Sweet talk.

[The Curmudgeon]

To be honest, I wasn't really sure WHERE to put this thread, in that it concerns that most trivial and unessential, (yet still strangely important and essential), of things - sweets to us Brits, candy to you Jet Age Americans.

Everyone eats it, everyone likes it. Some more than others, of course, but I remember when I was in Florida last year, my wife and I went into a shop (or store, whatever) and we must have looked like absolute stoners, buying up all this weird and funky sweet stuff that we'd never heard of and wanted to try.

So, first of all, I'm going to give you a small list of the UK's most famous and popular sweets, and I want the American Dwellers to tell us if they've heard of them. For instance, Hershey Bars seem to be in every American movie in the 80s, but we don't have them in the UK. Oh, and Wolfman, I know you're American and live in Finland, so you can share two countries experience with us. Anyway, do you have..

Maltesers
Mars
Galaxy
Milky Way
Twix
Double Decker
Minstrels
Aero

There are millions more, but those are the main ones I can think of. I didn't know, for example, that the American's had Skittles until I saw them hawked shamelessly on WWE Monday Night Raw. Check out THIS shilling ..

www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8rYJODwHPQ

One of my wife's favourite drinks is Mountain Dew, which the UK don't sell, so we have to get it shipped from the US from a website that sells all kinds of wacky US sweets (Berry flavoured M&Ms?! What space age madness is that?) so if you can think of something that we wouldn't normally have tried - name it. For example; we tried something called "taffy" which I think started its life as an army boot.

So, let's indulge our sweet tooths..

[trashcanman]

Salt Water Taffy; Pismo Beach, California. The six sweetest words in the english language. I'm sitting here pouring a bag of Chewy Atomic Fireballs (which I just tried for the first time today) down my throat as I type. I never drink, never smoked, have done no other drugs, and seldom even pop so much as an aspirin but I am a junkie, my friends: a sugar junkie. When my son gets old enough to steal I just don't know what I'll do. I'm not a violent man, but I will throw down right now over some Hersey's chocolate! I need help!

Anyways, Mars bars used to be pretty poular, but they've been phased out it seems. Milk Way is a staple, Twix is a personal favorite, and the rest are all nays in my region, though it's possible they changed the name for American cosumption. Anything called "minstrels" just wouldn't fly here, I assure you. I've never seen berry M&M's and am almost retching at the thought. WTF were they thinking there?

[The Curmudgeon]

Chewy atomic fireballs sound like the greatest thing on earth. I'm gonna have to hunt those sucksers down.

I tried a bluberry (I think) version of taffy and dear God it sucked. I can't imagine how a salt water version would be any better. Wouldn't it just be like eating a tire dragged from the sea?

[trashcanman]

I don't know what you ate, C, but I love me some salt water taffy. And no, it isn't salt water flavored. And yes, I'm quite sure that chewey Atomic Fireballs are the best thing on Earth at the moment.

[The Curmudgeon]

One thing that's always struck me about American food is the size of the "chips" (or crisps to us). In the UK you can buy a 30g bag



and that's sort of the basic size. But I've never seen this sort of thing in the US. It's always the "Share Size" bags that we have but this seems to be the standard bag. Is there a smaller size bag in the US or if you fancy some chips you've got to eat enough for about four people?

[trashcanman]

Yeah, you can buy a serving size bag that's already tiny, usually only half-full, and barely costs less than the big bag. Or you can buy a bunch of the little bags in assorted varieties at an even crummier value. I just get the big bag and put them into smaller ziploc bags for my lunch.