I’ve been a bit out of commission since late last week due to an accidental eye injury, and I’m slowly getting caught up on the many things I wasn’t able to do while patched-up with only one good eye. I’m still a bit blurry in the injured eye, but I’m healing. In other words, I’m back and ready to talk candy.
In order to give myself a leg-up on getting up to speed here on the site, I decided to pull something especially fun from my archives that sort of speaks for itself. The item I chose also happens to speak quite a lot about me personally.
I played AD&D (Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, for you civilians) a LOT back in the 1980’s. I guess you could call me an “old-school” RPG player, as I was a 1st Edition AD&D guy… I eventually learned and played 2nd edition, but I never really warmed to AD&D 3rd Edition rules. Yeah, I’ve got some nerd-cred. I could go on, but rather than bore the non-role-players reading, I’ll get to the subject of today’s short post: Dungeons and Dragons Candy! Yes, it really existed:
Amurol - Dungeons and Dragons - fantasy candy figures - candy box - early 1983
Produced by Amurol (makers of Big League Chew and Bubble Tape, among other great things) back in the heyday of D&D, it would appear that this was a candy that arrived in the shape of “fantasy figures”.
I don’t actually remember Dungeons and Dragons Candy, and if I ever saw them on shelves in 1983, I probably didn’t think much of them. Now, however, I can appreciate them for the era that produced them, so I think they’re insanely-fantastic. I hope you think so, too.
Late addition – here’s an image of a full display box of Dungeons and Dragons candy, from my pal Dan Goodsell:
Dungeons and Dragons Candy display box - image courtesy Dan Goodsell
Tomorrow I’ll have a new edition of Wacky Wednesdays to share, and I’ve got a nice series of posts being prepared in my run up to CollectingCandy.com’s 100th post, coming soon!
Sweet, I have that Fighter card in my trading card collection. I can now sleep again knowing where I got it. Love you site.
Another repressed memory brought back to life! I remember collecting these to get the character cards on the back. They’re definitely from the Basic rule set which was my first intro to D&D right around 82/83. I can’t say for sure but I think the candy was in the shape of the character card images and was similar to the Mr Bones candy.
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This is crazy! I never saw these on the west coast. I would have bought them in a jiffy!
I started playing D&D in 1976 and a year or so after started DMing been playing ever since. These would have easily made there way to our gaming table if I had ever seen them. Thanks Jason for sharing all this great stuff, I love it!
Wonderful! When will I learn to proof read before hitting send!!! DOH!
I cannot believe I have never seen these before! Thanks for posting them! I’ll be hunting them down soon !!
I once asked the leading RPG dice manufacturer why he never manufactured candy dice — it seemed like an obvious play, as they’d get used up during the game. He pointed out that all he would need is someone to swallow the real dice by accident!
Cleaning up years of debris… I just found two of the cards from the backs of the candy. “Troglodyte” and “Ogre”. Very cool.
The D&D candy I remember was nothing like that. What we had around here was pretty much a gummy worm consistency candy in the shape of Carrion Crawlers and Chimeras. I remember blowing my allowance on a handful of D&D candy and a few packs of Garbage Pail Kids many times as a kid in the mid-80’s.
I remember these here in California. Circa. 1984 or so in Davis and Sacramento. I was just barely starting school. From what I remember they were really fruity and tasty. The only downside was that they were small ergo easy to inhale. Also they got stuck in your teeth and had a powdery aftertaste. Though those downsides were small potatoes compared to the fact that even teenagers were fighting little kids over them to have some. They were that good. I mean we’re talking big league chew good. The green pouch. Haha! 😀
I remember collecting these as a child in St.Albert, Alberta.
I was fascinated with the box art and collecting the cards for the Troglodite, Owl Bear, Warrior, and whatever the fourth one was… a Wizard? The candies were cool and were in the shapes of what was on the cards. I wish this candy was still around, I did take a look for it when I was in Vegas last month as there were some vintage candy shops along the strip.