Like a Blogger in a Candy Show: I Went to the National Confectioners Association 2012 Sweets & Snacks Expo!

"I feel like a kid in some kind of a store!"
--Homer Simpson, at a candy convention; Season 6 episode "Homer Badman"

"Nom nom nom nom nom."
--Me, at a candy convention; May 9, 2012

Let me make something perfectly clear from the start: For a huge percentage of my life, I have longed to go to a candy convention.  I have lived to go to a candy convention.

I guess I first became aware of the dream world that is a candy expo when I saw the above-mentioned episode of The Simpsons, which the Internets tell me first aired in 1994.

Then, some time later, when I used to schedule my whole life around Monday night's episodes of Unwrapped on the Food Network, I saw many a segment filmed at the National Confectioners Association show in Chicago.

And once I found myself actually living in the Chicago area, I said, "I will find a way to get into that candy show."  (I'm serious, I really said that.  On more than one occasion.)

This year, I finally found a way into the candy show.  I was granted access to the National Confectioners Association 2012 Sweets & Snacks Expo on a press pass, because I'm a blogger.

I cannot even begin to convey how excited I was.  This was HUGE.

And the show did not disappoint.  It was seriously one of the most awesome events I've ever attended. 

Let me start with a picture of the showpiece that stood at the entrance of the expo.  It's a replica of the famous Chicago sculpture "The Bean," made out of jelly beans!  (The Bean's actual name is Cloud Gate, and you can see it here.) 

The jelly bean Bean was crafted by young volunteers as part of the After School Matters program, in partnership with Jelly Belly, The Food Channel, the For the Love of Chocolate Foundation, and the French Pastry School.  The credits are on the back of the sculpture:

Once inside the show, I discovered that almost every single booth was offering samples.  For example:

It was like being in a giant mall, and every single store in that mall is the Sweet Factory.  And every single store is free.

I was going to need to pace myself.

For my first stop, I wandered over to two Angry Birds costumed characters passing out Angry Birds fruit snacks as part of the Healthy Food Brands booth.  I told the rep at the booth that Angry Birds and fruit snacks are two of Nathan's favorite things, and she gave me a handful of extra free samples.

Here's the Angry Birds space fruit snacks line:

And the holiday version:

The company also makes other app-based fruit snacks, such as Fruit Ninja (not pictured) and Cut the Rope:

Next ... PEZ!  The PEZ booth was topped with this giant moving PEZ dispenser shaped like a bear:

A shot of some different PEZ lines:

I was particularly intrigued by PEZ's Presidential Line:

This is a close-up featuring Bill's favorite president, James Madison, and a couple of the other founding fathers:

These presidents are part of Set 1 of the Presidential Series, which is currently available.  Set 2 will come out in November, and subsequent sets will be released each November.  

Over at the booth for Jelly Belly, I took a picture featuring their Peter Rabbit, Snapple, and Hello Kitty product lines:

I would like to use the above photo to illustrate an important point I learned at the Sweets & Snacks Expo: Just because you see a lavish display of products lined up, it does not mean those products are yours for the taking.  If you look very closely, you'll see that the little bags of candy are connected by red plastic rings.  When you attempt to pull a bag off the shelf, the red plastic rings ensure that the bag snaps right back to its intended location on the rack, making you feel like a bit of a criminal.  Other booths used signs that said Display Only or Please Do Not Take, while some just straight-up taped/glued the products down.  (I did see a woman forcefully rip several taped-down candy bars off a shelf, though.)  The Jelly Belly people were very forthcoming with small bags of samples elsewhere, just not on that particular shelf.  The owners of the booths wanted to keep displays intact so they would have a lavish-looking spread, which is understandable.

This is a Jelly Belly vending machine:

And this is a display to promote the Peter Rabbit line.  I took this picture because I had a lot of Beatrix Potter stuff as a kid, largely stemming from the fact that I apparently showed a preference for the character Jemima Puddleduck from a very early age. 

This next photo shows the booth for Euro-American Brands, which distributes a lot of your Cost Plus World Market-type candies, as well as the always-delicious Ritter Sport candy bar.  (And seriously, click on that link.  Their site is, quite literally, eye candy.)  I learned that Ritter Sport, which you can get at Target, comes in a lot of different flavors.  (And, truth be told, that was the booth where the woman yanked the taped-down candy bars.  So, see, their products are highly in demand.) 

Next, looking quite literally like the mother ship that it is, the booth for the Hershey's corporation:

A sign at the Hershey booth illustrated that this was, in fact, an insider trade show, where marketing isn't aimed at the general public:

Simply delicious.  Simply incremental sales. It's probably not going to be a slogan they use in their national ad campaign.

And who among us doesn't have fond memories of selling/eating World's Finest Chocolate as a fundraiser?  This was a giant candy bar at their booth:

I'm pretty sure it was real chocolate, or at least chocolate-coated.  

And what can I say?  I'm a sucker for a costumed character:

Have you tried the 100th Anniversary Oreos?  The filling is cake batter-flavored.  

This is a shot of the booth for Sanchez Cano, a Spanish company that makes these fun, colorful Fini licorice tubes:

And I have to give a shout-out to the Divine Chocolate company, a fair-trade chocolatier that uses the products of woman cocoa farmers in developing countries:

The candy was really good, and this woman was super nice. 

This next booth was promoting the Hello, Cupcake app for iPhone and iPad, which is a cupcake-tutorial app based on the books Hello, Cupcake and What's New, Cupcake?  The man in the booth was demonstrating the making of sheep cupcakes:

Here's the rest of the flock:

And here's a nacho cake from the same booth:

Over at the booth for yum junkie candy distributors, they had a giant candy version of one of my childhood favorites, Gumby!

And then they had gummi versions of Gumby (green apple) and Pokey (orange mango):

They also sell those Puffy Poles marshmallow candies I have in my hand there.

With the Gumby theme song stuck in my head (He was once a little green slab of clay ... Gumby!), I wandered over to the booth for McSteven's, purveyors of cute hot chocolate tins:

What the heck?  I'll go political here. 

These are some glazed strawberries from the International Glace company:

This is ribbon candy from Hammond's Candies, which has a factory (in Denver) that you can visit, or even have your birthday party:

So pretty.

Hammond's also makes a large line of jarred dessert dips and toppings.  

 I sampled the fudge one and the lemon one, and ... WOW.  So delicious.

This is the Fannie May artisan chocolate line, which is gorgeous but costs a lot.  They didn't have any samples.

I took this picture of Nathan's cheddar cheese fry snacks, for obvious reasons:

And speaking of Nathan, I figured this would be his dream vending machine, filled with fruit snacks from Welch's:

The sad part is, it would still take him 20 minutes to decide what kind of fruit snacks to get.

(Also, Bill would like you to know that he loved the Welch's filled licorice I brought home.)

Now to a product near and dear to my heart, Fla-Vor-Ice.  Katie and I have long been fans of the delicious, low-cal frozen snack.  It turns out the Jel Sert corporation makes pretty much all the frozen tube-based snacks you can think of:

I sampled the watermelon Jolly Rancher flavor.  It was really good, and not overwhelmingly sweet like I feared it might be.

And how about this quaint, homey facade at the Werther's Original booth, reminiscent of their early-90s ad campaign with the folksy grandpa:

They were giving out their awesome caramel apple candies, which is a green apple candy coated with their traditional caramel hard candy.

Next I played Plinko over at the Foreign Candy Co. booth (an odd name, since they're based in Iowa) and won Nathan this truck filled with Rips sour licorice candy:

Both the cab and the back compartment hold candy:

Now, here I must stop to explain that, while I took home a good amount of prepackaged samples like the truck seen above, a huge percentage of the samples at the show were unwrapped.  Which means you had to consume them right on the spot.  It turns out that a person can't eat an unlimited amount of candy without feeling sick.  Strangely, I found myself craving plants! or protein! after eating several candy samples.  

Fortunately I was allowed access to the press lounge, where they had water, fruit, and Diet Pepsi:

A palate-cleansing break.

Back on the horse, I ventured out to the show.  The Lindt booth had a cute display of their chocolate bunnies:

That picture is blurry, but I included it as a companion to this photo of the Lindt chocolate bears:

Some of the nicest people at the show were the people at the booth for Terry's Chocolate Orange.  I told the rep there about how Bill brings the chocolate oranges to his students during their final, because he includes a fictional case about Terry's as part of the exam.  The guy went into the secret back section of the booth and opened a case of the oranges so I could have one for Bill.

Now, by far my all-time favorite gummi candies are the Haribo kind:

Haribo samples:

This next company was called Gamer Grub.  Gamer Grub is a line of packaged snacks that you can pour into your mouth while playing video games.  I told these guys at the booth about how my husband teaches a course in video game law, and they gave me an extra sample.

And there were about a million other booths I didn't include in my post here.  There were candy makers, candy distributors, makers of candy accoutrements like containers and labels, big companies, small companies ... you name it.  The common denominator was deliciousness.

I could have stayed all day, or possibly several days, at the show, except for one problem.  You were only allowed to take out samples in the official trade show bag, which was about the size of a medium gift bag.  They punched your entrance badge to indicate that you had gotten the bag, so there was no getting a second or third bag.  So, when my bag was full, it was time to leave the show.  If they let me in again next year, I've learned that I need to go multiple days, empty my bag at home each night, and bring the bag back the next day for more samples. 

As it was, I think I did pretty well: 

When Nathan saw the spread, he said, Wow, it covers the whole table! and then gave the pile of candy a hug.  I made him re-create the scene for the camera:

Of course a family of 3 shouldn't eat this much candy, so we've been sharing it with others.  We're doing okay for ourselves, though. 

My trip to the Sweets & Snacks Expo was by far one of the best moments of the year.  It was a truly wonderful event, and I'm so grateful to have been given the opportunity to go.  Thank you SO MUCH, National Confectioners Association!  I hope to see you again next year!