Manhattan = Candyland!

On our recent trip to New York , we visited a couple of candy emporium’s – or sweet shops as I am more inclined to call them!

On our first night there, we popped into the Hershey Store, which is brilliantly decorated on the exterior with loads of ‘candy’.

Now, I know Hershey’s chocolates are not to everyone’s taste, but I do love it’s unique flavour. Fear not though if you are in Manhattan, Hershey’s do way more than just chocolate. They are also famous for Jolly Ranchers, Icebreakers, Reese’s Peanut Butter and Chocolate, Twizzlers and much more. The store sells lots of souvenirs alongside the confections and I picked up a Reese’s coffee beaker, a plastic shopping bag thingy full of Kisses as well as some sweets. There were keychains, photoframes, the usual touristy stuff, but I resisted.

We popped over the street to the M&M’s store, which was really the same as the one in Leicester Square in London, but I did take the snap above of Miss Green dressed as the Statue of Liberty. I always find it strange that M&M’s stores don’t stock other flavours such as Peanut Butter, Coconut or Pretzel, only their chocolate and peanut. Think they are missing a trick there.

Next stop on the candy trail was in New York’s most famous toy shop – FAO Schwarz. This is well known for it’s ‘big’ keyboard which was seen in the 1988 film ‘Big’ starring Tom Hanks. But a huge section of the store was dedicated to sweets or FAO Schweetz  as they called them. They had lots of ‘big’ sweets too, giant gummi bears, mahoosive marshmallow peeps and the gigantic Rice Krispie Treat at the top of the page. I had to take a photo of this, what with Cakeyboi having made a few over the past year!

They also had these ‘Poofy Pops’ which I found very amusing! I don’t think they were intentionally being homophobic about the lolly!!

Aside from lots of other convenience stores where I stocked up on more sweets, we visited Dylan’s Candy Bar on 3^rd Ave. Imagine if Walt Disney spawned a Candy Store, this is what it would be like! Dylan’s is famous in the US and is adorned inside with candy EVERYWHERE! The floors, the walls, the ceilings. 

  

There were three levels  – ground level, with a giant chocolate bunny greeting us, lolliopops on the ceiling and sweets everywhere.

Upstairs had a bar and café, but we didn’t venture too far into there what with lack of time. But the basement level was vast and had even more candy, clothing, sweets for pets, cushions, mugs and everything in between. The songs playing were all on the theme of sweets and when we made a purchase we were told to have a sweet night! It was great fun.

And I did make a purchase of four flavoured chocolate bars, Brownie Batter, Birthday Cake with sprinkles, Angel Food Cake and Bacon flavour chocolate. The first three were eaten in quite quick succession. The bacon is still languishing somewhere…definitely an acquired taste.

New York certainly was a sugar rush! More Americana yet to come…