After the rush of the first day of the All Candy Expo I decided to kick things down a gear for the second day. My feet and shoulders were killing me so I really wanted to take things easier. And with my press bag emptied out it was a lot easier. There was a lot of candy in that thing and I had pushed along at a good clip on day one to make sure I got in at least one full pass of the show floor in addition to the four sessions I attended. Day two was for filling in the blanks. And it seemed to be a good time to do so. I don’t know if I was just used to the madness by then, but things seemed a little slower on Wednesday. Given the leisurely pace I was setting and the feeling that things in general were going slower (possibly an illusion since I had slowed down) I took some time to stop and talk to people I had skipped by the day before for one reason or another and had some nice conversations with a number of the exhibitors. As the day wore on I found my curiosity slipping from chocolate into my old loves of sour candies and meat snacks. That was when I knew I should pack it in. I was there for the chocolate and it would be rude to leave with one suitcase stuffed with chocolate and another stuffed with jerky and sour bombs. But people were so nice about it. Even when I told people I was reporting on chocolate and felt they should save their samples for people who would potentially be selling for them they were still happy to offer my some mammoth meat log or the newest candy on the block. People were very friendly and I only felt an attitude from a couple of booths which was nice. It really was a fun time and it had a fun atmosphere.

You will notice that this post is very short on details. This is intentional. I have a lot of stuff to sort and try and I’m going to break things up into a series of posts. The first will be a sort of general inventory of what I’ve got in hand. There will be a few posts dedicated to a number of items that will get full reviews at this time. The new varieties of M&M’s will get their own post for certain as will the Snickers Fudge bar. A number of items will get a little paragraph of detail since I only have a few moments conversation and a small sample to go on, but a lot of these items will later be brought back in for full reviews. And somewhere in there I’m going to do a general trip report with my thoughts on the show, the direction, what I loved, what was irritating, lessons learned (like don’t leave your business cards in your suitcase) and what I might do different if I go back next year. So I have a lot of stuff I want to write about and there is going to be a disgusting amount of candy consumed over the next few days. Luckily it’s a long weekend so I’ll have some time to address it all (I should have taken the entire week off so I could handle it all at a leisurely pace, but that’s really something to be shoved off to the “lessons learned” post).

So, to cap this bloated post of generalities, I had a great time, learned a lot, tried some great chocolates, brought home some great chocolates, met some cool people and came out with a better understanding of how to make the most of the show.