SKY BAR :: Return of the Living Dead Candy Bar

"If you love something, set it free. If it comes back, set it on fire."

- George Carlin

Not everything goes away - just the stuff we love. How often have you nailed down a favorite brand of corned beef or personal lubricant only to find the grocery store stops carrying it without warning? More often than not, it's the snacks & sweets that come into our lives, seduce us, and then never call again. Sometimes they'll caution us with a disclaimer of "Limited Edition" so we know it's nothing serious. But sometimes even the longest-term relationship can blindside us through no fault of our own - much like in 2018 when Necco stopped manufacturing one of the greatest candy bars of all time: the Sky Bar. 

The New England Candy Company (Necco) was formed in 1901 and in the century that followed they became best known for Clark Bars, Sweethearts, Necco Wafers, Peach Blossoms, Candy Buttons, Squirrel Nut Zippers, and the cleverly complex Sky Bar. When the company was sold (and immediately dismantled) in 2018, some of the brands were sold off to other companies who continued to manufacture them -- sometimes keeping the "Necco" as part of the name.

The Sky Bar recipe went unclaimed and appeared to be a casualty of this collapse, until an online auction was held in September '18 wherein a local shop owner (local to me but also to the original home of the candy) bid on and won the rights. And bless her for doing so because she took her newly acquired privilege and power and proceeded to do everything right: she opened a candy store/factory(!) in Sudbury, Massachusetts, next door to her current whatnot shop in the same strip mall - and simply called it "Sky Bar."

She preserved the name, the logo, the wrapper, the flavors, and made it all entirely accessible to locals as well as online. And while the draw of the store is the resurrected candy itself, it's also full of a wide variety of standards and oddities, as well as a large window that allows shoppers to peep the "factory." 

If you've never had one: my stock description is "a box of chocolates in a candy bar." It's four pieces, held together like a Kit Kat, and each piece has a different cream filling: caramel, vanilla, peanut, and fudge. So it's always a mild surprise if you don't know from which end you're starting, but most importantly, there're really no losers in this lineup. 

This is a situation where the scarcity isn't really a turn on; I was perfectly pleased when they were more readily available at more locations. But I'm not so unsophisticated or faultfinding to not appreciate my geographical advantage in this otherwise burdensome turn of events. For as long as this store stays open (which has already survived waaayyy longer than I'd anticipated), it's an adequately pleasant 45 minute drive through upscale New England neighborhoods to get to a Sky Bar. But believe me, I wouldn't do that shit for a Snickers. 

- Paul