Ye Olde Candy Shopping

So this last Saturday we went out on our weekly treasure hunt and found quite a bit of fun stuff. I found a stand alone camp stove and a complete set of welding equipment for $15. Of course that also included a fist full of Cat 5e networking cables, World of Warcraft disks, and a few pairs womens pants.

My sweet wife found a Halloween plush candy basket in a box full of other stuff. They wanted to sell the box as a set, as this was the 2nd time in a month that they were having a yard sale, so she filled the strange basket with candy that was in the box so that her offer of $1 would be of mutual benefit.

Upon getting the loot home, we munched the candy and found that the Take 5 bars were stale. Yeah, we know, what do you expect from a yard sale right. This did not stop us from eating them, and the much fresher Reese's, and the impossible to go sourer SweetTarts.

The point of the post is actually to teach you how to tell if your candy is old...

For M&M/Mars candy, you look at the first three [3] numbers in the printed info. The first is year number, while the next two combined represent the week in the year. For example, we see a 827xxxxxxx number. That means that the candy is good until the first week of July 2008.

For Hersey products, there is a two digit code. The Reese's were 6E and the Take 5's were a 7D. The number represents the year, while the letter represents the month. January is A, with D being April and E being May.

The candy we just ate was old, but the Reese's held up MUCH better than the Take 5's.