Whimsical designs on bright yellow stand-up bags make the new 14-item line of nuts, candy and snacks from Ames International sure to stand out from the crowd. The bags range in size from 5.5 ounces to 9 ounces, depending on the product; suggested retail price is $3.99. The assortment includes items such as macadamia nuts covered in milk chocolate, peanut butter-filled pretzels, soy nuts covered in dark chocolate, espresso beans covered in dark chocolate, a variety of chocolate-covered fruit items, and more. 

Amazing Candicraft Pens with fruit-flavored “ink” and edible paper add a whole new twist to “playing with your food.” This tasty new item from Sherwood Brands is packaged in a variety of formats. There is a three-pack of pens with paper; a single pen with paper; and a Combo Display that contains individual pens and individual paper packets.  

Flared jeans and platform shoes are back in vogue, so it’s only logical perhaps that Sconza is introducing Psychedelic Sours — jawbreakers with a 70s spin. Each over-sized jawbreaker is colored neon green and splattered with bright colors and features sour fruit flavors that are tart, but not painfully intense. Each jawbreaker layer is a different color and a different flavor. Psychedelic Sours are available in a 12-count display box and 110-count display baskets. The suggested retail price is $1.49 per jawbreaker.

Simply Lite Foods is hoping consumers will “take a fruit trip” with its new line of Sunkist gummies, chews and hard candies — available in regular fruit and sour fruit varieties.  

Packages of gummies and chews are positioned for easy portion control; they come five 1-ounce packs per 5-ounce bag. Each pack of gummies contains 80 to 90 calories; the chews are 100 calories per pack. Fruit varieties for both gummies and chews include cherry, orange, lemon and strawberry. Sour fruit flavors for both are watermelon, cherry, orange and apple.

The new lineup also includes Sunkist Hard Candy — in fruit and sour fruit flavors. Each 5-ounce bag contains approximately 35 pieces at 10 calories per piece. For all of the candy varieties, a serving supplies 100 percent of the Recommended Daily Value of vitamin C.

Individually wrapped gummy eyeballs sold under the Fear Factor banner come in a 1.35-ounce peg bag and have a suggested retail price of 99 cents to $1.19. The candy carries the tag line, “Tastes great, looks sick.”

Real Fruit Gummies from Dare Foods come in three fruity flavor varieties — Orchard Fruits, Fruit Medley and Tropical Fruits. A leading Canadian confectionery company, Dare Foods hopes to carve out a niche in the U.S. marketplace with its gummy offerings. The Real Fruit Gummies are available in 6.4-ounce peg bags and 55-gram single-serving packs.

Gimbal’s is introducing a peg bag line all decked out with a crisp new look in blue and white. The lineup includes: Gourmet Jelly Beans (34 flavors); Lavaballs chewy cinnamon candy; Scottie Dogs Licorice; Raspberries and Blackberries made with real fruit preserves. The suggested retail price for the 7-ounce bags is $1.99.  

Orange and fruit punch flavors are combined in a single piece in the new “Double” variety of saliva-stimulating Quench Gum. The gum comes in a 10-pack.

New Dippity Pops are designed to appeal to candy lovers from “eight to 80,” according to the company. This novelty item features either a strawberry pop combined with a milk chocolate-flavored dip (made from real Belgian chocolate) or an apple-flavored pop with a caramel dip. The pops are shaped to resemble a strawberry or an apple, respectively. Each Dippity Pop has a suggested retail price of $1.99.

When Innovative Candy Concepts’ Armand Hammer decided to develop a new chewy candy offering, he started by taking a close look at the gummy assortment already available in stores.

“We would see this huge wall of chewy products,” says Hammer, company president and CEO. What he didn’t see was much in the way of premium gummy products. “We felt that a category this big deserved a different taste experience — something more intense, but more natural,” he explains.

The new ICC confectionery offering — Dream Chews gummy candies — are made without sugar (sweetened with honey instead) and are fortified with vitamins C, A and D. Dream Chews deliver a distinctively satisfying taste sensation, which starts out sour, but turns sweet. The new gummies come in colorful, side-resealing packages. A 1.75-ounce snack pack has a suggested retail price of from 99 cents to $1.29, and a 4-ounce peg bag will retail for from $1.89 to $1.99

Unlike ICC’s Too Tarts Smart Choice kids’ candy line, Dream Chews have an all-family positioning. At the NCA & ECRM EPPS Candy Marketplace in Florida earlier this fall, candy buyers responded enthusiastically to the new entry, which is shipping in mid-November, Hammer reports.

Martoon LLC, an entrepreneurial marketer of mints and gums, including innovatively packaged M-I mints, is at it again. The company has introduced two highly targeted, functional chewing gums — Gameface Sports Performance Gum and Ace It Test Performance Gum.

Gameface is fortified with caffeine, B vitamins and taurine to pack a peak performance punch. Ace It is designed to help test takers do precisely what the gum's name proclaims. It is fortified with caffeine, ginkgo biloba and ginseng — ingredients associated with improved alertness, mental cognition and reaction speed. Both of the new sugar-sweetened tablet gums are packaged with 10 jumbo-sized pieces per sleeved blister pack.

Marty Carmichael, president of Martoon LLC, says that the rollout of both brands will be supported with focused national television advertising.