#2-Milk Duds

Vote for Your Favorite Movie Candy…and Why Are They Called Milk Duds?

Want to vote for your favorite movie-eating candy? I’m doing a poll. You can vote below.

My favorite? Milk Duds.

Dud is a great word. It means something that fails to work properly or is otherwise unsatisfactory or worthless.

“The firecracker was a dud. It didn’t explode or anything.”

It can also refer to a person.

“Our quarterback is such a dud. He can barely throw a pass.”

Since the word is so negative, why would a candy maker name its product Milk Duds?

This is what the box looked like when Granpa was a kid

I looked it up, and it’s because back in the 1920s the company that invented them wanted perfectly round caramels coated with milk chocolate…and no matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t make them look like that. So they called them Milk (chocolate) Duds.

Granpa ate Milk Duds at the movies when he was a kid. The package was different then because they were made by a different company. I wondered if today’s Milk Duds were the same as in the olden days, so I gave him one of mine to taste. Here is his review:

“Not like I remember. The caramel’s the same, but I don’t know…the chocolate tastes different.”

So Granpa and I did some research and found out that Hershey’s doesn’t use cocoa butter (that’s the oily part of the cocoa bean) anymore. Now they use vegetable oil. Without cocoa butter—the government says—chocolate isn’t really chocolate. So Hershey’s is not allowed to say Milk Duds are covered with chocolate. All they can say (look at the box at the top) is “chocolatey covered.”

Granpa says that proves they really are duds.

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(Voting is below the images.)

goodandplentygummywormsjelly bean

juniormintslifesaversmandms

milk dudsraisinetstwizzlers

reesescandy barsno caps

sour patchstartburst

Here’s my movie-eating candy poll. The choices are in alphabetical order. Pick one!

But if you or anyone else in your house has already voted, you don’t get to vote again (all the voting choices will disappear…cool, huh?). You can come back to look at the poll results as many times as you want.

What is your favorite movie-eating candy?

View Results

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Comments from my Readers & Friends

  5. My favorite candy is starburst it tastes sooooooooooooo good I got one big starburst pack for halloween!

  9. also there’s the new sour pach EXTREME.And thats so so so so so so so sour its not even good anymore (you cry and you just spit it out!!!

  12. Happy Birthday to you! Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday dear Cheesie. Happy birthday to you!!
    HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHEESIE

  13. I love twix, BEST. CHOCOLATE. EVER. But I usually get sour patch kids or the water melon candy at the movies. in fact, I just went on Sunday to watch inside- out.
    My Rating- 5 STAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  14. I’m a big M&M’s fan and have even been to the store in NYC. I would like to try sno-caps as well as Cadbury chocolates. (If it hasn’t become clear by now, chocolate is my favorite type of candy!)

  15. i like milk duds because they last a long time, their made with the finest chocolate and caramel!

    • I like ’em, too. But I’m not so sure about the “finest” chocolate. Read my post. They can’t even call them chocolate. They have to say, “chocolatey.”

  17. I love your books and i always read it every night and i don’t care if i read these books like ten times i just love them

  19. All my friends tell me that they thought your books were okay. I think that your books are awesome and they must be confusing your books with another persons books. And about June, you need to pull better pranks on her.

    • I like Reese’s Pieces but I also like a ton of other candy so I don’t know what to pick!