{"id":1633,"date":"2010-01-26T18:08:41","date_gmt":"2010-01-27T01:08:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/?p=1633"},"modified":"2010-01-26T18:08:41","modified_gmt":"2010-01-27T01:08:41","slug":"lies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/2010\/01\/26\/lies\/","title":{"rendered":"LIES"},"content":{"rendered":"

One thing Sweethearts lovers can count on each year is the candy\u2019s simple formula. Since the hearts inception, the recipe has remained basically unchanged. —NECCO®<\/sup> Sweethearts page<\/a><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For decades one of my very favorite things has been the chalky confection known as the conversation heart. NECCO makes the good ones; I have no interest in the Brach version.<\/p>\n

Until this year. I went to the local drugstore, and the packaging was utterly wrong – all opaque, no view of the candy. And it smelled wrong. Not, like, up close, but from a distance. Like Sweethearts Tarts. I looked for citric acid in the ingredient list, and no dice. I bought a small box for experimental purposes. Gross. Not just the wrong taste, but bumped flavors for the different colors, like someone overdoing the saturation on a photograph and ending up with colors that are just plain odd.<\/p>\n

They issued an egg style of the candy for Easter a couple years ago, and they were absolutely foul. These are not as foul as those were, but they are NOT the traditional NECCO Sweethearts. And I don’t have the heart to try Brach’s this year and see if those are an acceptable port in this storm.<\/p>\n

Valentine’s Day is cancelled.<\/p>\n

Update, Feb 2014: My local grocery sold these during Valentine season as bulk candy. I also found an almost identical formula in individual boxes branded BRACH, but the BRACH-branded bags were different. It makes me crazy these are still manufactured but so arbitrarily marketed. I can’t be the only person who bonded so hard to these in childhood!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One thing Sweethearts lovers can count on each year is the candy\u2019s simple formula. Since the hearts inception, the recipe has remained basically unchanged. —NECCO® Sweethearts page For decades one of my very favorite things has been the chalky confection known as the conversation heart. NECCO makes the good ones; I have no interest in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[22],"tags":[206,485,574,826,1175,1176],"class_list":["post-1633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words","tag-candy","tag-formulation","tag-heartbreak","tag-necco","tag-sweetarts","tag-sweethearts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s4OKzG-lies","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1633\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caitlinburke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}