50 Reasons to Love Toronto: No. 44, The Lightbox serves Milk Duds

The assets of the Lightbox, the new home of the Toronto International Film Festival, are many: the intelligent movie selection, the three comfy theatres (the two on the uppermost level are merely all right), the high-tech projectors, and, for post-movie debates, the tasteful bar with a bird’s-eye view of couples strolling on King West. The long-standing relationship between a good movie experience and excellent snack food is not lost on the people who run the snack bar, either. The popcorn is topped with real butter, the coffee is fresh, the staff are genuinely perky. The gooey jewel in the concession stand’s crown is a throwback: Hershey’s Milk Duds, the little wads of candy that, perhaps thanks to a dentist-led conspiracy, are now as rare as a new Terrence Malick movie. For the uninitiated, Milk Duds are chocolate-covered blobs of awesomely thick caramel that glues itself to your molars and requires ages of pleasurably frustrating sucking and tongue action to dislodge. If movie-going had a taste, that’d be it.