Candy

BY CHARLOTTE DRUCKMAN

Adults are sinking their teeth into premium confections with serious chew and audible crunch. This is what conspicuous consumption looks (and sounds) like in 2025.

THIS HAS BEEN a big year for me. I turned 50, and I started eating candy. Both were inescapable.

Candy, by which I do not mean chocolate, is everywhere. The chewier/crunchier and more intensely flavored and colored, the better. Candy wants to be seen, and heard, and we want to be seen and heard eating it.

Social-media feeds are flooded by adults loudly chomping on gem-colored, toy-shaped, sugary treats.

The content creator known as @jazzy.tingles, a South African expat based in Michigan who prefers not to share her name, developed a passion for candy culture via YouTube. She watched ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) videos of YouTubers in different parts of the world eating treats she’d never seen: Chinese candied fruit ( tanghulu ), Japanese snowball mochi, Thai luk chup sweets made from mung bean paste.

Today, her own TikTok reels rack up millions of likes. They feature live tastings—a genre widely known by the Korean name of crystal-coated agar-agar jelly, or crunchy, sour freeze-dried fruit roll-ups. Her videos start with a warning—“!Misophonia alert—eating sounds!”—though her legions of followers clearly cannot get enough of the sounds and the visceral sense of a candy that they convey.

@jazzy.tingles has a talent for translating what a candy feels and tastes like for her viewers’ vicarious pleasure: “The texture is like biting into fruity layers of cheese puffs, and the slightly sour kick is ridiculously addictive,” she said, via email, of those freeze-dried fruit roll-ups.

What a Shopping Trip

Beyond TikTok, you can find confectionery as entertainment in chic boutiques opening across the country. Leo Schaltz co-founded the Swedish candy company BonBon, which opened its first shop in 2018 on New York City’s Lower

mukbang —

THE SWEET LIFE

For less than you’d pay for craft cocktails, you can assemble a spectacular mix of premium candies, like these from Swedish boutique BonBon.

East Side. “A big part of it was the experience factor,” he said. “We quickly realized this follows a larger trend of the premiumization of everything—cold brew, chocolate, matcha—and we hadn’t seen that yet for gummies and licorice.”

Seven years later, we most certainly have. BonBon has six storefronts throughout the New York area and is expanding out of state next year. Candycopia established itself in Oak Park, outside Chicago, in 2022. Lil Sweet Treat launched in 2024 and already has locations in Manhattan, Philadelphia and Boston, where just this week, the Sweetish Fish hung out its shingle after establishing a presence in Cape Cod back in June. Kändi, another spot that traffics in Swedish sweets, parked itself in Los Angeles back in February. All Aboard Candy dropped anchor in Philly four months later, and Scandy Candy touched down in Miami this summer. Whereas the well-known Dylan’s Candy Bar chain caters to kids, these spaces invite grown-ups to compose their own candy mixes—a luxury attainable for under $10.

All offer e-commerce, if you’re unable to score a popular BUBS fizzy, foamy, fruity treat near you. Founded by the Lindström family in 1992 and sold to Orkla Confectionery & Snacks in 2023, the Swedish BUBS brand skyrocketed to global fame on TikTok in 2024 and brought their products stateside. The two-toned Lemon Raspberry Skull and Banana Toffee Foam Oval have been early favorites in the U.S. (BUBS lovers in New York City between now and Oct. 22 can shop the brand’s first stateside pop-up.)

Feeling All the Feels

For some perspective on the antecedents of all this conspicuous candy consumption, I turned to Andrea Hernández, an expert in food products and the founder of Snaxshot, a Substack publication and socialmedia account. Hernández, a millennial, said her generation is embracing moreness in candy as a reaction to restrictive dietary trends. “We grew up in the golden

era of snacks—Dunkaroos, Gushers—and then came the demonization of sugar.”

Gen Zers, Hernández continued, have spent more of their existence online and evaluate products based on how much attention or “influence” they might draw. They find anything hyper-sensory or tactile especially compelling—jaw-working chewiness, ear-shattering crunchiness, hair-raising sourness. “Like they want to feel something,” Hernández said.

Hernández has observed a movement away from “super sweet” to “sour, spice, bitterness.” Filipino-American baker and cookbook author Abi Balingit’s sour-spicy candy of choice is Mexican Vero Rellerindos: Shaped like a tamarind pod, the candy’s hard exterior delivers that fruit’s sour punch and then gives way to a chileinfused caramel center. Balingit is also a fan of BonBon’s Sour Blackberry Fish.

@jazzy.tingles craves Manhattan Milk Bottles from South Africa, “the foamy gummies with a subtle flavor that’s all about the texture and memories.” For cookbook author and product designer Frankie Gaw, Japanese Botan Rice Candy has been a favorite since childhood. He appreciates “the box with its vintage Asian graphic design” as much as the not-toosweet, chewy treats themselves.

Of another nostalgic choice with serious chew, Gaw said: “If Tootsie Roll had an archnemesis, it would be White Rabbit— this little, white, soft candy that, when chewed, releases so much saliva and condensed-milk flavor, you just can’t help but eat more.”

For Balingit, childhood returns via gummy assortments. “The variety of textures is fun,” she said. “Some pieces are like chewing on rubber, but I like it.” She has a similar soft spot for U.K. brand Marks & Spencer’s adorable, elastic Percy Pig gummy candy, which made its U.S. debut at Target in the spring.

Schaltz, of BonBon, wants to introduce Americans to lördagsgodis , a Swedish tradition he grew up with. In this weekly Saturday ritual, adults and children alike eat candy together as a family.

Now living in Brooklyn, he still enjoys the marshmallow bananas he takes to his father-in-law’s house in lieu of wine, the salty lenses (licorice pastilles) he and his mother love, and the red Ferrari wine gums of his school days. Candy can offer comfort, Schaltz noted; during the Covid pandemic, BonBon’s business spiked. “People seek it out in times of stress,” he said.

Some of us are stressed, reclaiming sugar as a pleasure that needn’t, after all, be guilty among consenting adults. Others are just beginning to explore the wider world beyond Twizzlers now at our sticky fingertips. For both, candy is meeting the moment.

Candies those in the know are chewing, crunching and coveting now

1. Kasugai Frutia Lychee Gummy, $4 for 21 candies 2. Salty Lenses, $5 for 1 /

4 pound 3. Raspberry Ferraris, $20 for 1/ 2 pound 4. Botan Rice Candy, $1

for 3 / 4 ounce 5. White Rabbit Creamy Candy, $5 for 32 pieces 6. Haw Flakes, $10 for 10 rolls 7. Banana Marshmallows, $5 for

1 /

4 pound 8.

Z&B Candiez Pluto’s Fruit Swirlz, from $12 for 6 candies 9. Tammy Holmes Edible Crystals, from $45 for 12 assorted crystals 10. Percy Pigs, $4 for 6 ounces 11. Manhattan Milk Bottles, $4 for 4 1 / 2 ounces 12. Vero Rellerindos, $9 for 1 1 / 2 pounds