Sweet Success Pushes the Limits of Taste : Candy: Gummi ‘worms’ hide in crumbled chocolate cookie ‘dirt.’ S.N.O.T. drips out of a plastic nose. Mouth Muck makes you foam at the mouth. Tasting good isn’t good enough at the confection convention.

Gummi “worms” hide in crumbled chocolate cookie “dirt.” Mouth Muck makes you foam at the mouth. S.N.O.T. drips out of a plastic nose.

Is there nothing too gross for kids to buy?

“No. Well, there probably is, but I don’t know what it is,” said Lori Bassett of Sherman Confections Inc.

Her display at the American Wholesale Marketers Assn.’s 36th National Winter Convention and Candy Exposition included Super Nauseating Obnoxious Treat, sold in a nose-shaped container. Sherman also makes Spew, which foams and stains the spewer’s mouth, and Mad Dawg Super Spew Bubble Gum.

Then there’s the high-tech option: bubble gum in plastic compact discs, CD players and boom boxes; toy beepers and cellular phones with candy inside.

Add the more straightforward Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, M&M;’s, Snickers, Hershey’s Kisses, Butterfingers and Mounds and you have a fraction of the sweet treats at the convention that is the world’s biggest candy shop.

It’s clear that tasting good isn’t good enough for kids today.

Amurol Confection Co. sells a viscous, neon-colored liquid in a clear squeeze bottle shaped like a lava lamp. The display trumpets, “Lava Lick: A great taste eruption!”

There’s Gobble-D-Goo, day-glo goo in a glue bottle.

Leaf Inc. sells Mouth Muck, bubble gum balls that make you foam at the mouth.

Candy makers have a word for sweets that make people say, “Eeuuwwww, gross.”

No, not revolting.

Interactive.

Kids want to play with their candy.

“When I was in Europe, they had excrement-shaped candy, and it was selling like hot cakes,” said John Schultens of Triple C. Inc., a Canadian distributor. “They also had a product called Barf.”

Triple C. doesn’t sell those.

“We actually have certain standards,” Schultens said.

There’s a lot of fizzy candy out there, too. Magic Fizz popping candy. Cherry Bomb lollipops. Remember Pop Rocks?

“I haven’t seen them for years,” said Denise Perryman, a buyer for Wal-mart Stores Inc.

However inventive these new candies may be, tradition remains the best seller. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups is the national favorite, followed by Snickers and M&M;’s Plain and Peanut brands.

That’s because candy is mostly consumed by grown-ups. And confection consumption in the United States is growing, association President Lawrence Graham told the convention.

Sales figures may favor more sedate products, but the convention’s big draw was clear: The toys.

Like Roller Pop: “Candy N’ Powder that PAINTS your Mouth!” Or necklaces to hold your half-eaten lollipops. Or candy whistles.

Mike Giblin, a Uniconfis Corp. vice president, unwrapped a lollipop slide whistle--watermelon--popped it in his mouth and played a tune. He unfolded the wrapper to point out another feature, saying: “Ih comsh with sheet mushic.”

Uniconfis also offers Pen Pops. “This is where the craze starts,” Giblin said. He picked one up and took off the end to reveal a ballpoint pen point.

“Usually you’re writing like this,” he said. “When the teacher’s not looking”--he slid a button up the side.

The spherical top split open and a lollipop popped up.