6 Sweet Treats From Your Childhood That You Can Taste Again

Was there anything more exciting in childhood than going to the corner store and picking out your favorite penny candies? For years, most of those familiar treats were no longer available, but they are beginning to make a comeback for nostalgic reasons.

1. Salt Water Taffy

Salt water taffy brings back happy memories of summer vacations at the beach. If you were lucky, you got to watch the machinery through a window as it pulled the taffy. Although it has never been made with salt water as an ingredient, it has traditionally been sold by the seashore.

Now, however, instead of waiting for your next vacation, or hoping someone will bring you a souvenir box, it is readily available in most good candy shops and also online.

This soft, colorful treat comes in as many as 75 color coded flavors.

2. Candy Dots and Jewelry

Who knows where the idea for candy dots came from or why it seemed fun to eat colorful blobs of hard candy from a piece of paper, but candy dots were once a childhood staple.

Using the same colors and sweetness, circles of candy were also threaded onto string to wear as either bracelets or necklaces. As the day went on, you could take occasional nibbles and even recklessly (considering today's standards) extend the necklace to a friend so they could have a taste.

One thing you did not want to do is get caught in the rain while wearing one, since you would quickly become a rainbow-colored sticky mess.

3. Wax Treats

Two types of wax treats were a lot of fun.

The first type were tiny wax bottles that held colored liquid. You bit off the top to suck the liquid out and then chewed on the wax like gum for as long as it held some flavor.

The other favorite wax item was big red lips. There was a ridge to bite in the back to keep them in place so the lips looked like your own. Again, when you were tired of showing your new lips off to people, then you'd chew the cherry flavored wax until all of the flavor was gone.

4. Whistle Pops

Although some vintage lollipops like Tootsie Pops and Dum Dums have never disappeared, whistle pops were scarce for a while.

Candy that is also a toy is very appealing to kids. Whistle pops were shaped like whistles and actually made a noise when you blew through them.

They have made a big comeback and there is even a YouTube video of a man playing songs on one.

5. Necco Wafers

Necco stands for "New England Confectionery Company" and the wafers were first made in 1847. This candy has certainly stood the test of time, although the appeal isn't readily obvious.

The wafers have numerous colors and flavors, each is stamped "Necco" and rolled in a paper tube. They have been sent to North Pole Explorers and carried by soldiers in many wars and are being manufactured again after a brief hiatus.

6. Gum

Of course, gum is still popular but it's mostly sugar-free, minty or "tropical" and nothing like the sticks of gum available 50 years ago.

There were two brands in particular that were available everywhere once, but a bit harder to find now.

One was Black Jack gum, the first flavored gum to be sold in the U.S. The actual gum was black and tasted like licorice. A favorite trick of the baby-boom generation was to chew it for a while, then stick it all on one front tooth. Next, they'd run home screaming "Mom, my tooth got knocked out!" Although some mothers produced satisfactory surprise, it probably never fooled them.

The next was Teaberry. The pink sticks had a weird, but appealing flavor somewhere between cinnamon and mint.

Although probably not a great idea to have on a regular basis, it could be fun to relive your childhood with one of these classics. Consider getting enough to share with the children in your life and see what they think of your former favorites.