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Important Offseason Lists: Candy Rankings

TOPICAL!

By Billy Gomila

So if you follow me on Twitter (you don't? you should), you might have noticed that in the crossfire of the anti- and pro-Marshawn Lynch #HOTTAEKS forces on Wednesday, there was an important revelation:

For those of you that are uninitiated, the allegedly laconic tailback of the Seattle Seahawks has a particular affinity for tasting the rainbow. Nonetheless, Skittles are overrated. They just are.

Now, truth to be known, at 33 years old my tastes have advanced to the point that in general, I prefer savory snacks to sweet. And if I am going to indulge in candy, I'm probably going with chocolate, which I believe is kind of it's own genre. What I'm talking about here is the basic fruit-flavored sugar stuff. Ball-park concession stand/elementary-school recess candy. Now seems as good a time as any to properly rank it.

1. Starbursts

Original model here -- the sub-genres are nice, but when you think Starburst, you think pink, yellow, red and orange. Appropriate flavor varieties and just the right level of chewiness that you could consume them without feeling like it was WORK a la taffy. How good are Starbursts? They even make jellybeans taste good.

2. Nerds

Underrated and I'll tell you why. At recess, Nerds were the thinking man's candy. If you had enough change you could score two, and they were easy enough to hide to either A) sneak into class or B) stash until you got home without anybody trying to get 'em from you. Plus, you could always throw most of 'em in your mouth at once if you were desperate.

Yes, I was a husky child. Why do you ask?

3. Airheads

These get extra points for two things: variety of flavors and the fact that, at least at my school, when they had a candy sale you could usually get three for 50 cents. You just can't beat that kind of value at 7 years old.

4. Sweet Tarts

Underrated, in my opinion. A good combination of sweet and sour, and pairs incredibly well with a Sprite or a 10K sports drink (#4Life). You don't want the over-the-top, lip-puckering of Warheads. Happy medium here.

5. Skittles

Controversial choice, but I'm comfortable with it. Marriage Story: my wife and I once had a fight over how I ate Skittles -- a handful at a time. She prefers to sort them by color. Says it helps her "taste the rainbow."

6. Fun Dip

It was flavored sugar you ate with a candy spoon. And we wonder how so many kids got ADHD?

You really haven't stolen second base until you've done it after sucking up an entire Fun Dip pouch and then wolfing down the spoon during warm-ups.

7. Runts

The chewy ones were a game-changer, but overall these lose points for the awful-tasting banana ones. There's nothing like not being able to eat a quarter or worse, a third of your bag of candy in between baseball games.

8. Sour Patch Kids

Mostly associated with movie theater lobbies, but tough to beat. Sour sugar, much like Sweet Tarts, gives you that sour jolt with just enough sweet to cut it, backed up by the gummies.

9 (tie). Bottle Caps & Ring Pops

You never think of bottle caps, and that's sad. You get the same consistency of Sweet Tarts but with a little more sweet-to-tart ratio, plus a few more unique flavors. Root Beer Bottle Caps are right up there with the top single pieces of candy you could have.

With Ring Pops, it's the nostalgia really. Plus, you could pretend to be a Green Lantern, and if you didn't finish them before recess ended and your teacher was nice, she might let you finish it in class, since the alternative was basically pitching it.

10 (tie). Sour Straws, Big League Chew

Here's the thing with Sour Straws -- the whole idea is that you drink something through them and you pick up some of the straw flavor, right? That never worked for me.

And if you didn't use big-league chew to practice a disgusting and unhealthy tobacco habit my God what kind of horrible little league experience did you have?

Anyway, there's the list. I'm glad Marshawn Lynch loves his Skittles, though they are definitely not worth all the fines and stuff. I have a feeling this will probably be one of my more controversial posts here at ATVS, but I'm comfortable in my rightness. Let's here all your wrong answers in the comments!

By the way, you can tell the crazy people because they mention Swedish Fish. Nobody has ever willingly tried those things.