Event Thu Sep 20 2007

The Buzz is Sugar, Not Excitement

By Robyn Nisi

The All Candy Expo roared into town this past week at McCormick Place, a loud, colorful, three-day event for candy and snack food manufacturers from all corners of the globe to show their stuff to buyers. But not to each other, as I learned.

While the economy tumbles, the candy and snack industry never really seems to take a hit. Candy and snack foods are a solid part of our eating vocabulary, and industry statistics prove that candy producers are clearly thriving: according to the National Confectioner's Association website, about 65 percent of American candy brands have been around for more than 50 years. A resounding theme that was the lack of competition between manufacturers, given the vast candy-buying demographic; the poorest to the wealthiest are all regular customers.

Walking around the aisles of the All Candy Expo, I saw a lot of the familiar objects from the checkout aisle--chocolate, gum, candy, beef jerky--turned into displays stuffed with free samples for attendees. Thrown in with the samples were other attention-getting tricks. The Mentos booth had a television showing the wacky Diet Coke and Mentos chemical explosion phenomenon of late; Mars, the makers of M & Ms, had a chocolate fondue station and caricature artists who would draw attendees as an M & M. A Mini Cooper emblazoned with the corporate art of the Minnesota-based maker of Fizzies, a tablet (once popular in the 1950s) containing color and flavor for dissolving in water, was parked in the middle of a booth. I tasted a sample of the drink, which visually resembled easter egg dye and weakly tasted of the fruit punch it intended to be. The salesperson watching me drink said, with not a hint of irony in his voice, that the tablet was intended "to make drinking water fun again" for kids.

Another interesting dimension of the Expo was how the products were marketed. The industry owes a great debt to the publicized health benefits of dark chocolate, regardless of how challenged and contradicted those claims are. As a result, displays for dark chocolate products showed pictures of people exercising and staying beautiful thanks to a candy bar. Much to my chagrin, samples of dark chocolate were easier to find than their milk chocolate brethren. The organic/natural craze was all over the place as well, with retailers like Cadbury-owned Green and Black's making appearances with their natural wares. I sampled natural licorice from an Australian company, which was a softer, more flavorful version of the kinds I find at the grocery store. The attention, however, seemed to be more focused on the anticipated innovation of the household brands that already sell themselves. I sampled a very underwhelming handful of chocolate Skittles, and was told that samples of the hyped Java-flavored Twix bars (akin to the iPhone) were intentionally nowhere to be found in the building.

The more personal approaches to hawking a candy bar had the potential to turn foul. A colorful, cartoon-ish drawing of a woman resembling Cathy stared at me as I sampled a pumpkin, peanut butter and cinnamon-infused chocolate from a booth at a miserable location at the edge of the exhibition . A sign next to the samples read "Chocolate: it's not just for that time of the month!" The lone staff member at the booth was an older, bored-looking man, the kind of person you expect to be selling such a product. I spoke at length with an Alabama-based manufacturer of candy wrapped with scripture-laden packaging as I looked at a small tin of Jesus fish-shaped breathmints. "Is there anything in the Bible about gluttony?" I asked, straight-faced.

Hours later, I stumbled out of the convention center, past the hoardes of Dockers-clad salespeople chatting about sport scores and local restaurant options for the evening, with a serious case of sugar jitters that resulted in an unexpected, lengthy nap when I got home. I woke up next to a small pile of samples that had made their way into my bag throughout the afternoon. As my head began aching, I reached for a sugar-free Baskin Robbins ice cream-flavored hard candy. The train had to keep rolling.