Over the weekend, we announced a Free Candy Contest on our email list. Now it’s time to pick some winners.

Chocolate Conversation Hearts go to: Susan Bucolic
Dazzled Tart Conversation Hearts go to: Ryan Errico
Conversation Hearts en Español go to: We don’t know yet!

Second Chance Drawing!

Check it out! Believe it or not, no one submitted an entry for our case of Spanish Conversation Hearts. They’re still up for grabs. For your chance to win, visit our Candy Contests Facebook Tab and submit the entry form.

We know. It’s early. But we have the most interesting and scrumptious-looking array of Easter Candy, and we figured you might as well have dibs on it! I keep walking past the stack of Reese’s Peanut Butter Bunnies and thinking, “Who wouldn’t want one of those?!” But there’s some specific candy in particular that I want you to know about.

What would Easter be without Brach’s?

After all they’re the ones who taught the world about the circle of chocolatey-marshmallow life. You know the story. In magical springtime moments, marshmallow chickens sometimes fall into chocolate puddles. Then they lay chocolate-covered marshmallow eggs. When those eggs don’t get gobbled up fast enough, they hatch into chocolate-covered marshmallow rabbits. If the Easter Bunny didn’t spread these yummy goodies across the globe, they’d take over the Earth!

For the past several holidays, we’ve received tons calls and emails asking us where to find all kinds of Brach’s candy. Evidently, certain classic favorites, especially those popularly used for baking and crafts, have been impossible to track down. Well, we’ve got the real deal.

Brach’s Easter Candy

Jelly Bird Eggs Jelly Beans	Fiesta Malted Milk Eggs	Brach’s Chicks & Rabbits
Jelly Bean Nougats	Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Eggs	Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Rabbits

Hard-to-Find Classic Brach’s Candies

While we’re at it, it’s worth mentioning that classic Brach’s candies are available at CandyFavorites year round. Why go searching from store to store when you can stock up and (probably) get free shipping? Now you can bake just like grandma without leaving the comfort of your own home! Or if you’re less domestically inclined, you can at least make your house her favorite place to snack.

Brach’s Malted Milk Balls

Chocolate Bridge Mix

Cinnamon Disks

This weekend in our CandyFavorites Newsletter, we gave customers the chance to win the World’s Largest Hershey Bar. It’s a 2-foot-long, 5-pound plank of Hershey’s Original Milk Chocolate.

And the winner is:
Pamela Pollock of Slippery Rock, PA

Don’t miss our future exclusive deals and contests!
Sign up for the Candy Favorites Newsletter.

Valentine’s Day is kind of a polarizing holiday. Young lovers love it, and lonely curmudgeons hate it. And so do a lot of normal people. The legendary stories that inspired the celebration vary widely, and the only really clear thing is that people have been getting romantic once a year for centuries. But a holiday about love in the middle of winter makes sense. Celebrating loved ones might be the best thing to do when you’ve been stuck inside with them for months. Just imagine what it would be like if you shared a hovel with them. Or a Conestoga wagon. These days, we’ve got it easy, so let’s stop grumbling and focus on showing people some love.

When you think about candy all the time, Valentine’s Day is super fun. It’s a time for surprises and the joy of delighting people you love. As a relatively “small holiday,” there aren’t that many gifts to choose from — it’s candy, flowers, jewelry, or a mix tape.  And anything that’s not candy goes better with candy. But there are plenty of ways to mix it up and get creative. You can find out your crush’s favorite candy from childhood, then shock them with a whole box. If you’re ambitious, you could even fill a locker or a car with candy.

We’ve got all the traditional candies, like all kinds of conversation hearts and hand-poured mixed chocolates. Valentine’s Day is an opportunity to celebrate true love, or friendship, or family. Just find your favorite way to make someone feel special. Here are some interesting options, and you’ll find lots more in our Valentines Candy section.

Lollipop Bouquets

Heart-Shaped Lollipops

Milk Chocolate Roses

Blooming Bouquet Lollipops

Great for Grown-Ups

Reese’s Peanut Butter Heart Gift Box

Foil Wrapped Chocolate Fish

Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Golden Apple

Well, we’re two weeks into 2012. Those lifestyle-change commitments should still be fresh in your mind. And we want to help make them happen. A candy company might be the last place you’d look for ways to make your New Year’s resolution a reality. But we’re here to help you with everything candy related, and this is no exception. Sure, if you treat it the wrong way, candy can be the reason behind your New Year’s resolution. But when respected as the perfect motivator kids around the world know it to be, candy can drive you to do just about anything.

Lay off the Sugar

For those of us who need to limit sugar, for whatever reason, there’s good news. We’re living in the year 2012. Over the past several years, shocking advances have been made in the world of sugar-free sweets. New sugar substitutes offer all kinds and degrees of sweetness. And there are sugar-free versions of classic candies that taste incredibly similar to the originals.

Check out these great-tasting options from all over the flavor spectrum to keep your treats interesting and guilt free.

Diverse: Eda’s Sugar Free candies offers every flavor under the sun — from the basics to sour, tropical, coffee, minty, and creamy.
Cool: – York Sugar Free Peppermint Patties give you your mint and chocolate without the ice cream.
Exciting: – Sugarfree Pop Rocks keep things exciting without giving you a sugar rush.
Gummy: Jelly Belly does SF right with bags featuring 10 classic flavors.
Peanut Buttery: Reese’s Sugar Free Peanut Butter Cups go right to the jugular of temptation. Everybody needs a little peanut butter sometimes. Have these on hand when your time hits.
Retro: Sen-Sen Rolls pack a classic licorice flavor without the calories.

Quit Smoking

If you’ve sworn off smoking, you’re embarking on a commendable task. It’s one of the greatest things you can do, for both yourself and your loved ones. Quitting smoking is hard, but there are ways to take the edge off your cravings. We’ve received lots of reviews crediting Cinnamon Toothpicks as the best natural stop-smoking aid out there. If you like some refreshment with your substitute, Mint Flavored Toothpicks will also do the trick. These flavorful picks simulate the hand-to-mouth motion of smoking, and they’re totally sugar free. We also have a million kinds of gum to keep your mouth busy. Well, maybe more like 200. But who needs more variety than that?

Reward Yourself

We all know that total deprivation is the easiest way to compromise the mission. Sure, cold turkey seems like it would be the way to go. But believing you’re never able to have something (especially something you think about often) can be dangerous. The forbidden fruit is often the most tempting.

For some habits, quitting cold turkey is the way to go. But for others, moderation is perfectly reasonable. Candy Favorites offers hundreds of delicious options with less sugar, less fat, and smaller portions to help you indulge reasonably. Stock up on a better-for-you treat, and your moments of weakness won’t be disastrous. Even better, proactively plan to reward yourself for positive milestones. This will keep your cravings to a minimum and give you a better chance at reaching your goals.

Being in the candy business is a lot of fun. We often get to connect people with candies they’ve loved and lost. Each holiday brings a wave of exhilaration at being part of something joyful. But every once in a while, we’re fortunate that our work allows us to do something really cool. Just before Christmas this year, an email from a drowsy dad gave us just that kind of opportunity.

Nearly every young child has their favorite thing — some item they hold on to for comfort throughout their early years. For one boy, it was a soft yellow M&M’s pillow. He’d slept soundly with it every night, beginning with his first night home from the hospital after being born. On a recent vacation, that M&M’s pillow went missing and sleepless nights began.

After searching desperately (without any luck) for a replacement, the boy’s father wrote to Candy Favorites. The pillows were long gone from our inventory, but he hoped that just maybe we could connect him with one yellow pillow. It just happened that our President,
Jon Prince, had set a few collectible pillows aside, thinking they were interesting novelty items. He went searching, and sure enough, a yellow M&M’s pillow was among them. Jon was delighted to send it off just in time for Christmas.

Here’s what happened on Christmas Morning:

Christmas Wish on Vimeo.

We are so grateful to this family for sharing their Christmas with us. Like anything else, the candy business has its ups and downs. But these are the moments that make it all worthwhile.

Thanks to social media, we’ve been connecting with lots of new friends and followers lately. It’s nice to meet you! Since those new to us might not know what we’re all about, we’d like to fill you in on how things work around here.

Nostalgic Candy

Our company has been around (and in the family) for over 80 years. We’re more than a little bit sentimental about candy. After all, we think about it all the time. To us, the value of candy lies in a simpler time, when things moved more slowly and moments were meaningful. The old-fashioned candies we’ve come to cherish have become favorites because we connect them to memories of the past. Whether you miss penny candy, can’t get the Bonomo song out of your head, or can only chew BlackJack gum, our goal is to get you the candy that keeps bringing back those memories.

Back when most of the candies we sell were being introduced, you could buy them at a local candy counter from your neighborhood candy man. These days, you can have practically anything delivered to your door from just about anywhere, but it usually comes without much individual attention. At Candy Favorites, we want to maintain that personal connection with our customers. Candy is supposed to be fun, and we’re willing to go the extra mile to make sure you have some.

Serious Customer Service

We know that most of our customers just want a safe, reliable place to get their favorite candies and have it go smoothly. That’s why our motto is, “Candy is what we deliver but service is what we sell.” What that means is that, when you make a purchase at CandyFavorites.com, you can expect a positive experience. We can’t guarantee that nothing will ever go wrong, but it’s how you act in tough times that shows what you’re made of.

If you love your experience, we hope you’ll share your story with us on our social media. But if there’s a problem, please don’t hesitate to tell us. We want to know about it and to make sure you’re happy in the end. Just check out the stories of customers whose orders were made right after something went awry.

Free Shipping

If there’s one thing that can ruin the joy of an online candy shopping spree, it’s shipping. You get to the end of the road only to find that it costs as much to ship your candy as it does to buy it. Whether you abandon your cart or begrudgingly go through with the purchase, the whole thing leaves a bitter taste in your mouth. And everything about candy should be sweet! That’s why we’ve taken an unusual approach to shipping.

We were one of the first online candy stores, period. So it’s part of our job to stay ahead of the curve. We found that the best way to get around the shipping issue was to make it free. At any given time, CandyFavorites.com offers free shipping on orders above a certain dollar amount (check our site for the latest rates). With our free shipping promotions, you can usually get free shipping by ordering 2 or 3 items. It’s the best online shipping deal around! There’s never a minimum order required to use our site, and most of our orders ship for free. And those that don’t get a discounted flat shipping rate.

A Downright Nice Candy Company

That’s what we hope you’ll think of us. These are just a few of the values that make up the culture here at Candy Favorites. We’re always working to make the candy-buying experience better for you. We’ve added the BuySafe guarantee free of charge to every order to help protect our customers. And we’re always available on Twitter and Facebook to help you find candy, answer your questions, or get your concerns to the right people. Don’t hesitate to talk to us. We love hearing from you.

Entertaining guests is an integral part of the holiday season. Whether you plan elaborate get-togethers or get caught off guard by spontaneous drop-ins, your unused chairs and “nice” dishes are bound to get some play before the end of the year. I recently discovered a time-tested strategy for making all this visiting easier — one that seems to have been forgotten along the way by generation X.

Pam Knows What's Up

It’s very simple. Put candy all over your house.

I’m not kidding. As an eater of salad in lieu of dessert, I am the last person who ever expected to say this. Sure, I celebrate individual candies as their own independent holidays. But scattered candy previously meant nothing to me aside from an abundance of temptation.

I’ve finally found what receptionists and bank tellers have known for years. Candy makes people feel better. It makes them calm down! Even when they’re being told bad news, like, “No, Michael’s not here” or “No, you can’t make a withdrawal. We actually want you to pay us before we’ll let you leave.”If little bits of sugary sweetness can brighten those moments, imagine what they can do for your too-small apartment when your great aunts, who don’t like your boyfriend, suddenly feel the urge to spend unending amounts of time with you.

With a little forethought and very little expense, you can make your home an exciting place to be — for you, your guests, and for the children they drag along with them. Placing candy within reach has the incredible and immediate impact of making guests feel more at home. Elevate your freinds’ enjoyment of your company by giving them something sweet to eat.

Mmm...Sweet Nostalgia

Celebrate the Season

The fun part of holiday candy is that it’s socially acceptable to put it literally everywhere. Red-and-white-striped candy is the perfect complement to sprigs of evergreen. So hang candy canes on your tree and place peppermint sticks throughout your garland.

It’s super adorable to dress up vintage jars or modern glass vessels for Christmas. Just fill them with different candies and slap on some homemade labels to give your guests a variety of beautiful things to snack on and talk about. So showcase your sweet tooth and brighten up your space at the same time. It’s the one step of holiday decorating that will be painless (and might even make trimming the tree go more smoothly)

Share the Love

Putting candy around the house is a really suave way of getting people to try things that you love. We all want to share things we enjoy, but it can be next to impossible to get friends to take the leap on their own. Instead of giving treats as gifts — and having to wrap them and send them — you can encourage your guests to indulge while keeping you company. It’s the perfect way to change minds and get first dibs on the leftovers.

Keep the Kiddies Busy

We all grow up with our favorite houses to visit — and those we dread. Candy is the best way to swing your friends’ kids’ opinions in your favor. Did you throw away the box of toys your cousin Hannah gave you for occasions like this? Distract with chocolate covered cherries. Have a tendency to snap when someone sets a little foot in your parlor? Grab some gummi bears. When kids have off from school, candy is the prime currency for buying time with your adult friends. The more rooms you decorate with it, the greater the scavenger hunt you can send them on. And the best part is, they’ll love you for it!

There’s no use fighting — embrace the season! String up popcorn with your holly and pair peppermint with your poinsettias. And maybe you’ll make the holidays just a little bit sweeter for your self and everyone who visits you.

Interested in celebrating yet another holiday between Thanksgiving and Christmas? Need a distraction from your kids’ constant countdown? Belsnickel Day is the perfect opportunity to practice your early-morning home-videography skills and encourage children to keep the pre-holiday tantrums to a minimum.

Christmas…Before Christmas

A few of us graced with the good fortune of growing up in rural German Pennsylvania towns know the joy of a little early Christmas visit. On the evening of December 6th, we put our shoes (one pair apiece, of course) next to the front door. In the morning, they’d most likely be full of candy treats and small gifts. This was, however, the only occasion on which we really ever saw lumps of coal. After all, it was Belsnickel’s job to let Santa know whether we’d been behaving our P’s and Q’s.

A Sometimes Troubling Tradition

The tradition of Der Belsnickel was brought to America by German immigrants and was soon adopted by other settlers. The name translates roughly to “Niklos in furs,” and the character is traditionally covered in, well, furs. In some traditions, he’ll even wear masks or be painted to look pretty terrifying. The job of Belsnickel is to reward good children and punish those who’d misbehaved.

The Belsnickel I believed in was a far cry from the mythical being who scared the Bejeezus out of kids (and probably their parents). In my own view, Belsnickel was more or less Santa’s brother or cousin popping in to make sure things were as they should be as Christmas approached. Though I never stayed up to try and catch a glimpse, had I known the real legend, I imagine I’d have refused to sleep — or maybe even to leave school. As it turned out, I stayed blissfully unaware and reveled in the fact that I got to enjoy the gifts of an “extra” jolly gentleman who passed by the homes of my classmates.

Keeping a Classic

The Pennsylvania Dutch tradition of Belsnickle started fading in the 1920′s. It’s for that reason that I’d really like to keep it alive. It’s one of those opportunities to celebrate a fading cultural practice and develop a yearly tradition at the same time. Just like I feed my friends saurkraut on New Year’s Day, I plan to add a shoe-Santa moment to my pre-Christmas ugly sweater party. What better way to add a dash of unexpected magic to the holiday season?

Mark your calendar for December 6th and check out our naughty-and-nice stocking stuffers for the perfect Belsnickle treats!

Sources:
Der Belsnickel of the Pennsylvania Dutch
Belsnickel on Wikipedia

It’s 2011, folks, and preparing for the holidays isn’t what it used to be. Black Friday is starting on Thursday, and stores explode into Christmas mode as they take down their Halloween decor. Thankfully, online shopping has become much simpler and more secure, so you don’t even have to set foot in a mall. (Speaking of which, you can sign up for our email newsletter to make sure you receive our Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals!)

Each year, stocking stuffer options get more interesting and impressive. Stockings provide a great opportunity to impress your loved ones when they least expect it. Especially in these uncertain economic times, small gifts are a great way to spread holiday joy without breaking the bank. Give some extra thought to your stocking stuffers and gift toppers to make the most of Christmas this year.

Giant Lollipops

When I was a kid, giant lollipops were a spectacle that could only be found at amusement parks. There were two kinds — the big, round, flat lollipop and the long, twisty swirl. I thought the flat ones got you the most candy, but my sister stuck with the twist. Either way, they made special occasions more memorable. These Giant Christmas Lollipops bring this type of fun to the holidays. Whether kids get to savor them individually or shatter them to share, they’ll make little ones feel a little extra special.

Candy Cane Tree Lollipops

Christmas Cupcake Lollipops

Christmas Swirl Lollipops

Candy + Toy Novelties

Companies like Hilco have upped the stocking-stuffer ante by combining holiday candy with toys. These novelty candy-and-toy combinations give kids something to snack on, as well as something to keep and play with long after the candy is gone. Many of them can be refilled, which extends the value of each treat over time. These seasonal exclusives really make a big impression with younger children.

Lindor Truffles

The holidays are the time for savoring the moments, sights, and sounds we love. The flavors we cherish are center stage, and that makes this the best time of year for Truffles. Lindt Lindor Truffle Balls are the grown-up stocking stuffer your friends will go crazy for. We’ve got the flavors below, plus just about every other flavor you can think of — raspberry, hazelnut, peanut butter, and extra-dark chocolate for the most refined palettes. Unlike most online stores, we won’t make you buy 120. Mix and match our 60-count boxes to offer your holiday guests a variety of indulgences.

Dark Chocolate Lindor Balls

Milk Chocolate Lindor Balls

Mint Chocolate Lindor Balls

DIY Gift Boxes

These “Make It Yourself Kits” take the toy-plus-candy novelty treat to a whole new level! Each DIY kit contains an adventure that older kids or even adults can enjoy. One of these gift boxes can enhance a party twice — once when you give it, and again when your giftee uses it. Each one includes everything you need to create a homemade batch of goodies that most people have never thought of making at home before!

Make Your Own Chewing Gum

Make Your Own Chocolate

Make Your Own Gummies