The Sylvania Area Chamber of Commerce (SACC) just bit off more than it could chew…
In posting Facebook photos of the ribbon-cutting ceremony for Aunt B’s Retro Candy, the new nostalgia candy store that popped up in Mayberry Square (8160 Sunset Ln., Sylvania), the SACC declared Aunt B’s to have the biggest selection of taffy in NW Ohio (a claim repeated on Aunt B’s website).
“Now hold on just a minute” said Boyd’s Retro Candy shop. “We have a pretty decent selection of taffy ourselves.”
Well, they didn’t actually say that, but we know that Boyd’s Retro Candy takes taffy pretty seriously.
The City Paper decided that this taffy claim deserved a little investigating. We needed to pull this mystery apart and find its sweet spot. No nuts, no chocolate, just a candy fiend measuring some chewy saltwater taffy facts. We visited both shops, sampled some of each store’s respective taffy and came to a delicious conclusion: this town is big enough for multiple candy stores.
Aunt B’s definitely isn’t messing around when it comes to a wide assortment of taffy. They have 50 different flavors with some of the wildest including Maple Bacon, Buttered Popcorn, Xtreme Hot, and S’mores. Their taffy comes in a volume-based packaging style: they have small bags and big bags. You fill your preferred bag size with any flavors of taffy you wish. A small bag will run you $5.99, while a big bag of the saltwater chewables comes in at $7.99 for as much taffy as you can cram in either size bag. Of course, if you’re a “by the piece” type of confections connoisseur, they’ll sell it to you at six pieces for a dollar. With their convenient and full buckets of offerings, Aunt B’s makes finding what you want easy— the problem is what you want is everything.
Boyd’s, on the other hand, is a long-time institution in Toledo, the little pink castle (954 Phillips Ave.) is packed full of options— candy everywhere you turn. And while their taffy isn’t the focal point of the store like Aunt B’s, it’s pretty clear from the enormous marked tubs behind the counter, that Toledo is a taffy town. When it comes to the saltwater sweets, Boyd’s is still the top game in town. Not only do they boast 65(!) different flavors of taffy, they sell it for $3.29 a pound, or— get this— six cents a piece. And their wide selection of taffy includes Chicken ‘n Waffles, perhaps the most decadent flavor known to man. Also, Boyd’s Retro Candy features sugar-free flavors for the health conscious junk food junkie.
Here, at the end of things, you might think that taste might be a deciding factor, but full disclosure: it is the same brand of taffy at both locations, so don’t sweat it if you are on one side of the town or the other.
The bottom line is you won’t lose no matter where you go for sweets, but the new challenger has a little more work ahead of them if they want to be the tops of the taffy game in NW Ohio.
