Runts Theater Box Candy, 5 oz

Runts are the small, crunchy fruit-shaped candies Ferrara has been making since the early 1980s, and the shapes are half the appeal: each piece is molded to look like the fruit it tastes of, so a handful can be sorted by sight before anyone eats it. The mix has been reworked more than once over the decades, with lime, cherry, watermelon and tropical flavors coming and going, so treat the flavor list printed on the box in front of you as the authority rather than any list from memory.

The banana is the piece people argue about. It is the most recognized shape in the assortment and the one that gets picked out first, whether that means hoarded or handed off to someone else. Under the hard shell sits a compressed center that breaks with a snap closer to a tablet candy than a boiled sweet.

The 5 oz theater box is the old concession-counter format: flat, pocketable, easy to pass down a row, and an easy fill for party bags and pinatas.