Whether you can enjoy candies with sugar, or are diabetic, here are flavor combos and suggestions plus what you CAN'T use.
First off, here is what WON'T work with this machine:
* Skittles, Lemonheads or Boston Baked Beans
* Hot Tamales or Ike & Mikes
* Gummy Bears or Worms
* Gumballs or Round Candy
* Citrus Slices or Starburst
* Anything chewy, gummy or with too much cream
For best results, use no more than two pieces of candy (so it spins faster), but you can also cut/break candy into halves. One piece of candy on one side of the spinner, and two halves opposite that for better flavor combinations.
Good candy choices include Lifesavers (fruit, Hawaiian Fruit, Fruiteria, butter rum) but not their Mints (won't fluff), Werther's Original & Chocolate Hard Candies, Butterscotch, Cinnamon Discs, Peppermints, and Coffee (but not Nips). Brach's Soda Poppers (Root Beer, 7UP, Dr. Pepper, Orange Crush) work great, but only use one candy cut in half or it won't fluff right.
Here's what I've come up with so far:
* Orange Muffin: 1 Butterscoth + 1/2 Cinnamon + 1/2 Orange LS
* Turtle Frappe: 1 Hard Coffee + 1 Werther's Caramel Chocolate
* Raspberry Mocha: 1 Coffee + 1/2 Raspberry + 1/2 Werthers Choc.
* Chocolate Covered Strawberry: Strawberry LS + 1 Werthers Choc.
* Cherry Garcia: 1 Cherry LS + 1/2 Werthers Choc + 1/2 Vanilla
* Candy Apple: 1 Green Apple + 1 Cinnamon Disc
Your cotton candy will be fluffier with sugar-based candy, though sugar-free still works fine. Avoid candies that have too many non-sugar ingredients; heavy creams or actual peanut butter will cause it to not fluff.
For best results, DO NOT stir your cone in a circle around the spinner (like how you would stir a pot of soup). That only works on big machines, you'll be too close to your heat source and some of the candy will burn. Instead, do that for just a few seconds to get some fluff on your cone. Then wave the cone side to side a few inches above the spinner, while slowly spinning it in your hand (like the way you twist your fork with spaghetti on it). That twisting will pull fluff towards your cone; you can even raise the cone a few inches every so often to pull more fluffed candy up and out of the bowl. Mostly you want to keep it away from the hot spinner.
This is a really fun product, and you're given many ways to experiment with flavors. Definitely get your hands on one.