Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
My life in candy
Oh. My. God. Now they’re making chocolate-covered PayDay bars.
It’s like a Baby Ruth, only better. Baby Ruths are too chewy, too provocative to my TMJs. Chocolate-covered PayDay bars melt in my mouth, giving me that quick double-charge of sucrose and theobromine. Aaah.
Candy wasn’t always this good.
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Cup-o-Gold: the ultimate truth in advertising, heaven in a brown wrapper, and it was mine, all mine. That’s why it’s Hoffman’s Cup-o-Gold. This critter was made with me in mind . . . but I didn’t discover it until high school. Let’s back up a few years. Â
When I was three, I didn’t quite get the concept that a nickle equaled five pennies, a dime two nickles, and so forth. I gathered change until I had thirty-five coins, all I needed for a candy bar. My enterprising ten-year-old brother knew a good thing when he saw it and never disabused me of my bad math. He would take me and my thirty-five coins down to Flick’s Liquour and buy me a candy bar.
What with compound interest and all, I figure he owes me about $361,029.01.
My mother was a Hershey’s fanatic. She stuffed me full of Hershey’s chocolate, which I disliked because of the inevitable cleanup afterwards: spit on kleenex, wipe face until toddler blood flows freely. Less disgusting were her Juicy Fruit gum sticks. But not much less disgusting.Â
Left to my own devices, I chose one of three treats. Each had their own merits and demerits:
Jolly Rancher apple-flavored slabs. Not the lozenge-shaped Jolly Ranchers, but straps of apple goodness that lasted all afternoon. You could suck ’em down to a razor sharp edge, the ideal playground shiv; but heaven help you if you had one in your mouth and accidentally fell while running. Goodbye, tongue.
100,000 Dollar Bars. Gooey, crispy, chocolatey, and yucky, but a 100,000 dollar bar for thirty-five cents — who could pass up a deal like that? And didn’t they appreciate to become Million Dollar Bars a few years later? But my favorite, the winner every time unless I was all chocolated out, was . . .
The Seven-Up Bar. This had nothing to do with the soda and everything to do with the bar’s division into seven separate compartments. I remember a few of the centers: fudgy, caramel, coconut. I’ll bet I could find out more online if I weren’t so lazy.
Ah, here we go:
For all of you who have asked exactly what flavors were in the Seven Up Bar, this wrapper provides the definitive answer in a groovy font: cherry, coconut, caramel, fudge, jelly, maple, and Brazil nut.
Jelly was my favorite center.
My next favorite was the Mars Bar, but Mars Bars are imperfect wonders. Perfect milk chocolate and creamy nougat, but it took effort to nibble it free from the almonds. Not that I mind almonds, but if I really liked almonds, I’d eat a Mounds bar.
I’ve never been much of a Snickers fan, by the way. The peanuts are so tiny you can’t nibble around them, and then your teeth are embedded in all this gritty, caramely stuff. Blech. Snickers Ice Cream bars were a big improvement, but we’re not talking about ice cream.
Oh, and those chocolate covered maraschino cherries swimming in pastel pink sugar syrup — what are those called? Those are yummy, too, but Cup-o-Gold rawks. High quality chocolate with itsy bitsy crispies, sweet-but-not-too-sweet marshmallow filling . . .  Tom Waits is wrong:
Well I dont want no anna zabba
Dont want no almond joy
There aint nothing better
Suitable for this boy
Well its the only thing
That can pick me up
Better than a cup of gold
See only a chocolate jesus
Can satisfy my soul
Somewhere between my teenage years and adulthood, I lost my way, strayed from the path of Cup-o-Gold goodness; and now I favor PayDay bars and Butterfingers. Truly, I am lost, but if I could find a local source for Cup-o-Golds, my soul would find satisfaction.
Although I must admit, I’ve never eaten a chocolate Jesus.
D.
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Mars Bars have almonds?!?
Leave it to you Yanks to screw up a perfectly good chocolate bar. Real Mars Bars have no almonds, and are freely available throughout the Great White North. We also have 3 Muskateers, which are pretty much the same thing, with a smaller advertising budget.
The Mars Bars of the Antipodes are also free of the devil almond. A less gooey experience can be had with the Cadbury “Whip”. And I would never have described the peanut pieces in a local “Snickers” bar small.
And I’ve never heard of all of the other stuff except the Hershey bar. Surely, we must live in a chocolate bar backwater.
From Answers.Com:
And from Wikipedia:
All of us are correct!
I really miss Mars Bars with the almonds on top.I did slice my tongue on a Jolly Rancher, but it was a suck-exposed bubble that got me. I prefer the wee single hard candies instead. Watermelon is the best, then apple.
Snickers Bars are best frozen. Mounds have no almonds, Almond Joy has almonds and one must eat all the chocolate off the hunk of coconut before eating in full. Same goes for a Twix bar; one must slowly expose the cookie middle.
Baby Ruths always disappoint because the peanuts are always stale.
I love an old fashioned Zagnut or Skor bar.
Great! Now I’m homesick.
mmm, chocolate. the day i discovered Midnight Milky Ways…heaven. i’m a dark chocolate gal, but in a pinch i’ll go milky way, snickers, 3 musketeer, kitkat, reeses, Mounds…as long as its chocolate and doesnt have almonds, i’m good to go. 🙂
I love dark chocolate since I can eat less of it and be just as happy as if I ate an entire milk chocolate bar. It’s much better for the blood sugar taht way, and I can be snobby about my chocolate too! 🙂
Mmmmmm… chocolate.
*sniff* I love this city.
(My tastes are pretty wide-ranging as far as chocolate goes. Those guys just happen to make some particularly tasty chocolate. One neighborhood over from mine…)
Have you tried Reese’s Fast Breaks? If you like peanut butter, these are so much better than Butterfingers which I think are immediate tooth rotters because that candy really gets ground into your teeth.
I recall the Seven Up Bar…didn’t care for most of the flavors in it, but the chocolate was very good. Among my favorites: Chunky (a big fat square of chocolate filled with nuts and raisins)and Big Hunks (white nougat and peanuts). Now, it’s Sees’ truffles all the way. I recall those Cup O Golds but just the name. What was in those?
Lyvvie: Yup, I should have remembered the theme song:
Shaina, I never much liked Milky Way. The fluff inside, to me, has an off taste. But I give them points for being nutless 🙂
nox, I love dark chocolate, but dark chocolate hates me — wires the hell out of me, and stirs up my reflux like it ain’t funny.
PS, I’ll check it out.
Sis, I don’t think I’ve tried that one. Cup-o-Gold has marshmallow cream inside. Not the best part of it — the best part is the chocolate. Hmm, and I’ve never tried Chunky or Big Hunks, either.
We have a wonderful candy bar made in Nashville called the Goo-Goo cluster – marshmallow, caramel, peanuts and chocolate- so wonderful. I found this website http://www.oldtimecandy.com/cup-o-gold.htm that sells something called cup-o-gold, but the wrapper is not the same. Check out the Goo-Goo’s at the same site. I LOVE CANDY!!!
Lucie – I LOVE that site! Thanks so much but alas, they don’t ship international. I may make a big order and ship to my Mom to send over – plus oh what fun making gift bags for my Brother!!
That had Saf-T-Pops!! Those were the lollies that I got a wee kid that came in a long strip and looked like condoms!Not that I knew what condoms were as a wee kid…
Husband and I were talking the other day about candy cigarettes, and how they aren’t made any more. You still get “candy sticks” that have a suspicious orange tip on them. I used to get a pack of ten gum cigarettes that had a paper wrapper, and when you blew through them puffs of powdered sugar came out the end looking like smoke.
Ahhhhh those were the days. Sitting on a picnic table outside DQ, puffing away on my gum and picking berries off the trees.
Holy shit they have the gum smokes too!!!
Hmmm. Is a Cup-O-Gold anything like a Mallo Cup? I LOVED Mallo Cups.
Eeeeuuuwww. Juicy Fruit. Blech. Now Teaberry–that was tasty gum.
Gee, is it lunchtime yet??
Here (Oz), a cigarette-like candy called “Fags” was all the rage when I was a child.
Then they changed it to “Fads”. And apparently they dropped the red “lit” end, too.
It’s considered a bit risque these days to gayly suck a Fag.
I’ve never been a huge candy fan, but when I was pregnant with my daughter I CRAVED Mars Bars (the American kind with almonds). Them and jalapenos. Bill’d bring me one almost every day when he came home from work. God I loved those darn things. lol When they stopped making them here, I was totally devastated. They came out with Snickers Almond, but they’re nowhere near as good. Mars Bars are the only candy I’ve ever really liked.
Thanks for explaining that Canadian and UK Mars Bars aren’t the same. I can stop drooling toward our northern border now.
I have not read any further than Lyvvie’s comment:
“… it was a suck-exposed bubble that got me”
I’m going to write a story with that as a title. Or the theme. Or something.
Wow. I don’t think we had the Seven Up bar in New Jersey when I was growing up, or it would definitely have gone on my Definitive Halloween Candy List. I would have loved to try that!
And oh, yes, I remember the large Jolly Ranchers. It never ceases to blow my mind that we in the USA could have dangerous treats like that, but the unbelieveably awesome Kinder Surpise is illegal here. You’d best believe I’m going to try to pick up some while I’m in Canada this w.e. No justice, no peace!
Er, hey look – I pimped myself! ;o)