Classic Candy From Your Youth

The granddaddy of American candy, these hard flavored wafers from the New England Confectionery Co. (Necco, get it?) were carried by Union soldiers in the Civil War. The U.S. government distributed them to GIs during World War II, creating a generation of loyal customers. A couple of years ago Necco experimented with a version softened with glycerin. Sales fell 35 percent. Now the old formula is back. You don't mess with a classic.

There doesn't seem to be a hard date for when the old Cumberland Valley Co. started making these ubiquitous rounded pegs of candy that you peel off a strip of paper. Necco has been making them since 1980 — three-quarters of a billion of them a year, in fact.

The classic "Smack it and Crack it" bar — which isn't really taffy at all, but nougat — was one of the first candies advertised on TV.

From Necco; hard to find. It was the first molded chocolate bar with a soft flavored filling.

A peanut butter-and-coconut confection, its lack of chocolate has rendered it a niche candy. But it's popular among troops in Iraq and Afghanistan because it doesn't melt.

Pittsburgh's original candy bar (the abandoned factory is still there).

Remember Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass's catchy "Teaberry Shuffle" jingle from the 1960s? The company is still based in Buffalo, N.Y.; the minty gum, perhaps appropriately, is made in Mexico.

Impossibly sweet and kaleidoscopically colored, these jelly candies have a knack for finding their way into the tightest tooth crevices.

This is the first nonminty stick gum that many boomers remember.

William and Andrew Smith were actually producing their cough drops for years, but in 1872 they began boxing them — with their bearded selves on the label — to prevent sales of knockoffs. Long since overtaken by cough-medicine manufacturers, the brothers' drops are now made by a private-equity company in Santa Monica, Calif.

Goetze's Candy started out as the Baltimore Chewing Gum Co., but it hit a home run with its Bulls-Eyes caramel creams. They're still sold today, as are these long, thin, taillike spinoffs.

Their genesis is seemingly lost to history, but generations of new dads have handed these out to pals on the arrival of a new baby girl (pink) or boy (blue).

Rumor has it they were invented in northern Europe, but on these shores they're produced by the Smarties Candy Co., makers of another vintage classic.

Caramel, peanut and almond nougat smothered in white fudge — what's not to like? It was first made by the Hollywood Brands candy company in — where else? — Minneapolis. Now Zero Bar is a Hershey brand.

These rice paper saucer-shape disks, filled with candy, had a brief spell of popularity here — but a 2004 United Kingdom survey named them the most popular sweet of all time.

"Trust me," Bart Simpson told the gullible hyperactive kids next door, "there's no sugar in Pixy Stix!" Actually, the treat was originally sold as a sugary-drink mix, served up in their own straws. Turned out kids loved emptying the contents right into their mouths, and a legend was born.

The official brand name of the famous wax bottle with flavored drink inside, now owned by Tootsie Roll Industries, is Nik-L-Nip. But there are knockoffs aplenty out there.

An acquired taste, to be sure, though these have been around forever. Don't tell health-conscious New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, but the Finnish government has banned advertisements for them, fearing they'll lure kids into a life of dangerous pipe smoking. Wax lips are flavored, however most people tend to toss them after their teeth have sufficiently chewed up the mouthpiece. That classic design is protected by a patent.

There are of course candy cigarettes, those little chalky candies that don't look much like cigarettes at all, and then there are these beauties: rounded sticks of gum that come wrapped in a paper shield that mimics the real thing, right down to the filter. Although the gum is so-so, the visual effect is amazing. The Finnish government would never approve.

Similar to Necco's classic Mary Jane (1914) but a bit harder to find, this chewy bar is primarily a honey-flavored taffy containing almond bits. Like Mary Jane, it's also a dependable filling extractor.

Originally called Papa Sucker (not much of an improvement), the big, chewy caramel bar predates its offspring, the more popular Sugar Babies, by a decade.