Where have all the spice drops gone?
Last week, I went looking for spice drops, the soft, sugar-crusted gumdrops flavored with clove, cinnamon, anise, spearmint, peppermint, and wintergreen. I checked store after store, only to discover that nearly every one in my city had stopped carrying them. Now there’s just one store where I can still find them, and they only have one bag in stock.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, spice drops had a permanent place in the candy aisle. You could count on seeing them there, bag after bag, year after year. Now I’m lucky to find a single 10-ounce bag at the one store that still carries them. It costs $3, is frequently sold out, and never seems to go on sale.
I can guess why. Shelf space is expensive, and stores naturally give it to the candy that sells fastest. Spice drops have always been a divisive little confection. Some of us love that unmistakable, clove-heavy bite. Others take one taste and wonder why anyone would want to eat a gumdrop that tastes like a bowl of potpourri. A candy with a smaller but devoted following is an easy candidate to squeeze off the shelf.
And yet, losing spice drops feels like losing more than just another kind of candy.
They’re a reminder of a time when candy didn’t have to be sour enough to make your face collapse, loaded with exotic flavors, or engineered around increasingly elaborate textures. Sometimes you just wanted something simple: a little sugar, a little spice, and that wonderfully old-fashioned chew.
Maybe that’s why I keep looking for them. A bag of spiced drops is a small reminder that not everything has to change just because something newer comes along. Sometimes the old-fashioned things are worth keeping around, not because everyone loves them, but because the people who do would really miss them.
I especially enjoy eating spice drops in the autumn, so I didn’t have much trouble finishing the 10-ounce bag I managed to find. Fortunately, there’s always Amazon. It reliably keeps them in stock, which means I won’t have to face the possibility of making it through an entire autumn without one of my favorite candies.