Where sweets talk is serious

Coffee Candy This is the Everest of sugar highs.It's the annual All Candy Expo, the biggest candy show in North America, a sort of Woodstock of the confectionary arts, which wrapped up Thursday.For three days, more than 430 candy makers from around the world — including Minnesota — spread out over seven football fields of McCormick Place convention space. They passed out fistfuls of free samples of some 2,000 products ranging from caramels to cotton candy, marshmallows to mints, toffees to truffles and gum to gummi bears.In the calorie-dense world of the All Candy Expo, chocolate is king, and sugar and corn syrup make up the base of the food pyramid.But there also was some space for savory snacks — chips, nuts, popcorn, pretzels and enough salty "meat snacks" to raise the blood pressure of an army of nutritionists.It was the tooth-rotting, stomach-busting stuff of every kid's dream, except that the event actually was an adults-only affair."There is no longer a Sweets and Snacks Treasure House (formerly Candy Time room) for children to attend," according to the convention rules.The event isn't geared to your average adult, either, no matter how much of a candy freak you are.The 15,000 attendees were strictly in the trade — manufacturers, merchandisers, buyers, store owners, consultants. And journalists, of course; brave reporters putting our waistlines and digestive systems in peril to bring you the story of what new gooey gut bombs Big Candy hopes to get us to gobble up.No need to thank us. It's our job.The education sessions for the candy peddlers started at 8 a.m. Tuesday in a big conference room with plates loaded with free Twizzlers, Kit Kats and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.Jill Manchester, Kraft Foods vice president of immediate consumption — her actual title, honest — talked about what she called "a snacking revolution."It's taking place in a world where stressed, time-pressured Americans are eating more often at work or in their cars and less often at home, and where a Frappuccino is thought of as a meal, Manchester said."How many of you eat three solid meals a day?" she asked. Only a few hands out of about 100 people went up.No wonder consumers want more snacks and a greater variety of snacks, Manchester said."This is great news for us," she said.Us, she explained, is the $76 billion U.S. snack industry.Executives from Mars Snackfood told conference-goers that they hope to grab more of that market through "premiumization."In other words, taking a mainstream candy such as MM's and selling an upmarket version. MM's Premiums, in flavors like mocha, mint and raspberry almond, are set to hit store shelves this summer, costing $3.99 for a 6-ounce box.Mars also is pushing personalization of the candy experience.For example, you can order Dove chocolates with your own message printed inside the foil wrapper."It's like reading little love poems and love stories. It brings tears to your eyes," Mars Vice President James Cass said of the messages customers have ordered.You also can order MM's with personal messages on them. Cass said Mars checks each message to make sure nothing inappropriate slips by.Next up: MM's printed with a tiny image of a loved one's face."I truly believe this is going to be one of the biggest ideas in the Candy Expo this year," Cass said.Health and wellness and sustainability are another strategy to sell sweets, according to Mars."Mars has become the world leader in cocoa science," Marlene Machut said of the company's efforts to develop chocolate it says has health benefits."We're calling it the cookie with a conscience," Machut said of a whole-grain treat Mars is introducing.Some Local Sweeteners / For every big player like Mars and Hershey at the convention, there were dozens of small fry, would-be Willy Wonkas with one sweet idea they hope will vault them to the top of the big rock candy mountain.For example, Circle Pines-based Bubbagum company was started by three guys who used to be in the acrylic novelty-teeth business.When Wal-Mart started to sell a competing version, the trio schemed to find something different. Rick Leier said his partner Pat Brittain, a dental school dropout, went to work."He put this set of teeth in his mouth, and he ate them in front of me. I knew we had something," Leier said.The combination of hideous but realistic-looking edible fake candy teeth that are held in your mouth by a wad of bubble gum apparently is irresistible to kids and a certain segment of adults."I've seen them used at weddings, class reunions, family get-togethers," Leier said.Playing with your food also is the appeal of a candy product made by Amerilab Technologies. The Plymouth-based company specializes in making vitamin supplements or hangover cures delivered through a tablet that fizzes with sodium bicarbonate when you drop it into water.A couple of years ago, the company decided to resurrect Fizzies, a tablet that creates a bubbly sweet drink. Fizzies, originally made by a different company, were a hit in the 1960s, becoming a $70-million-a-year product, until they disappeared in 1970."The sweetener was banned by the FDA," account manager Chris Briggs said.Amerilab now makes Fizzies with sucralose instead of cyclamate, to the apparent delight of baby boomers who want to repeat an off-label use of the product." 'You know what I used to do with them? I used to put them in my mouth.' We hear that 5,000 times, like they're the only ones who did that," Briggs said.Then there's Jeanie Morgan, a Kentucky marketer who came up with the idea of flavored temporary body tattoos you could lick off your skin. When she saw kids putting the tattoo applicator strips directly into their mouths, she created the Tung-Too, candy-flavored temporary tongue art. Each pack of tattoos comes with a pocket mirror, so you can have the immediate gratification of seeing what your tongue looks like with a spider or a heart or a text message on it.Sometimes, it's just a name that leads to a new candy.John Osmanski was a biomedical engineering student when he saw irritable coffee-addicted students and instructors behaving like "crackheads" if denied their caffeine fix. The 27-year-old is selling chocolate-covered espresso beans called Crackheads.When a friend complained he couldn't quit smoking because he had an oral fixation, "a light bulb went off," entrepreneur Henry Rich said. Oral Fixation mints come in flavors such as green tea and herbal jasmine."What really draws them to the booth is the name. People say, 'I absolutely love the name FunkyChunky,' " said Tore Villberg, sales and marketing director for the Edina-based gourmet popcorn, pretzel and caramel corn company.Portland, Ore., inventor Brett Stern normally specializes in surgical instruments and robotic machinery. But one day, "I was sitting on a couch, drinking some beer, eating some chips ..."Voila: The beer-flavored potato chip. Stern also sells a margarita and Bloody Mary version. He said kids like the beer version the best, but "I'm not trying to promote that."Something similar occurred to Mark Singleton, who was trying to come up with a way to get people to eat chips in the morning."I was thinking of a chip that would taste good with coffee. Then I thought, heck, I bet I could make a chip with coffee," Singleton said. His Engobi caffeine-infused, multigrain chips come in lemon and cinnamon flavors.Candy For Daily Living / The caffeine chip was one of many efforts at the expo by manufacturers striving to make candy "functional" or healthy.There are gums that are supposed to give you energy, mints that have the health benefits of green tea, a candy spray that promises to help you sleep better and a chocolate with a "spinal-sacral aphrodisiac" additive.Jelly Belly's Sport Beans were developed with athletes in mind, supplying them with electrolytes, vitamins and caffeine, and its pomegranate jelly beans are touted as "high in antioxidants."Chips made with cassava root or containing Japanese adzuki beans promise the benefits of higher fiber."A lot of people, I think, have gotten capsule fatigue," said chocolate maker Barry Gasaway, who offers to supply your omega-3 fats through his company's fish oil-laced dark chocolate.But can spun sugar — even if it's vegan and kosher with no pesticides, no genetically modified organisms, no artificial flavors, no synthetic colors, no gluten, no casein, no transfats — really be healthy?"We wouldn't say it's healthy. We'd say it's better for you," said Amanda Roth with Pure Fun, an organic-candy company from Canada that sells maple syrup cotton candy.Meg Finn, a Minneapolis consultant and trend watcher at the conference, said candy consumers aren't looking for health food, but they do want an indulgence they perceive as pure and natural."Consumers are bringing the hate" against high fructose corn syrup, she said.But Steve Luitjens, senior vice president of Farley's & Sathers Candy Co., said he hasn't seen a consumer pushback against corn syrup sweeteners."We stay pretty much in the flavor profiles of the masses," Luitjens said of his Round Lake, Minn., firm that recently became the fifth-largest U.S. confection company, with the acquisition of the Brach's brand.Candy For All Kinds / There was one candy maker at the show that promised not good health but eternal salvation. Scripture Candy in Birmingham, Ala., includes Bible verses with each package. They have suckers shaped like crucifixes, Valentine hearts with messages such as "Got God," mints shaped as the Christian fish symbol and a tin of candy labeled "Jesus.""It's a very nonaggressive, very friendly way to witness to people," Scripture Candy owner Michael McCarron said.On the sinful side of the spectrum were the chocolate makers who didn't care about health or spiritual matters. They just wanted to push the boundaries of our jaded taste envelopes with chocolate and wasabi peas, chocolate and wine, chocolate mojitos, chocolate salad dressing, chocolate and olive oil, chocolate flavored with Earl Grey tea and chocolate with blue cheese."It's a multi-sensory, multi-layered experience," chocolatier Michael Antonorsi said of his Fire Cracker truffle, which combines chocolate, chipotle chile, salt and popping candy to create a sizzling, popping noise in your mouth.Besides giving convention-goers enough free candy to gag Homer Simpson, vendors tried to stand out with attention-getters such as people dressed as Elvis, Santa and MM's. Mr. Jelly Belly presided at an actual wedding. Uncle Sam on stilts hawked gum. Riesen offered free shoeshines, and St. Paul-based Pearson Candy Co. staged magic shows.Some optimistic candy makers said small indulgences such as chocolate are recession-proof, but one sour note at the convention was discussions of how rising commodity prices are cutting into profits.Chocolatier Jeff Shepherd, for example, complained of soaring cocoa prices in terms that echoed the doomsaying prophecies of peak oil."There just isn't enough of it," he said of chocolate's raw material. He said that if the world's biggest populations in India and China start eating chocolate, "that would be the end of the chocolate industry as we know it."