These are a classic East Coast candy. Made for years by the Goldenberg candy company, they were purchased by Just Born in 2003, which has been gobbling up other Eastern small-maker candies. Just Born is best known for the Easter favorite, Marshmallow Peeps.

I’ve always referred to these as Goldenbergs ... the one part of the old name that is not retained (I think the company is pushing the name “Chew-Ets”) so now I have to call them just Peanut Chews. But the notable thing about them is that they break one of my rules of good candy. They’re fake. There’s no chocolate there. But what they lack in chocolate they make up for in flavor.

The original Chew-Et is a molasses-based chew embedded with peanuts and then covered in a wax that resembles dark chocolate. (Okay, it’s not wax, it’s just not real chocolate.) The interesting part of the chew is that it’s not a caramel. There’s no milk in the original bar at all, so it can’t be a caramel. It’s just a sugary syrup that’s been boiled down to soft-ball state. Maybe you could call it a “soft brittle”. They’re formed into fingers of candy that are placed in a tray and usually sold in a package of six or so, though I usually bought the King Sized ones. For a while I’ve been able to find them here in California at Rite Aid (probably because Rite Aid is based in Pennsylvania). The molasses and peanuts make a good combination of roasted, musky flavors. The dark chocolate stays out of the way and doesn’t really add anything to the party (except trans fats).

Having just said that the chocolate coating doesn’t much matter, it seems to make more of a difference in the milk version. Molasses is a dark flavor and seems to benefit from the dark, slightly bitter mockolate. While the milk chocolate coating is more successful at replicating the feel of real chocolate, it’s a little sweet, a little sticky feeling in the combo.

I’m glad to see that the Chew-Ets will continue to exist, as they are rather unique. They’re small and easy to share and have a flavor combination not found in any other candy bar on the market in the states. Since it’s not real chocolate, they also seem to weather being in my bag better than chocolate candies, so they’re a better bet as a summer candy. I wish they were made with real chocolate, but I suppose I shouldn’t advocate messing around with such a good bar.

Additional Reading: Check out Steve Almond’s Candy Freak which has a whole chapter devoted to his visit to the Goldenberg factory (while it was still Goldenberg’s) in Philadelphia. You can even read a couple of pages on Amazon if you like. Here’s something interesting I learned from the book, Goldenbergs were first developed as ration bar for the Army in WWI and after the war the GIs kept buying them.

Edit: I found this in Mike’s Candy Wrappers, the original wrapper.

UPDATE 8/1/2012: The original name of Goldenberg’s Peanut Chews has been restored on the packages, and an updated but still classic looking package is back on store shelves.

Related Candies

1. Mary Jane & Mary Jane Wicked Mix
2. Eat with your Eyes: Goldenberg’s Peanut Chews
3. Short & Sweet: Summer Bites
4. Candy Trends: Packaging
5. Molasses Pops
6. Look! and Big Hunk
7. Eat-More

Now, I’m not one to be throwing stone from my glass house where I consume expired candy, but this might be ill-advised:

A vendor on eBay is selling a Marathon bar ... the Mars one that is now called the Snickers bar. It has an expiry date of 1990.

Yes, hop on board folks, this auction ends in less than a day, you don’t wanna miss out on a 16 year old candy bar!

There are five bids and the current price is GBP 3.20 (Approximately US $5.65) with free shipping. The same seller is also offering a circa 1990 Wispa bar.

When I find old candy at the bottom of a suitcase or purse when I’m cleaning, I usually throw it out. It never occurred to me to put it up on eBay.

Of course if that’s a little hard to swallow, you might want to check out the other interesting things you can find, like eBay sellers that specialize in all the variations of KitKats worldwide and limited edition candy bars.

Chocolate oranges are a holiday favorite. We used to get them in our Christmas stocking when I was a kid, though not this brand. The chocolate orange is simply chocolate pieces shaped like orange segments assembled into a sphere. The Terry’s Chocolate Orange has a chocolate stem in the center and all the pieces are joined to it. They tell you to “whack and unwrap” to separate the pieces. (The ones I got as a kid had a plastic stem, so there was no need for whacking.)

The sphere is between the size of a handball and a tennis ball. The slices are textured to look like citrus fruit on one side, the other is smooth.

I’ve reviewed the Terry’s Chocolate Orange bar, and I find this chocolate to be similar. It’s not great quality, a little grainy and very sweet. The mint is quite overpowering in this version of Terry’s chocolate (just as I found Hershey’s Mint Mix).

It’s damn cute though and since it was half off, I don’t feel at all bad for plunking down $2 for it. $4 would be another matter.

Notes: This peppermint chocolate orange was made in Poland. Terry’s is credited with creating the first “Chocolate Orange” in 1932.

On Saturday morning I arrived early for my whalewatching boat because of the freakishly light traffic. So I wandered around the Ports o’ Call village there at the harbor to see what it was all about. I’d been there once before for a wedding reception at one of the restaurants years ago, but we didn’t explore the area at all. The anchor of the area is this is where the huge cruise ships harbor, so the tourists often stop by for brief shopping trips and of course locals come down for the boat rides and fine dining.

I found Candy Town tucked away in a corner, only a few hundred feet from the Spirit Cruises berth and was happy to find that they had a HUGE selection of candy. The store is not at all like the bin type candy stores like Sweet Factory or Candy Station, this appears to be a real small business with an enthusiastic woman behind the counter.

I walked around, checking out everything before I even considered any purchases. The store isn’t jam packed with goods, it’s spacious and has very simple, perhaps antiquated, displays. They have a hodge podge of shelves and racks, some that might be better suited to selling deli products, jewelry or perhaps magazines. But they make it work. They had a nice selection of import chocolate bars such as Toblerone and the Ritter Sport assortments as well as those little tins of French Pastilles. Then there are small bags of individually wrapped candies like Mary Janes, Bit ‘o Honey and Walnettos. There was a corner devoted to bulk candies that included a huge selection of taffy (necessary for any seaside shop) that also included a healthy assortment of Mexican and Italian hard candies (well, “healthy” as it applies to Mexican candies is not something I can back up with their issues regarding lead content lately). Then there were the American shelves which seemed to include just about every common bar in production right now.

At that point the woman behind the counter, a woman about 10 years older than me and with a rather strong accent (I think Taiwanese, but I could be wrong), enthusiastically wanted to help me. She pointed out candies and asked if I remembered them. Wax Bottles? Bottle Caps? Pixy Stix? Licorice Pipes? Cinnamon Toothpicks? Sen-Sen? Okay, the Sen-Sen got me. She really didn’t think I was THAT old, did she?

The prices were decent. I got some Bottle Caps, Razzles (including sour ones) and a tin of Orange Blossom Pastilles. There were quite a few things in there I’m looking forward to trying and after the excellent ride on the Spirit Cruises whalewatching tour, I know I’ll be back.

Candy Town
Berth 77 (Just off Harbor Blvd. at 6th Street)
San Pedro, CA
(310) 514-2669

I saw this article today about Jelly Belly chairman, Herman Rowland.

It’s an interesting profile of the man, who is of course a little unorthodox. I’ve found in my reading and research that most candy folks are a little unusual in one respect or another.

The saddest thing mentioned in the article though is that Rowland is now a diabetic, which must be especially difficult for a sugar candymaker (instead of one that makes chocolate which is often better tolerated by diabetics). Other interesting notes in the article is the recent announcement that Jelly Belly is opening a factory in Thailand. What’s surprising about this is that the factory will make candy only for non-American venues. The Jelly Belly factory in Fairfield, CA, will continue to supply America will Jelly Bellys even though it’d be cheaper to take the factory overseas and not be subject to America’s backwards domestic sugar regulations.

The way Nestle is getting around the American sugar problem is they’re manufacturing most of their candy in Brazil and importing it.

The other announcement in the article is that Jelly Belly will be introducing new flavors at the Winter Fancy Food Show in San Francisco. I got to taste the newest one, Pomegranate, when I was at the factory last month, I’m not sure if that’s one that’s getting its new release now. (It’s still not on the website.)

Finally, JellyBelly.com just relaunched late last week with an all new site. The navigation is much improved over the old one which had some things that I wanted buried in submenus. But I’m a little annoyed by the height of the header graphic/menu (which means more scrolling for main content even on my big screen, but then again CandyBlog.net readers probably do a lot of scrolling, too). The other sad thing is that they have these great downloadable desktop images but nothing new for January. But the news section includes info about their new company store and they’ve filled out their section on visiting them at these locations. The cool thing about visiting an official Jelly Belly store? They offer their comprehensive tasting bar. Never get a Jelly Belly you don’t like again.