page.