Sweet Tarts vs. Smarties vs. Sassy Sours

If like me you still find yourself rifling through the bottom of the Halloween leftover bowl, I have a piece of crucial information to help guide you through this treacherous terrain. First, gum seems to have disappeared. Alas. Most chocolate now comes in tiniest of fun sized micro-bites that are hardly worth the effort of opening. Unless perhaps they could be snorted. A stale Baby Ruth up the nose might not be bad. Snickers not even on a bet. I am not wild about mass produced chocolate, though there were a few Heath Bars in there. My kids didn't realize the candy bar preceded the heath bar crunch ice cream flavor. The 100,000 dollar bar is gone. Twix has lost its luster for me. And in all honesty, I have always found the sour sugary garbage much more appealing from a purely gastronomic perspective. I don't know why, but pixie stix were grand. Can you recall zotz with a little lump of caustic acid in the middle that fizzed on the tongue? But who knew that the perverse little sweet and sour tablets wrapped in clear plastic with twists on the end are not all the same!?

I thought the classic were Smarties. Though a half eaten package on my desk somehow tastes flat, chalky and dissolves too quickly on the tongue. Then I opened the so-called Sassy Sours which are clearly a cheap knock-off. They are disgusting, can be easily crumbled with your fingers. And the pale pastel colors are vomitous - and they all taste the same too. The Smarties are a little bolder in color, a little more sour and hold together with more convinction. BUT, Sweet Tarts are divine. Hard as a rock, bracingly sour, with assertive colors like blue, green, purple and orange. Made by Wonka, though I don't think that was the case years ago. So if you find yourself being offered anything else, refuse adamantly. Oh these are good, even the flavors taste distinct. I think I'll have another.