Candy Blog

March is over, which means that Candy Season is coming to a close with Easter on Sunday. I’ve decided to start doing a monthly recap of things related to Candy Blog and the candy world mostly because I’ve been running a lot of reports at my day job so I figured I’d do the same here just to kind of track some tends.

Last year I asked readers which candy holiday was their favorite and 45% stated Halloween, but Easter was in second place with 25% of the votes. It’s by far my favorite, perhaps because of the pleasant colors but also because it’s a much more intimate candy holiday - it’s about family and friends, not begging from strangers.

The latest poll was What do you prefer: Egg, Bunny, Chick or Bean?. I admit it’s a pretty vague poll and I chose egg myself, not for the Cadbury Creme Eggs but for Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs and Cadbury Mini Eggs.

Previous polls revealed that while 39% of responding readers don’t like Peeps at all, ones that do prefer stale to fresh but 12% simply don’t care how they’re treated or prepared, they’ll eat them any way.

Chocolate bunnies are a different matter.

By the number of votes compared to the egg, bunny, chick or bean poll, people like chocolate rabbits. They also agree that if they’re for eating, they should be good quality.

In candy news one of the big developments has been the old good news & bad news scenario. More studies are being done on chocolate’s positive health benefits, especially for the cardiovascular system. The latest study released shows that even small amounts are great for overall heart health and reduces the risk of heart attacks and strokes. Chocolate, especially very dark chocolate, reduces blood pressure, increases elasticity of blood vessels and may reduce inflammation. The caution though is moderation - if you’re going to eat a lot of chocolate, which is high in calories, make sure you reduce other discretionary calories appropriately. So instead of those chips and dip and later that bowl of ice cream, have some chocolate throughout the day.

But the flip side of that is news that fatty foods can be associated with addiction in the same way that drugs can.

Earlier in March I also attended ExpoWest, which is a trade show for natural products held at the Anaheim Convention Center. The exhibits take up the entire show floor and though the majority were not of a candy nature, there still were at least 50 that did have candy or chocolate. Fair Trade, organic and fortified still seem to be the primary selling points. Many big companies that we’re familiar with that use artificial colors, flavors and sweeteners were exhibiting new product lines that are more wholesome versions - real natural ingredients and more traditional candy-making methods that appeal to natural product buyers. Raw chocolate has been around for a few years but this is the first time I’ve tried versions that rival the roasted stuff. (I’ll have reviews of those at some point when I get a hold of some actual whole product instead of a few bites here and there.)

Most Popular Candy Blog Posts for March 2010

1. Coconut M&Ms - these were initially released as a limited edition item and I reviewed them last year, but now as they’re hitting the store shelves as a new item there’s a lot of renewed interest.

2. Cadbury Mini Eggs - I’ve loved these things my whole life even though Hershey’s has mucked with the classic recipe by adding PGPR. Based on the number of visitors to that post every year around this time, I’m not alone in my love for the little morsels.

3. Kinder Surprise Egg

4. Reese’s Eggs - it doesn’t matter that I’ve reviewed several newer versions, the classic is the classic. 

5. Skittles - yeah, just plain old Skittles. This post from 2007 includes the classic Fruits, Wild Berry, Tropical, Smoothies (discontinued) and Sour (reformulated).

6. CVS Marshmallow Pop

7. Wonka Scrumdiddlyumptious

8. Reese’s Line

9. Skittles Fizzl’d Fruits - probably should have been called Bubbling Berries.

10. Chocolate Covered Peeps

Though I treasure my faithful readers and how they spread the word about Candy Blog, a fair number of visitors are just passing through via a search engine. I like to share these because it gives a sense of what the candy conversations are out there in the real world. Here are the most popular search phrases for March 2010:

1. Coconut M&Ms
2. Cadbury Mini Eggs
3. Extinguisher Candy
4. Kinder Eggs
5. Kazoozles
6. Almond Joy Pieces
7. Nestle Promotion Code (I actually don’t have any promotion codes on Candy Blog)
8. York Pieces
9. Turkish Delight recipe
10. Choxie

At the beginning of the month I moved from my old domain (typetive.com) to candyblog.net. I was afraid that beyond my regular readers that new readers wouldn’t find me, but it turns out that Google is pretty quick to catch up on spidering the new site. For a couple of weeks some photos were missing, but I think things are humming along smoothly now.

The dominant theme for March here on Candy Blog was obviously Easter, and with the 2010 season I’ve now reviewed more than 100 Easter candy products so far. I took about 1,600 candy photos this month (of course only about 200 were uploaded to Flickr and only

But I’m not alone in reviewing Easter candy, check out these excellent roundups - I’m going to guess that between and and the other diligent candy bloggers we’ve covered just about everything on the market:

Sugar Pressure’s Easter Candy Reviews
ZOMGCandy!‘s Easter Candy Reviews
The Candy Enthusiast’s Easter Candy Reviews
Candy Yum Yum’s Easter Candy Reviews
On Motivation and Chocolate’s Easter Candy Reviews
Gigi Reviews Easter Candy Reviews
Serious Eats has a serious obsession with Peeps
Chocablog’s Easter Chocolate Reviews
TodoCandy has Easter Candy Shopping
Jim’s Chocolate Mission’s 2009 Easter Archive (he didn’t tag Easter candy this year)
Candy Critic’s Easter Posts