It's so sad that in the USA candy is dominated by handful of brands that produce more or less the same limited range of cloyingly sweet and uninteresting confections of nougat, caramel, cheap chocolate, nuts, and a few other things.

I find it impossible to believe that this "sameness" is what people really want. I suspect candy vendors have specifically conditioned the candy market in much the same way as the film industry has conditioned audiences into go to see mass-market films-- endless re-hashes of the same stuff, endless sequels, formulaic plots, god forbid an edgy wildly different film gets out every once in a while.

Things are different in most European and Asian countries where you can easily find a mind-blowing variety of candies that are truly distinct from each other.

That reminds me, there's a fun book of essays, Candy Freak (https://www.amazon.com/Candyfreak-Journey-through-Chocolate-...) which is all about the vanishing fringe candy makers in the USA.

> Things are different in most European and Asian countries where you can easily find a mind-blowing variety of candies that are truly distinct from each other.

Uhm, in the US it's pretty easy to find boutique candy stores with a very wide variety. Even in grocery stores, the candy isle has quite a bit to choose from.

Don't conflate what's presented in the checkout rack, for impulse purchases, with the wider variety of what's available.

The awful chocolate! Oh the humanity. Its like a brown candle - mostly wax, flavorless. Done that way so it won't melt on the way to the store in an un-refrigerated truck.

Once you try proper chocolate (I recommend Winans', http://www.winanscoralville.com/), a grocery-store candy bar becomes inedible. I don't want them in my mouth. Its that different.

That doesn't ring true for me. Germany has Haribo and paprika-flavoured stuff. Everything else is a side show.

Central Asia has pretty much only Mars products.

I had learned this from The Old Web: http://totl.net/VisibleMars/

But the best selling candy bar in the US is Snickers. So that would be your biggest competitor.

A streaming marathon vs an actual marathon...

Does the UK have anything that's similar to the US version of the Mars Bar?

I think the nearest thing would be a Mars Bar?

I can't seem to find a reference for it, but my memory says that a US Mars Bar had almonds in it. The Wikipedia page[1] seems to indicate as much since it mentions "the American version was discontinued in 2002[10] and was replaced with the slightly different Snickers Almond [...]" Although it lists the contents of the Snickers bar, it doesn't say how it was 'slightly different.'

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_(chocolate_bar)#United_St...

I remember hearing about this guy a few years back. Apparently he found them :) https://www.oneindia.com/2008/06/02/lived-17-years-mars-choc...

Oh, I need more information about this. We have mars bars and milky ways in sweden, I wonder if ours are the UK or the US variant.

The dividing line is pretty much US/not US when it comes to these.

The UK ones!

Don't we all have Mars bars AND Milky Ways :) ?

Interesting, in Canada we have Mars Bars and 3 Musketeers. I don't think I've ever seen a Milky Way.