All this talk about flowery candy let me think of Veilchenpastillen, violet drops, which are a kind of very mild licorice with a strong violet taste. They taste very vile and seem very old fashioned, only your grandma would ever give it to you. I think they’re mostly eaten to freshen your breath, but for this I’d much rather use the aforementioned Fisherman’s Friends.
Oh my, yes.
My mother had a bowlful of those set out one Christmastime, I think.
I like black licorice. Those things were….. not good. The licorice bit was okay but the pastel chalky parts were not enjoyable at all.
Those are basically Jaffa cakes, which are quite nice. They were the subject of a lawsuit determining whether they were cakes or biscuits (cookies, for us Murricans). “Cakes” won.
On that topic, I have to mention Tunnock’s teacakes - sticky marshmallow on a biscuit, the whole in a chocolate casing.
All a bit icky for me. I prefer their caramel wafers.
I once bought what I thought were Madeleines at a Korean Bakery. It turns out that there is a traditional Korean cake in the same shell shape which is made with red bean paste. I’ve had lots of bean paste treats that I liked, but these were not even flavored, just barely even sweetened.
The next time I visited the bakery there was a sign beside them warning Americans. When I asked the cashier about it, she said none of them liked them either, but it’s a traditional thing they are expected to keep in stock.
Regarding licorice allsorts:
As I’ve mentioned, I like licorice allsorts. When I was younger, we ate them much like “a kid’ll eat the middle of an Oreo first”: we peeled the non-licorice pastel stuff off the layered ones, and ate that before the licorice.
Korea has many kinds of rice cake, and they are a proud tradition here. I hate them. Some are kind of candied, some are stuffed with red bean. My least favorite iteration is tteokbokki, which is an unsweetened rice cake suspended in a spicy stew like the pool noodle it kind of resembles. Honest circus peanuts are unknown here. They would be an improvement.
There is a reasonably popular ‘treat’ usually sold by street vendors - Dried Mopani Worms, salted, in Zimbabwe.
These are not true worms, they are the larval stage of Gonimbrasia Belinda, which is a large moth.
I was cajouled into trying one by a very persuasive street vendor sales-lady, and wow. That was horrible. Terrible. The taste stuck in my mouth even after a few beers. Just bad. Bad, bad, bad.
Fresh ribbon candy is fine. Grandma candy bowl ribbon candy has been sitting for weeks and is ick.
Has nobody else had the “other” kind of rock candy? Not crystal sugar, with or without sticks or strings, but what looked like actual little pebbles. I remember them coming in little boxes sort of the size of ‘theater’ candy, each rock sort of the size of a sour ball type drop. But instead of being glossy or shiny and perfectly round, they were dull, mottled gray/brown/whitish specks and somewhat ‘lumpy. They genuinely looked like the little naturally tumbled stones you might find at a stony beach. It was long ago (I was maybe 6 or 7 years old, so 1960ish) and we were living in the Mohave Desert near some rocket test base.
I honestly don’t remember what they tasted like beyond ‘sweet’ which was all my childish tastebuds demanded.
I bet they went away because they were too perfect for playing pranks with, which probably ended up with too many broken teeth.
Added: I didn’t imagine them. I never manage to post images, but google “chocolate river stones’ if you want to see them.
I haven’t seen a sugar cube in a while but the tongs show up for sale with other old silver.
Those are always hanging out in giftshops and souvenir places. Remember your visit to the Liberty Bell with gray sugar. Enjoy some edible pebbles after your day at Paul Bunyon’s boyhood home. $40/lb. They’re sometimes slightly dyed or marbled.
I’ve had river stones from Spain, which remind me of the ones I ate as a child in the U.S.
Here’s the Spanish river stones:
Whilst Tunnock’s Teacakes are undeniably disgusting, they are also strangely irresistible. I don’t like sweet things (these days) - but stick one of those in front of me and I would scarf it down in a heartbeat. And then tell you how disgusting it was.
j
Mary Janes. Are they still made? Vile, molasses and peanut butter rectangles.
They do! Ick!
Mrs. Cheesesteak is quite the fan of Choward’s. They’re not bad.
This thread has me nostalgic and sad. Not for candy, but a candy website. In the way back times, there was a site called badcandy dot com. Don’t bother going there, it’s long gone. It was just a few young guys who tasted random candies from around the world and told us how awful it all was. They had circus peanuts, double zout licorice, tamarind, spicy mexican candy, all kinds of unusual confections and made a big production out of trying it and hating it. Fun, well written reviews criticizing a world that allowed this candy to exist.
The world is a smaller place without them around.
What, no sickly sweet goo in the middle?
OK, that ramps it up from disgusting to hideous. You win. 
j
Mopane worms are highly variable - if they’re not properly cleaned, for instance, or stale, or not correctly dried or smoked.
But some are just salty, smokey snacks. Perfectly OK. Not great, but not horrible.
Apropos of nothing, I would have thought that was “Howard’s” with a stylized moon at the beginning of the name… (Capital H, followed by all lowercase letters…)
ETA: ah, now I know the rest of the story…
Another Saskatchewan tradition!