Candy is dandy at these local shops serving up nostalgic sweets: Andrew Coppolino

From Bottle Caps, to bright red "Wack-O-Wax" lips, Nerds, Runts and Laffy Taffy, candy, and particularly retro candy, is having a moment right now.

And while, yes, candy sales are always strong (thanks to their prominent impulse-purchase displays at supermarket check-outs) the impulse to recover a sweet childhood moment is also strong.

Bryan Munn has operated Guelph's Sweet! Candy and Ice Cream on Carden Street for nine years. The shop is packed with hundreds of candy treats as well as customers who are searching for their favourite candies of yesteryear.

"Nostalgia is our bread and butter here," Munn said. "We've always had candies that I remember from my own childhood in the 70s and 80s. Eight-year-old me would be happy being in this store every day."

Calling it a "generational" phenomenon, Munn is seeing a renewed interest in 1990s-era DunkAroos: self-billed as "Your favourite nostalgic snack!" the treat is experiencing what he calls a "second life."

"Kids had them in their school lunches back then and 20 years later are coming in for them," Munn said. "That's the sort of thing that happens here."

In Waterloo, featuring thousands of sweets and snacks from around the world as well as lots of memorable retro candy, Sweet Life Candy and Pop Shop opened at 354 King Street North in January 2022.

Just a bit farther up the road on King Street, co-owners Laura Foster and Kyle Foster opened Midnight Snack in uptown Waterloo about a month ago.

Having decided the moment was right to make a career change, they're also filling a candy gap that was created when Sugar Mountain closed.

For the Fosters, the interest in candy and sweets was always there, but they also noticed a large demographic of sweet-toothed shoppers keen for retro candy, including themselves.

"We wanted to do something more fun for work than we were doing before, and a candy store idea was an obvious choice. We always enjoy taking our own kids to different candy stores, and we have great memories of those ourselves," Kyle Foster said.

Sweet, nostalgic cravings

The retail candy environment seems to indicate that humans seek past experiences to re-live happy moments and they tend to want to share them with their kids.

Music is a good example — rabid fans of The Rolling Stones (who have their own iconic red-lips logo) bring their kids to see the aging rock superstars in concert.

It turns out, according to Munn and the Fosters, it's the same with a food like candy: it's a pure re-capture of childhood, and it's very personal.

"The candy triggers nostalgic feelings and brings back very strong and positive memories from their childhood. There's no one item that is 'the most' nostalgic," Kyle Foster said. "That is completely dependent on the individual."

With about 650 candies currently in stock, Midnight Snack customers range from a group of kids — plopping down a handful of coins and asking what they could buy with it (like so many of us did in our youth) — to families buying $100 worth of candy and other savoury treats for a movie night.

Their bulk candy section includes salt-water taffy, Lemonhead and Airheads and Rain-Blo bubblegum.

"We also have sugary breakfast cereal as part of our snack category," Laura Foster says.

Among Laura Foster's favourite candies are the long-forgotten Wacky Wafers and Tart N Tinys.

"I enjoyed those in my childhood and then they stopped being made," she says but notes "that a company called Leaf Brands has been buying up rights to retro candies no longer being made."

Over at Sweet!, Munn says his candy offers are giving people that "fix" of childhood memory that is the essence of his business.

"People are always happy to see the classic candy that has been around for ever. There's something about candies and childhood and nostalgia that we try to enable here," he said.

Companies have been trying to enable that "fix," too. You may have noticed television commercials for the 1960s' Haribo gummies featuring adult business executives in a corporate boardroom with children's voices dubbed in; the German company opened a manufacturing plant in Wisconsin in 2020.

Creating something new

The Fosters (Kyle is a physics graduate from the University of Waterloo; Laura has a culinary background) have added commercial food equipment to make unique freeze-dried candy in their commercial kitchen space.

"It typically starts with a chewy candy," Laura Foster said. "When freeze-dried, it acts like popcorn and the inside pops out and the candy becomes light and crispy. So, it's a sort of popcorn kind of experience."

That means you can experience Skittles or M&Ms, for instance, that may have been your favourites as a kid in a new way. The physics of freeze-drying inside the machine's chamber "puffs" the candy to create an airy texture and a different kind of crispness.

The store also specializes in candy, drinks and snacks from around the world. They have Australian, German, British and Japanese candies as well as unique savoury snacks like Lay's brand "Stax Spicy Lobster" chips (vị tôm hùm nướng ngũ vị) from Vietnam.

There is an entire display of Mexican Ruffles and other snacks, usually with chile spices and names such as Rioja Salsa and Chile y Queso Bolitas.

Kyle Foster recalls one adult customer, born in Mexican, who was excited to find Rancheritos.

"He said he hasn't seen them before in Canada and hasn't had them since he was a kid," he said.

"It's been amazing to see people with different backgrounds coming in and finding childhood favourites on our shelves that bring back nostalgic memories ... from their childhood."