We’d like to say a big THANK YOU to all our customers, and we wish you all the best this holiday season.

Look for us on page 22 of the November 2008 issue of Every Day with Rachel Ray. Our political candies are featured along with several other treats for the campaign season.

Kai’s Candy Company has an international relations policy we can get behind. They use a Japanese hand-rolling technique to put hilarious cartoon renditions of Obama and McCain on their Political Hard Candies.

Unfortunately, due to scheduling difficulties with our supplier, we won’t have new candies in time for Halloween. But we’ll be bringing you other fun and unique candies soon!

There’s growing speculation that John McCain will announce tomorrow that Joe Lieberman will be his running mate. As far as we’re concerned at Kai’s Candy Company, that would be great news. Our first batch of McCain lollipops didn’t come out looking like McCain, but as fate would have it, they happen to look like Lieberman. We didn’t get McCain’s wrinkles just right in the first batch, so we made a second batch with a new, properly-wrinkled design. But the wrinkles on those ‘pops from the first batch just happen to look like Joe’s.

So if Lieberman ends up on the ticket, then our McCain candy sets will feature a “new” Lieberman VP ‘pop too!

Those reviews started a small wave of follow-on posts from NPR, Serious Eats, Ben Smith’s blog at Politico, Scanner, Consumatron, The Times UK, and - my favorite - Comedy Central’s Indecision 2008 blog: “Now you can satisfy your [Obama] lust by wrapping your hands around the big B.O. and licking his sweet face… his lollipop face, that is.”

Now that we have complete sets of candies for both Obama and McCain, we’ll work on getting some attention from both the liberal and conservative ends of the blogosphere.

Here are the illustrations for all the designs in our political candy sets:

Illustrations of each of our political candy designs

We were able to lower our costs slightly with our new candies, which means we’ve lowered the price. We’ve knocked $1 off the price of the gift sets, so now they’re $13.95. We’ve also introduced a “mini-set”, that contain 2 lollipops and 5 small candies, for $3.95.

Our political candies were a big hit at Newport’s Black Ships Festival this past weekend. Our table was located right at the entrance to the Brick Market Place, which turned out to be a mixed blessing, as I spent half my time as an Information Desk - “where’s the nearest bathroom?”, “where are the sumo wrestlers?”, etc, etc. But it was no problem - being a native Newporter helped, as I knew where everything was.

On Sunday we were lucky to have Miyuki working just 30 ft. away. Miyuki works at Disney’s Epcot Center, and is the only woman in the world trained as a Japanese candy artist. When the day was over, Kai and I had a nice conversation with her, and she was happy to see us bringing kumi ame Japanese candies to the US for the first time.

A depiction of the Black Ships, which "opened" Japan to trade and diplomatic relations with the United States, ending two centuries of Japanese isolationism.

The Black Ships Festival offers a variety of events that emphasize both Japanese art and culture. Events include Origami, Martial Arts, and a Japanese Tea Ceremony. A highlight will be the Annual Festival of Drums, featuring the Matsuriza Taiko Group.

The Black Ships Festival commemorates the historic achievements of Commodore Matthew C. Perry, USN, of Newport, Rhode Island. The “Black Ships,” or “Kurofune,” refers to the Japanese term for foreign ships which, with one exception, were excluded from Japan for two hundred years until 1854. Commodore Perry negotiated the Treaty of Kanagawa in 1854, the first treaty between the United States and Japan, thus ending two centuries of Japanese isolationism. This year the Black Ships Festival celebrates over 150 years of the signing of the treaty, which brought the two countries together as trading partners.

I grew up in Newport so it’s a nice opportunity to see family and old friends too. The Black Ships Festival is one of Newport’s top summer attractions and is a big success every year. We are the first company to import Japanese kumi ame (rolled candy) to the United States, so we’re looking forward to introducing our candies to everyone visiting the Festival.

We will be outside Oriental Arts, Ltd. in Newport’s Brick Market Place. We’ll be in the heart of the Festival, as many of the main events will take place at the Brick Market, including a Sumo “meet and greet”, tea tasting, a demonstration of sword techniques, an anime presentation, and, of course, ninjas!

If you’re in Newport for the Festival, keep an eye out for us from noon - 4pm on Saturday July 19, and Sunday July 20. You might even have a chance to meet Kai.

Our McCain and Obama lollipops, as well as the Campaign 2008 small hard candies, are made with the Japanese art of kumi ame (rolled candy). This is a form of candy making that has never been mastered by candy makers in the United States (or, at least, after extensive research, we weren’t able to find anyone who could do it). Even in Japan, it is a dying art form, as there are very few candy makers left who have the skills to make candies like these. As with many other handicrafts, the demands of the global marketplace favor automated, high production volume over the unique qualities of hand-crafted work, causing skills such as kumi ame making to slowly die out.

The kumi ame making process starts in a way that is similar to “crystal cut” or rock candy - boiling sugar and a variety of other ingredients, as well as food coloring. The real talent comes in the next step - as the candy starts to cool and solidify, the candy makers have a very limited time to shape the different colored pieces into the design they wish to make. They form the design within a wide, fat, cylinder shaped candy. After the design is done, they then roll the candy so that it gradually becomes narrower and longer (it’s similar to rolling a piece of clay back and forth between the palms of your hands). This long and narrow candy is then sliced up into individual pieces. For the lollipops, the sticks then need to be inserted. And remember, this all has to be done before the candy hardens!

It is our belief that the internet is the perfect place to introduce the art of kumi ame to the United States. Through the internet we hope to reach everyone in the country who appreciates unusual, fun, and flavorful candies that are unlike the mass produced candies you find elsewhere. For Halloween we will be expanding our kumi ame offerings, and soon we’ll start offering other kinds of fun and tasty candies too - from the US, Japan, and other parts of the world!

Welcome to the Kai’s Candy Company blog! We plan to use our blog to keep you updated on our eternal quest to seek out the world’s coolest candies. Kai is not an official member of our 3 person company. But he provided the inspiration for starting our business. Kai is my 7 year old son. My family and I spent some time in Japan last year, and he was crazy for the very cool candies you can get in Japan that are unlike any candies here in the US. Candies that look like exact replicas of Pokemon characters. Candies with all kinds of intriguing flavors. Candies that look exactly like sushi (but certainly don’t taste like it!). The Japanese have a tradition of hand-crafting really wonderful hard candies that is something of a lost art here in the US.

After we returned from Japan, he kept asking for these candies, and we looked around, figuring someone must be importing them. But no one is. So we decided to give it a try ourselves. We’re starting with a small set of candies we commissioned from a candy maker in Japan who uses the centuries-old traditional kumi ame (rolled candy) technique for making candies by hand. This particular set of candies doesn’t look “Japanese” though - they’re candies for the current US Presidential election campaign. We have Obama candies, McCain candies, and others - take a look!

We’re really excited to grow our business. Over time we hope to steadily expand our selection of fun, unique, and tasty candies from around the world!