When we are young, we seem to eat more “sugary??? candy, whereas we get older, our palates change and we tend to go for candies with a more mature flavor, such as dark chocolate and candied fruit. But even then, there are a few childhood candies that manage to slip past our adult taste buds and anchor themselves in our memory. Like Airheads. I LOVE Airheads. I’m not sure what it is about them that I love so much. Take the cherry Airhead, for example. When you remove the shiny, colorful wrapper, the candy is bright red and smooth, it is flexible when you bend it and it smells like children’s cough syrup…but in a good way. And then the taste! Chewy, sweet, tart and just sugary enough without being overpowering. It leaves little grains of sugar on your tongue after you chew it and depending on what flavor you chose to munch on, your tongue is painted a garish purple, red or green – which pleases both it’s young and not-so-young consumer. 

Airheads come in a variety of flavors – grape, blue raspberry, cherry, orange, white mystery, watermelon, green apple, and strawberry. All are a taffy-like candy and they are kind of a take on the old salt water taffy’s that used to be so popular, but these taffy’s are modern and (to use a word we so often see) “extreme???. The candy itself is harder than salt water taffy, but equally chewy. My favorites are cherry and “white mystery???, most likely because they are a bit tangy. White Mystery…. I have been working on that one for years and still have not discovered just what it tastes like! Some days it is pineapple, other days it’s an orange-mango infusion. I guess I’ll never unravel the “mystery???. But here’s one mystery solved by the Sheriff, Airheads are criminal suspect number one. Crime committed? Being delicious!