Colt's Bolts

Colt's Bolts
Nashville Airport, $1.99

On the one hand, a Colt's Bolt is a dressed-up Reese's Peanut Butter Cup; on the other, it's a country song wrapped in foil.  

On the label of each confection is a 1980's glamor shot of blonde in a red power suit, company owner Mackenzie Colt.  A teenage wife and mother with talent and ambition, Colt was a regular at open mic nights at the Ramada Inn lounge near her St. Louis home, where she was discovered by Buck Owens.  After touring as Owens' protege, she moved to Nashville for a six-season stint as a scantily-clad "Hee Haw Honey." 

When she aged out of her Hee Haw role, Colt had a Plan C waiting in the wings:  a lifelong passion for baking and confectionery.  In 1984 she began to combine chocolate, peanut butter, and roasted almonds into candy cups she called Colt's Bolts.  At first she mixed all of the ingredients in her own Cuisinart and wrapped the finished cups in the foil left over from chocolate bars she melted down for her coating.  All that had to change after Colt's Bolts won the Fancy Food Show's Outstanding Confection Award and a Japanese distributor ordered 60,000 pieces.