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  • Candy.

  • Everyone loves it, and it should be hard to mess up.

  • But not all sweet treats can be as popular as Starbursts or Snickers.

  • Here are just a few of the biggest failures that the candy world has ever seen.

  • Easter is one of the happiest times of the year for candy lovers, with many brands releasing coveted, limited-time-only offerings for the season.

  • However, few Easter Candies spark fan obsession quite as much as the Cadbury Creme Egg.

  • Devotion to this seasonal treat is so strong that even minute changes to the formula can cause an outcry, a lesson that Cadbury learned the hard way in 2007 when it tried to secretly reduce the size of their signature treat.

  • Fans didn't take this attempted subterfuge lightly.

  • Creme Egg aficionado BJ Novak famously roasted the brand on Conan, comparing a new, smaller egg with a larger example he had saved from 2005 to prove that they had indeed shrunk.

  • - Look at that! - Judge for yourself, America.

  • After the Conan fiasco, Cadbury updated their website to, state, "Since people's preferences vary from market to market, so do our products."

  • A very convenient excuse indeed.

  • Cadbury further reduced the size of its eggs in 2019.

  • This time, however, they at least had the decency to admit it, saying that they had no other choice, thanks to the rising price of ingredients.

  • Necco Sweethearts, also known as Conversation Hearts, are a staple of the Valentine's Day season.

  • However, the 2018 bankruptcy of manufacture, Necco, endangered the future of this classic treat.

  • Spangler Candy Company, the makers of Dum Dum lollipops, swooped in to acquire the failing brand, which was, at that point, the oldest candy maker in America and had been in business since 1847.

  • The sale wasn't the end of the problems for sweethearts, however; when Spangler moved Necco's antique manufacturing equipment to a new facility, the stamp that printed messages on sweethearts broke in transit.

  • Instead of pausing production to sort out the technical issues, Spangler decided to press forward with mostly-blank sweethearts in order to meet customer demand.

  • Alyse Thomson, the managing editor of "Candy Industry" magazine, thought Spangler made a mistake in being so hasty, telling the Huffington Post, "It's better if Spangler waits to relaunch sweethearts until the company has the formulation and production process just right rather than rush them to market to meet demand."

  • Luckily, Spangler quickly got its act together and now prints messages on Conversation Hearts once again.

  • Nutella has an undeniable stranglehold on the chocolate spread market, with the delicious hazelnut topping bringing in billions of dollars every year.

  • Naturally, it only made sense for Hershey to try and get in on the action with a spread inspired by their famous Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.

  • While a peanut butter chocolate concoction seems easy enough for a multibillion-dollar company to develop and market, Hershey managed to fail at that simple task.

  • A pop sugar taste test yielded mixed reviews for the newest Reese's product.

  • Some tasters seemed to enjoy it, but the ones who didn't have strong negative reactions. Adjectives used to describe the spread included gritty and oily.

  • Many tasters also claimed that the product failed to deliver the signature Reese's taste advertised by the label.

  • Reese's spread landed with a thud and was quickly discontinued.

  • Despite that failure, the company hasn't totally abandoned the spread market.

  • It still sells regular peanut butter that has a more positive reputation.

  • Spicy treats are easily one of the hottest segments of the snack market.

  • A report by snack industry insider Kalsec showed that 95% of Americans enjoy at least mild levels of spice in food, and 38% like hot to extremely hot foods.

  • Another survey by market research firm Mintel reported that two-thirds of US consumers find sweet-and-spicy flavors appealing.

  • With those numbers in mind, Skittles must have thought they made a sure winner on their hands when they introduced their sweet heat flavor.

  • Strange flavors and promotional stunts are a big part of Skittles' brand identity; they've even gone as far as to introduce a flavor that's supposed to taste like rotten zombies.

  • In contrast to the zombie flavor, however, sweet heat Skittles were supposed to actually taste good.

  • Some food reviewers praised the spicy Skittles, comparing them favorably to more popular capsaicin confections like chili chocolates.

  • Despite positive first impressions, the flavor disappeared from store shelves quickly as it proved too strange for the average consumer.

  • When the makers of AYDS Diet Candy were brainstorming ideas for what to call their new product in the late 1930s, they had no idea what a headache they would cause in a few decades.

  • While the idea of diet candy may seem strange to us now, it was actually a hugely popular product during its peak in the mid-20th century.

  • While early formulations of AYDS contained only caramel and a proprietary vitamin blend, later versions were filled with a local anesthetic called benzocaine.

  • AYDS worked on the hypothesis that numbing people's tongues would reduce their desire to eat.

  • In the 1980s, the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, otherwise known as AIDS, began sweeping through America, killing untold thousands of people.

  • Despite the obviously negative associations that caused for the branding of the diet candy, the company stubbornly stuck to their name.

  • Frank Diprima, an executive at AYDS parent company Jeffrey Martin Incorporated, was quoted as saying, "The product has been around for 45 years. Let the disease change its name."

  • Jeffrey Martin's tasteless and insensitive response to its PR crisis did nothing to reassure consumers, and sales dwindled throughout the 1980s.

  • The product finally changed its name to Diet AYDS in 1988, but it was too little too late for the declining brand, which ceased production before the beginning of the 21st century.

  • As the package says, "Kids and grown-ups love it so, the happy world of Haribo."

  • The addictive texture and stackable size of Haribo gummy bears makes it all too easy to eat an entire bag in one sitting.

  • For those of us who have to watch our sugar intake, Haribo's sugar-free version of its classic bears appeared, at first, to be a perfect solution.

  • Unfortunately, no one could have predicted that these harmless-seeming treats concealed an extremely messy flaw.

  • Haribo chose to sweeten their bears with lycasin, a sugar substitute known to have a powerful laxative effect.

  • Researchers have determined that a mere 40 grams of lycasin is enough to cause gastrointestinal distress in adults, with only 25 grams needed to do the same for kids.

  • A single bag of sugar-free bears contains enough lycasin to have this effect several times over.

  • The bowel loosening properties of the lycasin-laced gummies led to an avalanche of bad press for Haribo online, with reviewers recounting their gummy bear horror stories in hilarious and terrifying ways.

  • As one reviewer put it, "The floodgates of hell were opened and the damned liquefied souls of an entire bag's worth of gummy bears cried as they burned through my sphincter."

  • Gross!

  • Toblerone has always had a classier image than most supermarket candy bars.

  • Perhaps it's because the bar is made of real Swiss chocolate.

  • Or maybe it's because its almond and honey filling has a more mature flavor profile than your average nougat.

  • However, it's more than likely that the real secret to Toblerone's success is its instantly recognizable pyramid shape.

  • Toblerone's parent company Mondelēz International inadvertently sparked outrage in 2016 when it announced that it would make the triangles in a Toblerone bar skinnier and further apart, reducing the weight of each one by around 20%.

  • You know what, Helena?

  • You don't deserve this Big Toblerone.

  • Much like Cadbury's size shenanigans, the change was blamed on rising ingredient prices.

  • Luckily, Mondelēz took the outcry from fans to heart, and the skinnier Toblerones only lasted two years.

  • The bar returned to its bulkier shape in 2018, and a Mondelēz representative acknowledged that the skinnier Toblerone may have been a mistake after all.

  • Every year, the coming of autumn brings the same dependable experiences: The leaves turn orange, the air gets chillier, and brands release an onslaught of pumpkin-flavored foods and beverages.

  • Starbucks shoulders a large portion of the blame for America's pumpkin spice overload, with its iconic Pumpkin Spice Latte selling 424 million units in 2019 alone.

  • The PSL success has led to a pumpkin arms race, with companies producing products ranging from gourd-flavored alcohol to pumpkin-spiced spam.

  • With all that money sitting on the table, it's no wonder the M&M's Mars company decided to release limited-edition Pumpkin Spice M&M in 2013.

  • They're now discontinued, so you can't taste them for yourself, but some would say you aren't missing much.

  • Reviewer Adam at The Impulsive Buy thought that the Pumpkin Spice M&Ms mostly tasted like a jumbo version of standard M&Ms with an aftertaste like, quote, "... a wimpy version of cinnamon red hots".

  • This limited-edition flavor only stuck around for a single season, but other pumpkin inspired M&M flavors have since had limited-time runs of their own.

  • The king of rock 'n' roll is famous for many things, but in the food world, Elvis' biggest legacy is undoubtedly the peanut butter, banana, and bacon sandwich.

  • The origins of Elvis' obsession with this flavor combination are shrouded in myth, but Serious Eats details the most popular version of the tale.

  • Allegedly, Elvis first tried this decadent snack at the Colorado Mine Company, a diner in Denver.

  • Their version was truly over-the-top, with a mass of bacon, bananas and peanut butter shoved inside an entire loaf of French bread.

  • The cooks at Colorado Mine Company then took the whole monstrosity and deep fried it to order.

  • Reese's decided to honor the king with a banana-cream-filled peanut butter cup in 2007, the 30th anniversary of Elvis' death.

  • Although the review wasn't entirely negative, a rider at Candy Yum Yum said that the cream was chewy and nougat-like, and the overall flavor of the cups was overly sweet and lacked real banana punch.

  • Although the candy only saw a short production run, anything Elvis-related turns into a collectible.

  • You can still buy ancient packages of the banana cream cups on eBay in their original wrapper, but we definitely don't recommend you eat them after all these years.

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Candy.

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