Cravings: Candy

Where have all the candy stores gone? We’re talking about magical shops brimming with colorful confections of all shapes and sizes  —  Sky Bars, root beer barrels, Mallo Cups, lollipops, wax lips, Pixy Stix  —  colorfully packaged and arranged in a display designed not just to seduce your sweet tooth, but to dazzle all your senses. One such candy store exists  —  or returns, rather: Shane Candies, which stood at 110 Market Street for nearly a century, reopens this winter as Shane Confectionery, under new ownership. Brothers Eric and Ryan Berley, proprietors of period-perfect ice-cream shop Franklin Fountain, purchased the business and are doing for the candy store what they did for the soda fountain: bringing back the charm (and the product). In addition to buffing up the interior and reviving those vintage sweets, they’re crafting
classic candies in-house, like clear toy candy, a traditional Pennsylvania German holiday sweet. It’s made in a variety of shapes, from trumpets to trains, using the 250-plus antique molds the brothers rescued at auction from Young’s Candies, another long-lost Philadelphia candy maker. You’ll have to wait until 2011 to visit Shane, but in the meantime, you can purchase clear toy candy throughout the holiday season at the Franklin Fountain.