The AV Club’s Taste Test series is one of my very favourite features on that site — giddy, irreverent food writing about precisely the sort of preposterous snacks that I will invariably consider eating whenever I’m in an American supermarket.

Yes, it’s lost something since Internet Eating Sensation Dave Chang left (a painful decision, I assume, but one that had to be made if he wanted to have a functioning pancreas at the age of thirty) but it’s still eminently readable and even enlightening.

Today’s entry takes the Taste Test project to a whole new level, however, sending the valiant team of Genevieve Koski, Josh Modell, Kyle Ryan and Emily Winthrow to the National Confectioners’ Association convention in Chicago, with its bountiful free samples and freakish experiments in brand expansion that will never, ever make it out of the test-marketing stage.

Honey-flavoured Jelly Bellies! Truffle Crisp 3 Musketeers bars! Chocolate-covered peeps! Really, if you care about candy at all, you’ll want to read this. Forewarned is forearmed, after all.