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My favorite candy choices seem to be just like my favorite cartoons. They always bring a smile to my face or a burst of laughter to even my most trying days!  As a kid,  I’d love to sit and watch Top Cat, Underdog, Scooby Doo, Popeye  and even Atom Ant, all while eating some of my favorite candy. I guess that’s why when we decided to take our candy selections online to sell in 2000, I had the website built in cartoon mode.

Yes, that was almost 10 years ago Blair Candy not only went online, but turned cartoon too! Not only has our website changed the past 10 years, but the candy and cartoons have too!  One thing that hasn’t changed is the smile and laughter our sweet treats bring!

Even though we can’t take any credit for the goodtimes Underdog , Porky Pig or even Tom and Jerry put on our faces, we can for the sweet treats some of you enjoyed while watching them.

There was nothing better than watching Popeye squeeze that gross looking spinich out of that can all while I was allowed to eat a bag of Sugar Babies or watch Mighty Mouse save the day as I tried and tried to get to the chocolate center of my Tootsie Pop lol.

Our new candy website you see today was thought out,  built and designed just like the Cartoonists, Ilustrators, Programmers and Producers use to build a cartoon. That’s why we feel this is the sweetest  one yet!

The Cartoonist and Illustrators at  EY Studio’s brought our candy chocies to life and even added a special super hero of our own, that’s going to bring you sweet special deals everyday.

Our Programmers and Producers from Solid Cactus made this website as easy to use as blowing a bubble with your favorite bubble gum or as simple as finding your favorite Nostalgic Candy on our website! I guess that’s why Yogi told us they are all… “Smarter than the average bear” ! lol

We hope you all have as much fun shopping and eating, as we all did making it!

Th-th-th-that’s all folks! …..Enjoy!

It’s been a very busy 2 months here at Blair Candy! It’s time for our online candy store to be redesigned. I’ve been through 4 redesigns since 2000 and this flip is a step above the rest!
For those of you who have never had the opportunity to undertake a challenge like this, it’s sort of like completely gutting the inside of your house or office, or building a new home from the ground up. It takes a lot of thought and work to pull it all together.

Yes, a new website design is just like flipping or decorating your home or office. You pick new colors to paint the walls (background), choose new furniture (programs), new pictures (products), but no matter what you do or buy for either, it all must flow together. This makes it easy to maneuver so no one trips and falls or gets lost from room to room.

You would think, considering this is the 4th redesign we have been through, this flip and the navigation choices should be pretty standard….
Oh if it would only be that easy lol

Just like what’s hot and what’s not in the carpet business or the candy bar business; Things change! As I’ve looked over many website for ideas, I noticed many seem to be making sections now called shop by brand or manufacturer. I was confused if this would work for us? Would I be wasting a lot of space on something that many might not know anyway?

Would the average candy lover know to click on the Tootsie Roll brand to find  Black Crows, Caramel Apple Lollipops or Junior Mints? How about those looking for a Clark Baror Candy Buttons? Would they know to click on the Necco brand for those?

I’ve grown up in this family candy business and have sat behind this desk for 28 years and I still don’t know who makes several of these candy items we sell. I often find myself cheating and looking in our in-house computer system to match up a novelty candy item to the manufacturer with the branding behind them.

It’s not like we are selling cars by GM or TV’S by Sony! Many of our manufacturers have so many different brands under their belts, it gets confusing.

So do I keep the sections lined up like we always have and let people search for gummy candy, candy bars and lollipops, or do we also give them a little more to think about? Will the average person know that Tootsie Roll Inc, also owns and manufactures a lot more than their name sake, Tootsie Rolls?

I still have many new colors, programs and products to add to this redesign, but you can be sure this flip is being designed with our sweet customers in mind!

It’s been a fun two weeks watching all the videos that were sent in for our Sing For Free Candy Contest. We appreciate the time everyone took to make their video! We judged each video on originality, creativity and by the fun they looked like they had making them. Even though this candy contest called for only 3 winners, we desided to sweeten the pot and give some special singers prizes aswell! You can view them all below.

                           Congratulations To The Winners below

First Place $250 Gift Certificate  ”The Gum Drop Girls” from Willow Springs, IL. These sweet little girls  dressed up for the part, made props, sang their hearts out and danced to the beat. Ranging from age 5  to 8, their mom told us they practiced many days for this. Catherine, Sierra, Ceara and Caitlin congratulations, you can pick a lot of candy!

Second Place $50 Gift Certificate - Cindy Ficarotta from Levittown, PA. Cindy has a very creative side and did one on the coolest computer generated entry we have ever seen! Congratulations Cindy on a job well done!

Third Place $25 Gift Certificate -  “The Candy Wrappers” from Shirley, MA -  These 3 young ladies, put a lot of thought into these lyrics  and used their “own” creativity to rap their way into the winners of a $25 gift certificate to spend how they please. Congratulations girls!

Now on to some very special candy videos that we felt needed reconginized in a sweet special way too!

Annika from Chicago -  this adorable sweet little girl, caught everyone’s attention here, so we’re sending her a special box full of candy treats! We love her smiling little face and sweet voice! We think you will agree! You can watch her sing right here

Kailyn and Kyle from Marina CA – This brother and sister duo were too sweet on the eyes of many of us here, so we’re sending them a box of goodies too!

OK this one gets our family award! This singing family, gave it there all and we enjoyed it! Congratulations Mike, Stephanie and Mandra. A sweet candy box full of treats is headed your way soon!

These last two from our favorites list was sent to us from Jean at allthingsjeep.com. Jean gathered up the family dog and frog to entertain us. Jean just won herself a special box full of candy treats too for thinking outside the box!

Now for the dog lol

Once again, a special thank you to everyone who submitted their videos! If you didn’t win something in this contest, keep a look out for more fun sweet contests from all of us here at BlairCandy.com

We all know that many Candy Companies  put a lot of time and energy into the packaging, taste and looks of candy, but is candy really all the same in the end?  Well… not the Candy I had a chance to see being sold this past week!

I was lucky enough while out in Las Vegas on business to get a tour of one of my favorite and very successful online shoe selling websites,  Zappos. 

For years I have been following this company and admiring their style, great customer service and strong culture. From the very beginning of my correspondence about a visit, Missy Raley, Zappos help desk  coordinator made the shoe fit even more!.

Some of you might not think that Zappos sells candy like we do, so why would I be so interested.  Truthfully, it’s always been their company culture that has always caught my attention and it sure helps that they actually sell candy too! Do a quick search on their website for candy and you’ll see pages of candy items. Heck they even sell  candy watches like we do sometimes. lol

Probably the most important and rewarding  candy items they sell are located in vending machines in their free lunch cafeteria. They have vending machines full of all kinds of sweet treats for their employees and visitors, but they charge for these and donate the profits to a charity in Nevada. Now how sweet is that!

Probably the only thing I couldn’t find in this ever expanding product company was shoe strings. Yes, they sell zillions of shoes, sneakers and boots that have them already preloaded, and even a few pocket books that tie shut, but I thought for sure I’d see some different colors of short and long shoe strings that people love to enjoy, just like our variety of shoe string candy laces.

This company and its sweet culture for success is run by Mr Tony Hsieh. Tony jumped into this company with both feet, and even sits in his own cubicle not a four walled office among hundreds of other Zappos employees, like Missy who coordinates at the help desk  and Heaven our devoted tour guide and even the big guy who heads up their fraud swat team.

The visit, just like the employees we met, was amazing!  All I can say is, I’m glad they aren’t selling our kind of  candy online. I might be shaking in my boots ~ lol

It’s hard to believe that a name like  Eddie Haskell would still be referenced to almost daily in everyone’s lives!

The other day I was searching the Internet for some Nostalgic Candy pictures to hang on my newly painted office walls and came across some pictures of Eddie Haskell. I giggled when I saw them, and actually stopped looking for candy pictures and began reading though stories of him and the Cleaver family.

What a guy huh?  He’s still famous and a household name after all these years,  just like some of the candy we sell. Even my sons know what I mean when I say something in reference to an Eddie Haskell.  I sat there thinking just how this name signaled some memories in almost everyone in one way or another, almost like a Candy Bar or a Rootbeer Barrel! I’m sure many of you have had your own reference to good old Eddie  lol.

 The great Eddie Haskell name really needs no explanation to most, and not even to the younger generation because I’m sure their parents have called them or one of their friends  Eddie Haskell and then explained just who Eddie was lol.

I really began to think this through while sitting at my desk. Hmmm do we have any Eddie’s in our building?  Does our company  Blair Candy and BlairCandy.com as a whole operate with the Eddie trickery?  I really couldn’t think of anyone while working for our company that plays the Eddie rule. Our company is  what it is. We are more like the Cleavers here lol. We don’t pretend to have free shipping  and hide it in the price of the product to brown nose the customer. We really have a real candy warehouse and candy outlet store full of thousands of candy products and we really don’t schmooze our customers into pretending to have good customer service or quality products.

Nope, no Haskell’s here, just a family owned and operated real wholesale candy distributor for over 70 years!  Heck we’ve been in the candy business longer than all the Eddie Haskell’s have been  in character!  The only comparison I could  find in our company to an Eddie Haskell, was his middle name was Clark, just like the Clark Bars we sell lol!

You might have to work here to understand why I compared our candy company to a circus, but let’s just say, it gets very busy with lots going on in all corners of our operation and we often say  “ It’s a Circus in here lol.
 Much like all the acts that go on during a busy Circus, our company operates about the same way. We have our own ticket takers, clowns, acrobats, animal trainers, jugglers, concession workers and even a few strongmen.

Our ticket takers are the sweet people that answer our phones and take your order and help you find what you need. Our clowns, well… let’s just say they keep all of us laughing through out the day with their various tricks they do. Our acrobats pretty much walk a tight rope and try to find space in our warehouses to store all our candy we get in from the manufactures. The jugglers aren’t throwing balls up in the air, but they are running from desk to desk trying to catch the overflow when someone’s busy. The strongmen are just that, they unload truck after truck by hand of full cases of bubble gum, snack foods, candy bars. Next is our animal trainers, we have some employees that donate a lot of their time to Animal Rescue groups. Last but not the least our candy concession workers. Yes, we have the cotton candy, peanuts, cracker jacks, popcorn and even snow cone stuff to sell that you also find and enjoy at the circus.
 Our teams of concession workers pick and pack up these treats for everyone to enjoy!

As I was writing this blog today, something else came to mind. Our Circus that comes to town is sponsored and hosted by our Jaffa Shrine Organization. A lot of the proceeds they make from their Circus get donated to various children’s organizations to help them out. At Blair Candy, we also use some of the profits we make from our very own Circus Seasons and donate to many organizations and children’s events.

We are a big sponsor of area youth sports teams and non profit organizations. From Baseball leagues, Basketball teams to Relay for Life and our local soup kitchen.
 All of our sweet treats we sell also help many in need, just like our local Circus Sponsor.

If you want to enjoy a little old fashion nostalgic fun, visit the circus, grab some cotton candy, watch the Elephants dance and the clowns be silly or you can visit our online candy store, or our outlet candy  store here in town and enjoy some Nostalgic candy. If you’re lucky maybe even one of our “strongmen” will show off for you!

I thought selling Candy to Rachael Ray for her magazine article about Super Bowl Parties was exciting, but this past week while I was away on my annual vacation to Florida I ran into Guy Fieri, from the Food Networks Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. Now that is what I call exciting!

I was heading to one of my favorite restaurants down at the beach, in Deerfield Beach Florida called The Whales Rib. I was starving and like always in a hurry. I marched through the parking lot not even noticing the sign that said “filming inside” lol, opened their doors, and was greeted with bright cameras filming away. Needless to say I shut that door as fast as I opened it and walked to the Pizza shop across the street.

As I sat there staring out the window while eating my coal oven pizza wishing I had the lobster salad from the Whales Rib, I spotted a guy with spiked up white hair that looked to me like the guy from the Food Network show I  watch. The closer he got to the window, the more I knew it was him. I could hardly eat my pizza and couldn’t wait to run out the door.

Yep, it was him. I was so excited I couldn’t remember how to take a picture with my cell phone lol. Finally I settled down, snapped a few shots and followed him back up to the parking lot that just 15 minutes prior I ran from. Low and behold it was him inside my favorite restaurant filming a segment for his show Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. I stood there watching him get into his famous car and begin filming now on the outside of the restaurant. Talk about the perfect opportunity to invite him to our Sweet Candy Store, but like most anything else I seem to do, I didn’t have one piece of candy of any kind on me, or even a business card to hand to him to spike his interest ugh.

To some of you, you might find it strange why I would even think that he would come to our candy outlet store, when all he goes to is restaurant type places, but if you’ve ever been to Blair Candy, you would understand why I think he would fit right in. Not because we’ve had some employees with the same type of hair he has, but because we have thousands of candies to buy, from every manufacturer and timeline. I think he would be as shocked as a lot of our visitors that walk in  and are greeted with aisle after aisle of every kind of candy you can think of. Nostalgic Candy, Novelty Candy,  Bubble Gum and lots of Breath Mints he could use after eating all those different foods. He might be surprised of all the  gummi candy shaped like some of the food he eats stacked to the ceiling too!  Heck why not Guy Fieri visiting us?  Some people do make a meal out of all these sweet treats we sell lol.

Now if I could only run into Bobby Flay! It would be interesting doing one of those Throw Down shows with him and challenge him to a cooking with candy event!

It’s no secret when you walk into our building; You are entering not only the sweetest building in the world, but it’s Pittsburgh Steeler country as well. Today a bunch of our sweet employees came dressed for the occasion. Black and Gold everywhere and Steeler fight songs playing on radios through out the building. Actually, the only thing missing football,  was our chocolate footballs lol. We shipped soooo many of those chocolate sports treats to our customers for their own  Super Bowl Parties, we had none left for our own employees.

Go figure, we normally have case after case, but because there are so many Steelers fans across the USA, they came from everywhere and found our online candy store and were buying them cases at a time. How sweet of the manufacturer to tell us our new shipment would be here 2 days after the big party ugh.

Some of our customers didn’t mind the wait, they didn’t really need them for the big game, but for a sports themed party and can wait till they arrive. Others, begged, pleaded and called a lot, but nothing we could do. We’ve now been telling them to cheer even louder, because when they win Super Bowl 43, there will be a lot of post Super Bowl parties going on across the USA and we will be able to send the chocolate footballs to them.

So for now, our own employees will have to survive the big game with out the chocolate footballs and maybe reach for some other kind of sweet candy treat we sell. hmmm wonder how chocolate basketballs would look sitting in the plastic football on my table lol

I love this time of year! It’s time to let our candy computer generate a best selling candy report for me. Here is our list of our top ten best selling online candies of 2008.

10. Satellite Wafers -  Otherwise known as flying saucers, stale candy with beads, or communion hosts filled with sugar beads.

9.  Chocolate Tootsie Pops – This was a limited edition Tootsie Roll brought out. Limited edition? Are they nuts??? Even Weight Watchers endorsed these low calorie tasty treats and we couldn’t keep them in stock.

8.  Caramel Apple Lollipops -  Yeah another winner for Tootsie Roll. A delicious apple tasting lollipop dipped in caramel.

7.  Sugar Free Tootsie Pop Mini Lollipops – Yep this company sure is on a tootsie “ roll!”

6.  Dubble Bubble Sugarless Bubble Gum – and to think it use to be Bazooka

5.  Bob’s Soft Peppermint Sticks -  These Nostalgic candy  treats are a favorite all year long. Some people dip them in chocolate and others in lemonade!

4. Candy Cigarettes - I’m sure that was a shocker to a lot of people, not us though, they held the number one spot for a lot of years!

3. Penny Candy Taffy Chews  – Ahh we can thank all the parade goers for this #3 cheap candy favorite of the year!

2. Chocolate Golf Balls – We are avid sports fans here and carry a huge selection of sports candy treats. Chocolate golf balls took first place in the sports division this year beating out, chocolate footballs, basketballs, and soccer balls

And finally our #1 best selling candy of 2008 is… Tootsie Frooties Tootsie Rolls by Tootsie Roll Inc. We sold almost 38 thousand 360 count bags of these tasty treats. That’s over 13 MILLION Tootsie Frootie Tootsie  Rolls!

So, anyone care to guess what next years winning top ten will be?  I’m not sure on all 10, but I think I’ll put my money on the Nostalgic Gum,  Beemans, Clove or Black Jack Gum. We got notice last month from the manufacturer they are finally bringing them back out after a 2 year absence in production.

Even if  your favorite didn’t make our top 10 this year, We appreciate your business and wish everyone a Happy Healthy New Year!

Actor Kevin Costner was popular for his role in the movie Field of Dreams, perhaps known most for it’s famous tagline, “If you build it, they will come.”  At Blair Candy, we enjoyed our own sweet success with our own concoction of that line:  “If you give them free candy, they will come, too!”

Our big event wasn’t a look back at famous baseball players– our main event was the start of the Holiday shopping season with Black Friday and Cyber Monday.  No, we didn’t have Shoeless Joe Jackson or Archie Graham walking out of a cornfield, but all Black Friday weekend, we did have our hard working employees walking in and out of our warehouse doors. Plus, our shipping company, UPS, pitched in and gave a hand as well, just so our customers could enjoy a little old fashioned candy game of speedy great customer service– our team’s trademark for the 70-plus years we’ve been in the candy business! 

The cheering in our stands erupted from the free candy we gave away those days to all of our previous customers, and even many new ones that found out about the promotion through our Advertising work done by Solid Cactus.  All our customers had to do was place any candy order that crucial holiday shopping week and we’d take 10% off their order, plus throw in some free candyto help fill their stockings. It was a homerun! 

The first group up to bat got a free box of the new Jr. Mints Peppermint crunch candies; the second group got a free Hershey’s Milk Chocolate large holiday bar, and the third got a free box of Cowtails.  These free candy items might not be what you usually order when you sit down to enjoy a live baseball game, but they sure did make the holidays a little sweeter on the wallets of over a thousand of our customers!

With all the excitement this free offer generated, it of course also generated a lot of work from our employees and our shipping company, UPS. Not only did UPS pitch in and help with the excessive amount of packages to be shipped across the nation, but our dedicated employees stepped up to the plate as well. We might not have had Kevin Costner lending a hand to make this all happen, but we did have our company vice president, Terry, pull himself away from his computer and speadsheets to pitch in and help get us to the 9th inning.   

This was the first time ever I had to make a S.O.S call to our UPS rep, Steve, on a weekend. I explained to him that first thing Monday morning, we needed a BIG empty brown truck.  Without a hitch, first thing Cyber Monday morning, UPS was parked in our warehouse parking lot ready to take away all of the orders.  But Steve didn’t just send a big truck, the normal UPS brown trucks most of you see, but a bigger model.  As in TRACTOR-TRAILER.   It may be hard for a lot of you to understand the kind of space all these different sizes of packed-up candy can take, but let me just say, they all would have covered that entire baseball field of dreams, way out there in Iowa!

A special thank you to UPS and their team, who helped us out, plus our own employees, too, who gave up their holiday weekend away from family and friends to work from dawn to dusk so our customers would be happy! Also a special thank you to all of our customers for continuously choosing us. We appreciate all the business and effort everyone gave.