Sweets and Snack Expo 2010 Begins!

Hi Gang!  I'm back from the whole bus incident and ready to rumble!!!  Look at the load of candy I got today (this is my bed at the Hilton COVERED in candy!):

I took a bunch of pictures so you all could get a feel for what the Expo looks like:

It's so bright and vibrant and amazing - these really don't do it justice. 

There were some new products I got to try, but they didn't have takeaway samples. So no autopsy or other photos.  These are new - coming out in the fall:

Milk chocolate covered blueberries by the maker of those crazy Queen Anne Cherries.  These are pretty darn good - I really liked the tartness of the blueberries.  They are still pretty sweet, but well worth trying!

Ghirardelli didn't have anything new, but how cool is this display?  This would be a cool sculpture for my house!

Asher's debuted their new dark and milk sea salt caramels.  Very, very good.  Not too soft and not too chewy - perfect consistency:

Peeps is going full bore with the chocolate covered goodies:

There are going to be milk and dark chocolate covered pumpkins, chocolate covered mint flavored trees, and chocolate covered raspberry flavored hearts.  Mark Summers from the Food Network (he did a late session just for us media folks today) loves the dark chocolate Peeps just like I do!  Yay!!

I didn't get to sample any of these, so I can only refer you to my review of the chocolate covered Peeps for Easter.  (YUM!)

Okay - how damn amazing and cool is this???

The Mona Lisa out of Jelly Bellies.  I would like this to go with my Ghirardelli sculpture please.

The Hershey's booth is impressive:

But no samples of the new candies - Hershey's Drops and Reese's Minis.  I have to say, I thought Hershey could have done way more in the samples department.  No samples of the new dark Kit Kat either. Teases.

Good grief, does Ed Hardy have NO shame?

On more popcorn?  Puleeze!  I'd say he's gone from cool to tool.

These were an interesting idea - a marshmallow with some dark chocolate drizzle:

I wanted to like these - the guys in the booth were really nice.  But these just didn't work.  There wasn't enough chocolate to really taste.  Maybe if they were completely coated?

This is Bubble Chocolate (http://www.bubblechocolate.com/) it's aerated chocolate (basically chocolate with a bunch of bubbles in it):

It comes in dark and milk, and quite honestly, I didn't like it.  Maybe if the chocolate were better?  I dunno - it just didn't work for me.  The people in the booth said it's really popular in other countries.  Nevertheless, I didn't like it.

I got to see a great opening session this morning with Kevin Roberts, CEO Worldwide of Saatchi & Saatchi.  He showed some fantastic ads and his big message is stop planning, start acting.  The world today is all about speed.  Of course, if you're not careful, that kind of thinking can get you hit by a bus.