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.