Valentine's Day... in March!

Okay, not really, but here's some candy for you.

Actually, I bought these after Valentine's in a post-Valentine's Day sale (25 cents for the box) after I got my driving privileges back following my concussion. I didn't buy them because I was so hungry for sugar. No, it was because this was the first time in 118 years that Necco was not doing the Conversation Hearts.

Necco, the storied candy manufacturer that was founded in 1901, gave up the ghost last July when it closed its doors and sold off its operations. The company, known originally the New England Confectionery Company, had been making heart-shaped candies with little sayings on them from 1901 to 2018. This was the only year in living memory that we've been heartless.

Or we would have been, but cheap candy magnate Brach's picked up the slack with these Tiny Conversation Hearts. A quick search of the U.S. Trademark Office database shows no trademark, live or dead, for "Conversation Hearts," and this late in the game it would be tough to show Brach's was stealing a unique idea of value. Anyway, lovebirds who wanted to share nearly flavorless romantic candy had someplace to go, so it was kind of a public service. Maybe Brach's has been making them for years in competition with Necco. I have no idea. I've been off the dating circuit for a while.

Brach's calls them Tiny Conversation Hearts, but are they really? Well, here they are next to a pencil.

Kinda small. Smaller than Necco's? I don't know.

We should be able to do a coronary candy competition next year, though. Spangler, the company that makes approximately a kabillion candy canes every Christmas (seriously, 2.7 million a day!), bought the rights to most of Necco's headliner candies, including Necco Wafers, Canada Mints, and Sweetheart Conversation Hearts. They've as much as promised a return of these old-time sweets in 2020. So there's something.

We can buy a box of each and have a heart-to-heart. If we remember to do it. Meh. The candies are kind of dull. Brach's taste kind of like miscellaneous fruit. It's hard at my age to get worked up about it.

I'm blasé about the whole thing. Maybe I need a hug. Can I buy a box with just the "Hug Me" hearts in it?

Skyyyyyyybaarrrrr Piiiilot!

My continuing effort to eat everything that is bad for me reeled in this little beauty---a Sky Bar, by Necco (the New England Confectionery Company). In this neck of the woods it's easy to find Necco wafers, Canada mints, and Sweethearts, and you might find Candy Buttons, a Clark Bar, some Mary Janes, and even a carton of Mighty Malts, but the Sky Bar is very hard to find. 

And this one is mine! Mine, you hear? 

Well, it was. 

The gimmick of the Sky Bar is that each bar has four pockets with distinct flavors---caramel, vanilla (kind of like marshmallow), peanut (not peanut butter, but a peanut-flavored cream), and fudge. The perfect candy bar for the indecisive. 

I liked it, although the individual components are not extraordinary. Necco's chocolate is no gourmet delicacy; neither are the fillings. Individually the sections could go head-to-head against other cheap confections: chocolate-covered Peeps, Reese's, Rolos, etc. But the treat of the Sky Bar is that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. It's the Fantastic Four of candy. No one would read Mr. Fantastic Comics, but you put him in with the Thing, the Human Torch, and the Invisible Woman, and he's an indispensable member of the squad. 

But the Sky Bar is but a poor version of the Seven Up Candy Bar---no relation to the soft drink---which had seven distinct flavors in one bar. Wikipedia explains: "Flavors changed with the availability and popularity of ingredients, which included, among others, brazil nut, buttercream, butterscotch, caramel, cherry, coconut, fudge, mint, nougat and orange." Sadly, the Seven Up went away in 1979. 

Thanks for the pic, Old Time Candy!

My advice: Get two Sky Bars, eat one section off one of them, and pretend you have a single (albeit repetitive) Seven Up bar remaining.