Whitman's Samplers

jujube

jujube

SF VIP
Location
I think I'm in Florida, but I'm not sure any more.
Remember getting Whitman's Samplers for Christmas?

My uncle would send us a huuuuge three-pound box every year. We kids were allowed to have ONE.PIECE.A.DAY. Of course, one had to make sure that one's piece was the RIGHT piece, yes? There was a chart showing what was what, but stuff got moved around and you weren't always sure that the piece you thought you had was the piece you actually had. And there would be nothing worse than biting into what you thought was a dark chocolate mousse and it turned out to be lemon crème or even worse.....maple.

So, being the uncivilized little savages we were, we'd poke the back of the chocolate first to see what was inside. Sometimes, if the Devil took over, we'd lick out the filling and eat that, leaving the chocolate shell for the next unsuspecting visitor to the box.

Visitors would stop by and Mom would proffer the box of chocolates...."have a piece"! (You'd think she'd learn, wouldn't you, as we did THE.SAME.THING.EVERY.YEAR. The visitor would choose a piece and quite often find someone had already been there. My mom would then swear that we were never going to get chocolates again, but the whole thing would start over again the next year.

Of course we always tried to sneak some extra pieces, too. And we'd rat each other out about it. I remember one of my sisters sidling over to my mom and saying, "_________ took another piece of chocolate and ate it in the bathroom." Mom asked how she knew, and the sister said, "She has chocolate on her breath." Oh, my.....damning evidence.
 

Every Christmas season, they used to make very small "stocking stuffer" boxes of the chocolates. It was a tradition in our house that everyone got one of these in their stocking every year. We carried that tradition on to our grandkids. We still want to do that for everyone, but cannot find the small boxes anymore. Really miss that tradition.
 
My sister is a chocolate poker!!!

A box of chocolates seemed to be a standard part of our holidays.

I've noticed more people these days seem to be buying cellophane sacks of miniature candy bars.

Somehow a bag is not as special to me as a box of chocolates from the drugstore.

It's just another little change in the world that makes me sad!

0c385a2d5efe9997ba2b24c02728b5cb--candy-boxes-candy-dishes.jpg
 

Thanks for reminding me of one of the treats of Christmas when I was a kid. I wanted the chocolate covered cherries, but somebody usually got to them before it was my turn:( I liked the lemon and orange ones, hated the chocolate ones, and the maple ones were always the last to be eaten.

We used to put those mini-samplers in our kids' stockings, too, and my DD used to put them in her kids' stockings, but now that it's been mentioned, I haven't seen them in years, either. That's a loss!

Now that I think about it, the lifesavers in packages made to look like a book were something I always hoped I'd get when we drew names in school. Butter rum was THE best! They still make lifesavers in package that look like a book, but there are lifesavers on only ONE side when it's opened. Worse? They're all the mixed flavors.
 
jujube said:
How about that beautiful "ribbon candy" and the candies that looked like spun glass? The kids at our church were always handed a small box of that kind of candy after services on Christmas Eve. I don't remember it tasting particularly good but it sure was beautiful.
Click to expand...

I saw little canisters of hard candy Christmas mix in the Dollar Tree this year and it brought back memories. I remember the little jam filled raspberries, the chocolate or peanut butter filled sticks, etc...

In this area we have a regional favorite called Nora's Turkey Joints. Turkey Joints are hard candy sticks filled with chocolate and nuts.

4314746739_dbb3bf9abc.jpg
 
I used to love Whitman's Samplers. I was a poker too,but my fav was the coconut crunch cup and you could tell by looking which one that was.
 
I loved the samplers ! Around here, I don't know if these were popular anywhere else , were the hard candy cherries you hung on trees. It was 2 round hard candy cherries joined by a wire that you bent and put on the tree branches. I don't know what made them so good ,but as kids we used to pluck them off of the trees and eat them till we got stomach aches . Now , of course , they're banned because of the wire. Sigh.... all the good stuff goes away ~~~~~
 
This a fun thread! My husband and I are in sync. He likes the cream filled ones and I like the nutty and caramel ones. No fighting.
 


Back
Top