Category Archives: Novelty Candy

Candy Corn Relay

Love the outdoors? Love candy? We have the perfect game for you. This Halloween organize a fun relay race with the little ones, friends, and family in your backyard or your local park. All you need is:

  • 2 bags of Candy Corn
  • 2 small/medium Jack O’ Lanterns (or 2 hollowed out pumpkins)
  • 2 buckets
  • 2 Spoons
  • Racing shoes
  • Costume (to add a little humor and difficulty)

Design the race course by adding a start and finish line. Place a bucket filled with the Candy Corn at the start and an empty Jack O’ Lantern at the finish line for each team. Split your players into two equal groups and hand a spoon to a player from each team. Now challenge the runner to scoop up a spoonful of candy corn and race as fast as he can—without spilling the candy corn—to the other side.They cannot spill any candy corn or use their hands! If any candy corn falls off the spoon, they must immediately pick it up and bring it back to the starting line bowl and start over with that scoopful.

When they get to the finish, they must dump the candy corn into the empty Jack O’ Lantern. Then, they must dash back to the start line to hand the spoon over to the next sprinter do repeat the same step. The team who fills out the Jack O’ Lantern first wins! As their reward, let the winning team keep both Jack O’ Lanterns and share the Candy Corn award them with freaky prizes such as Jelly Belly Pet Tarantulas or Rats. Visit us at Candy Direct to get your Candy Corn and your spooky prizes!

One PEZ at a time

Who would have ever thought that candy could be used as an anti-smoking device? Apparently PEZ did, more than 60 years ago. PEZ started out as a company in Vienna, Austria that produced mints. With the growing concerns with smoking, PEZ started promoting their mints as a way to quit smoking by packaging them in a dispenser that seemed to look like a lighter. The little plastic container was a great success and this gave the company a great idea. PEZ continued using the dispensers but decided to target the younger consumers by adding characters to them such as Popeye and Mickey Mouse. The different character dispensers became very attractive not only to children but to adults as well. Today thousands of collectors spread around the world and believe it or not, the winning bid for the world’s most expensive PEZ Dispenser was $32,205! If you’re trying to start a collection that could be worth a lot of money later on, why not PEZ dispensers?! You don’t have to look far, starting your collection is just a few clicks away. Candy Direct offers a variety of PEZ dispensers including Lion King, Hello Kitty, and Ice Age character dispensers. Even if you’re clinging to your favorite PEZ dispenser, Candy Direct can help refill it with your favorite PEZ flavors such as cola, regular and sour fruits. Come take a look at our PEZ dispensers and refill flavors available at candydirect.com!

This Blog is Intern Approved!

Alina Serrano (the newbie)

Cherry M&M’s – Milk Chocolate Candy

Taste the Flavor of Real Cherry and Chocolate with Cherry M&M’s

Among the holiday sweets, cherry M&M’s are one seasonal favorite worth remembering outside of Christmas. With their distinct taste and scent reminiscent of real cherry cordials, it’s sure to appeal to cherry lovers everywhere at any time of the year.

By simply opening a pack, you can already tell the difference: a sweet cherry scent that’s unique to this particular candy. This scent is also quite strong, so you might want to keep a container handy unless you’d like everything to smell like cherries. Of course, with such a sweet scent, there is definitely the promise of great taste. Sure enough, these chocolate treats don’t fail to impress with a sweet, maraschino cherry taste— completely different from the sometimes-medicinal taste you might expect from most cherry candies.

Packaged in all reds, these cherry M&M’s feature two colors: burgundy and crimson red, which are sure to add to any festive atmosphere.

Wax Lips – Wax Fangs

Play a Fun Game of “Vampire or Not” with Wax Lips and Fangs

Nothing beats a Halloween party that comes complete with games to play! If you’re hosting one this year, keeping your little guests entertained should be top priority. With wax lips and fangs, you can set up a game of Vampire or Not? that’s sure to be a hit for the night.

Vampire or Not? is a simple, yet fun-filled game where a “vampire hunter” is chosen to guess which kids are vampires, and which kids are not. Children find out what role they play with a draw of cards. Afterwards, each child in the game, except for the vampire hunter, is given either wax fangs or lips.

When the hunter goes around the kids to make his guess, all the kids will need to hide their identities by keeping their wax lips or fangs in their mouths.

If a hunter successfully finds the vampires, you can reward him with extra candy. You can even up the ante and make it more fun for all the kids with special prizes for hunters who have the most correct guesses or sneaky vampires who couldn’t be caught!

There are a lot of creative ways to keep your guests entertained the whole night. By knowing which games and candy they’ll love, you definitely throw an awesome Halloween party without too much trouble.

Wax Fangs – Halloween Candy

Turn Your Doorstep into the Ultimate Vampire’s Lair with Wax Fangs and Other Halloween Gimmicks

Go all out with your decorations and gimmicks and make your home stand out this Halloween! Creating the perfect hangout for any creature of the night becomes easy with wax fangs, little cups of fruit punch “blood”, and decorative details to complete a vampire’s lair.

Creating the traditional Transylvanian effect on your front porch can be done with a few toy bats to linger before your door, cotton cobwebs to accent the door frame, and electric candles on elegant candelabras by the windows. Dim the lights in the room before the front door to give your home a chilling aura that makes everything fall into place.

Finally, a vampire’s lair is never complete without its resident lord or lady, so throw on an elegant black outfit, make your skin pale and ashen with powder, and wear fake fangs. As soon as your doorbell rings, greet your trick-or-treaters with a haughty vampire laugh and present them with a tray full of wax fangs and bloody fruit punch.

With a complete gimmick this Halloween, you will surely impress both your little costumed visitors and your neighbors!

The Ultimate Jelly Bean Blog

Short Introduction

For those of you that don’t know, a jelly bean is more or less exactly what it sounds like. It is a bean-shaped candy with a semi-hard outer shell and a soft inside. They are generally fruit flavored, such as cherry and watermelon, but as production techniques have become more refined, companies have been able to experiment with many unique and interesting flavors, such as cotton candy and buttered popcorn. This candy has blossomed from an Easter-centered candy to a year-round favorite. Companies have the ability to change the colors and flavors of the jelly bean to match any occasion or season; red, white, and blue for the Fourth of July or orange and black for Halloween.

History

The exact date that jelly beans were created is unknown, but many believe they got their start during the civil war. In 1861, a man by the name of William Schraft began manufacturing jelly beans in Boston and encouraged people to send them to the soldiers to eat as snacks during the war. Some experts believe that the jelly center is descendent of a mid-Eastern confection known as Turkish Delight, which dates back to the biblical times.

However it was not until 1905 when the Chicago Daily News first mentioned jelly beans in an advertisement. Back then they sold for 9 cents per pound, and are considered to be the first “bulk candy.” Most historians have agreed that they were first linked with Easter in the 1930s.

In 1976, the Herman Goelitz Candy Co.,Inc. invented the gourmet jelly bean, which sprung new life into the jelly bean and assured it would last as a candy favorite.

Fun Fact: Jelly beans were Ronald Reagan’s favorite candy, thus during the Reagan administration, jelly beans could always be found in the White House. Reagan even had a specially made jelly bean holder for Air Force One so the jelly beans would not spill during turbulence. Jelly beans have also visited outer space when they traveled on the space shuttle.

Ingredients, Shape, Flavors

Although there are slight differences in the manufacturing processes between companies, the overall process required to make jelly beans is essentially the same.

The basic ingredients needed are sugar, corn syrup, and food starch. In addition to these ingredients, there are small proportions of flavoring that depend on the type of jelly bean. These natural and artificial flavors depend of the specific flavor and may include chocolate, coconut, peanuts, vanilla, oils, cream, or freeze-dried egg, milk, or fruit powders.

One of the recent advancements that has allowed for more creatively flavored jelly beans is the ability to have a particular jelly bean resemble its real world flavor. For example, a watermelon-flavored jelly bean has a soft red center and an outer green shell, so that it looks like a real watermelon. There is also a mixed fruit jelly bean, often known as tutti-frutti, that may have a soft pink center and a speckled outer shell, which suggests that it is a mixed flavor.

Believe it or not, the shape of the jelly bean remained relatively unchanged up until the mid-1970s when producers began manufacturing “gourmet” jelly beans. Gourmet jelly beans are typically smaller and softer than the traditional jelly beans. Since the introduction of gourmet jelly beans, manufacturers have been constantly changing the flavors available. They have been varying the flavors and colors that are available, replacing the less popular flavors with newly designed ones. Even creating fat-free jelly beans to adapt to a more health conscious generation.

The Manufacturing Process

This site has good pictures:    https://wikis.nyu.edu/xdesign/mediawiki/index.php/Jelly_Bean

The manufacturing process begins far earlier than the actual creating of the jelly bean. It begins in a laboratory where chemists test new flavors and flavor combinations of jelly beans, in order to see which flavors will sell the best. These chemists develop small test batches based on customer studies, which are manufactured over a trial period and marketed to gauge their success. If the new flavor is a success, it will be put into production, if not, it will be discarded. A recent trend has been toward organic and healthier candy, with an emphasis on natural ingredients and low calories and fat content.

After the chemists and marketing team have determined a successful flavor it is sent to the candy kitchen where the jelly bean making process begins. The first thing that the kitchen must do is create the jelly bean center. This is made using a syrup that is created by dissolving sugar and other ingredients in a large boiler. Here, the syrup is heated to the proper temperature and consistency, as well as where the flavor and color is added. After the flavor and color have been added, it is transported to the starch casting area.

Each individual jelly bean is created through a process called starch casting. During this process a product called dry corn starch is laid across a plastic tray by a machine called a mogul. Dry corn starch is used because it is a fine powder that is able to retain shapes very well. After the layer of corn starch is laid, dents are pressed into the corn starch in the shape of the inside of a jelly bean. The corn starch covered trays can contain between several hundred to over one thousand individual dents for jelly beans.

After the dents are placed in the dry corn starch, the trays are transported to a machine that deposits the heated syrup, which was made in the kitchen, into each tiny mold. From here, the trays are transported to a cooling room where the temperature and humidity are controlled. This allows the liquid syrup to cool and form the gummy center of the jelly bean.

Now that the gummy center of the jelly bean has been created, it is time to move onto the outer shell. The process to create the outer shell is known as the panning process. This process gives the outer shell its color and flavor. After the gummy centers are dried, they are removed from the corn starch, which is then recycled and used to create even more jelly centers.

Did you know…? Did you know that all of the centers are the same flavor and color before they start the panning process?

Once removed from their corn starch housing, the centers are transported to stainless steel “pans” where additional ingredients are added to give the jelly beans flavor and color. These “pans” rotate several hundred times per minute, which, when sugar is slowly added, allows a hard, sugar shell to be formed. Workers then add the flavors and colors, which gives each flavor of jelly bean its distinctive color and taste.

This is a very time consuming process and can take anywhere between 6 and 10 days. The final step in the process is the package the final product. After they finish the panning process, the jelly beans are placed in sorting trays where they are still separated by flavor and color. They are then taken to a large bin where they are mixed until the desired combination is achieved. Exceptions to this of course include times when jelly beans are packaged as a single flavor.

After they are mixed together they are inspected by workers for quality controlled reasons. Jelly beans with any imperfections are removed, and those that pass the quality inspection are packaged in various sizes and made available for bulk sale or to customers for individual purchases. Some packaging machines can package and seal 80,000 jelly beans a day!

Come take a look at the vast selection of Jelly Beans and more at Candy Direct!

By Matthew Rogers

New sizes, prices, and no shipping and handling costs!

Have you ever been shopping for your favorite candy on-line and thought to yourself, “What in the world do I need 5 pounds of candy for?!” You know that when you shop in bulk you save money, but it has never seemed practical to buy 5 pounds of candy for personal or family consumption. Not only is there a good chance that some of it may go bad, but you also have to pay the increased shipping fee, which sometimes can be as expensive as the candy itself!

Well look no further, CandyDirect.com is here for you! At CandyDirect.com we now offer more conveniently sized bulk candy. Your favorite candy is now available in sizes approximately equal to 2.5 pounds! And do you want to know the best part of this promotion from CandyDirect.com? Shipping is included! Can you believe that?! It is like a dream come true! No longer do you need to worry about ordering 5 pounds of bulk candy. You or your family can easily eat 2.5 pounds of your favorite candy!

What’s even more amazing about this promotion from CandyDirect.com is that if you want to try something new and do not want to pay an outrageous amount for it, we have separated the candy by price. That’s right! Candy now available in approximately 2.5 pound bulk bags for under $20, under $30, and under $40! There are even some below $15! This promotion is cleverly called the $20, $30, $40 deal!

Let me say that again so you fully grasp how amazing of a deal this really is: Your favorite bulk candy is now available in more convenient sizes! (Approximately 2.5 pounds) And it is available, with shipping included, conveniently bracketed by price, under $20, under $30, under $40!

This unbelievable deal might not last forever, so make sure to order your favorite candy in bulk, at a reduced price, with shipping included! Unbelievable!

Easter Candy – Something New

Mix it up this Easter with new Ideas

Easter is right around the corner and if you haven’t stocked up on candy then you might find yourself in a tough spot. We all know that there are some popular Easter candies that just seem to run off the shelves themselves leaving us looking puzzled as we try to decide between green marshmallow peep bunnies and regular Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. This year, why not think outside the egg? Colors can be your best friend and with a day like Easter it is easy to think of colors that are appropriate. Spring colors are always a big hit and pastels really give you that Easter look without being overly suggestive of the theme. Some great products in these colors are available all year round so they might be more readily available than most of the themed candy you’re used to seeing, and don’t be afraid to get creative! Think of all the unique candies that you can have to make your Easter celebration delightfully surprising and a hit! Products like Smarties, SweeTarts, Gum Balls, Jordan Almonds, and Laffy Taffy are available all the time with color specific choices. Imagine being the only person on your block to include Gummi Bears and Twinkle Pops in your Easter decorations. Maybe even try a different brand of Jelly Bean, like Gimbal’s Gourmet Jelly Beans, with more than 40 flavors, you’re sure to find your favorites and maybe make some new ones. Plus, if you’re really aching for something more traditional you can always go with Cadbury Creme Eggs, which are available 8 months out of the year. Jump over to Candy Direct and check out the Color section, there’s even a Pastel Colors subcategory where you are sure to find some creative Easter ideas.

Wedding Candy – Party Favors

Wedding Candy – Party Favors

Make Your Reception Sweeter with Wedding Candy

There are many ways to add color and style to a wedding. Candy is a popular choice, whether on the buffet table or as party favors for guests to take home. The best part is that there is no limit to what candy can be.

Want to give your wedding a crystal theme? Decorate with rock candy in colors of your choice. Or if you’d like to coordinate with silver accents, there are a number of candies with elegant plain silver wrapping to use both as décor and party favors. No matter how you want to style your wedding reception, there are definitely candy choices to suit it.

With candy, you can even make receptions more personal by making the favors yourself. Gather selections of your choice into a bag and tie a ribbon around it. You can use a personalized ribbon printed with your names and the date of the wedding to give the favor a special touch. You can choose treats that follow the wedding’s theme, or make things sweeter and choose retro candies that you and your spouse love.

Wedding candy buffets have always been a popular addition to any reception. They are also very easy to make, for the reception on a budget. Collect glass or clear plastic jars of different shapes and sizes then fill them with candy bought in bulk to suit your wedding reception theme. Make sure to keep tongs, scoops and bags nearby for guests to gather candy to take home. Varying the colors, the heights of the jars and even the types of candies can make a very eye-catching display. You can even separate this from the rest of the buffet and give it a special table of its own.

High School Musical Back Pack Snacks

Haven’t we had enough of High School Musical already? From Broadway to an every-other-day showing on the Disney Channel, to promotional products out the wazoo, I’m starting to wonder if these smiley-faced kids ever do anything but sing and dance their teenage years away. That said, the brilliant marketers at Flix Candy are getting in on The Great Mouse’s (a.k.a. Mickey’s) grand plan by selling High School Musical candies. Disney Back Pack Snacks are tiny carryall bags for candy (picture a Barbie-sized pack, maybe a little larger). The High School Musical backpack is bright and fun, promising that you’ll have a novelty toy to use as a change purse after the candy is long gone. Yes friends, the gang’s all here and ready to have a good time. Inside the bag’s zipper are some tinier clear plastic bags of “candy sports balls,” which are similar to Sweetarts, but basketball-shaped. The pastel colored sports balls are chalky in texture, a bit tart, a bit sugary. I wasn’t addicted by any means, but they didn’t taste bad. What interests me most about this candy is that the candy itself isn’t related to High School Musical at all—just the packaging. Remarkably, they can throw a “name” on it and get so many kids hyped up about something they’d normally turn up their nose at—a plastic pack of generic “sports ball” candies. But if there’s any chance that Zac Efron or Ashley Tisdale eats them—well, by golly, I’d better have some too!

Verdict: If you’re in need of satisfying your sweet tooth and no more, stick with regular Sweetarts and save the planet. But if you know a little High School Musical fan who’d be thrilled to pieces to tote this mini backpack on his or her keychain, you’ve got an idea for an affordable yet thoughtful gift. That’s if the kids don’t already have everything with the High School Musical name attached to it.