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CANDY RATINGS

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July 2005

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Hershey’s Take 5

Name: Take Five
Brand: Hershey’s
Place Purchased: 99 Cent Only Store
Price: 33 cents
Size: 1.5 oz
Calories per ounce: 147
Type: Chocolate/Caramel/Peanut butter

If I were to create the perfect candy bar, a great snack bar that would give me energy and taste good, it would contain the following: chocolate, pretzels, caramel and nuts. It’d be a great mix of simple carbs, fat and protein so as not to overwhelm the bloodstream with too much sugar. In my world it’d be a super turtle with a pretzel base, chewy caramel then pecans all covered in semi-sweet chocolate.

On a visit to the Chocolate Homeworld, er, sorry, Chocolate World in Hershey on New Year’s Day, this was the sample they gave us at the end of the ride. I quickly bargained with the other people in our party for theirs.

Hershey’s is dang close with the Take 5 bar. It’s got a pretzel center covered with peanut butter then a layer of caramel, a few chopped peanuts and then it’s all enrobed in milk chocolate. (Maybe I got that order wrong, it’s hard to tell.) The proportions are solid and the pretzel has got a great salty kick. If anything, the milk chocolate is a little sweet, but the salt on the pretzels and the slight saltiness of the peanut butter (which tastes like the center of a Reese’s ... maybe sweeter) balances well. If it only came in dark chocolate I might be in heaven.

The packaging is good, there are two little pieces in a tray and sealed in a the plastic packaging so they stay intact and are easy to slide out. I really wish they could figure out how to make this without hydrogenated oils, though it’s pretty far down on the list of ingredients and doesn’t show up on the nutrition part. For now I’ll keep buying it when I need a little boost during the day. It’s especially good with a morning cup of coffee, as I’m having the second piece right now.

As far as I’m concerned this bar could have lots of versions. A pecan/maple version, a pecan/dark chocolate turtle one, maybe white chocolate and walnuts or macadamias (not really for me, but a solid combo - I know that a white version of this same bar exists but I haven’t seen it yet) then another version with mint cookies and almonds.

Rating - 9 out of 10 (just make a dark version or a pecan one!)

See also: The Message Whore’s review (both milk chocolate & white)

Take 5UPDATE 9/2/2008: Sometime when I wasn’t looking (I photographed it last summer again) the Hershey’s Take 5 left the list of chocolate candy bars and joined the growing list of Hershey’s Real Mockolate

The package now says: made with chocolate & pretzels & caramel & peanuts & peanut butter. That “made with chocolate” part means that the coating may contain chocolate, but it has other additives such as vegetable oils that mean that it’s not pure chocolate. The actual chocolate as an ingredient comes far down on the list as the number 6 item, after vegetable oils and high fructose corn sweetener and before nonfat milk (you can imagine there’s not that much milk in there).

Take 5

The bars actually still look quite fetching. Little rather rectangular lumps with a pleasant sweet & peanutty scent.

Mine were exceptionally fresh, the pretzel was good and crunchy, a nice salty complement to the sweet coating. The coating didn’t have much flavor but did add a creamy texture.

This one was passably good, but I’ve had others in the past few months (I picked them out of a mix of snack size in a bowl at the office a couple of times) and I didn’t realize why they were kind of empty tasting for what I remembered. I just thought they were stale ... turns out that they’re just not designed to be good any longer.

Hershey’s still has an opportunity to reverse this and make it real chocolate again.

Product: Hershey’s Take 5
Previous Review: 7/13/2005
Change: milk chocolate coating is replaced with a fake chocolate coating (which contains chocolate but also other vegetable oils).
Result: For now they’re off my list but still get a passing rating of 5 out of 10.

Related Candies

  1. Revisit: Take 5, Sunkist Fruit Gems & Snickers Almond
  2. Head to Head: Twisted vs Take 5
  3. Take 5 Chocolate Cookie
  4. Take 5 Peanut Butter
  5. White Chocolate Take 5

POSTED BY Cybele AT 10:04 am     CandyReviewHershey'sCaramelChocolateCookiePeanuts9-YummyUnited States99 Cent Only Store

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Hershey’s S’mores

Name: S’mores
Brand: Hershey’s
Place Purchased: 99 Cent Only Store
Price: 33 cents
Size: 1.65 oz
Calories per ounce: 145
Type: Chocolate Candy/Marshmallow

To follow up on the earlier review of the Cup-O-Gold I figured I’d contrast that with Hershey’s S’mores bar. The S’mores bar is marshmallow on top of a graham cracker crust covered in chocolate. If you recall the S’mores most of us have made, they were a toasted marshmallow (or two), a few squares of Hershey’s chocolate between two graham crackers. What was great about that combo was that you’d freshly toasted the marshmallow so it was retardedly hot in the middle and of cuorse melted the chocolate and the ratio being the dominance of the graham crackers (which also kept your fingers from being burned).

In this bar Hershey’s has the ratios all askew. By far the dominant feature of this bar is the marshmallow center. It’s not a traditional white marshmallow but a slightly tan version that seems a tad nougaty ... perhaps they’re trying to make it taste toasted. Much sweeter than it needed to be and lacked that meringue feeling that a good marshmallow has. There no graham cracker here. Instead the crust seems to be a crisco and cookie bits amalgamation. Then it’s covered in very sweet milk chocolate.

Too sweet, not enough toasty flavor and the graham cracker thing was just plain wrong. Move along, nothing to taste here.

See also: Taste the World’s Review and Writers/Artists Snacking at Work’s Review

Rating: 4 out of 10

POSTED BY Cybele AT 5:09 pm     CandyReviewHershey'sChocolateCookieDiscontinuedMarshmallow4-BenignUnited States99 Cent Only Store

Cup-O-Gold

Name: Cup-O-Gold
Brand: Hoffman’s (made by Adams & Brooks)
Place Purchased: 99 cent store
Price: 33 cents
Size: 1.25 oz
Calories per ounce: 168
Type: Chocolate/Marshmallow

Okay, I’ll admit I bought this in an effort to diversify my offerings on the site. I like the idea of supporting some smaller candy companies, and this one is made right here in Los Angeles. I didn’t think I’d like it. I’m not that keen on marshmallow as a rule. I love toasted marshmallows, but for some reason I don’t think of those as candy. Most other marshmallow candies are just to sticky sweet. The only one to date that I like (and buy regularly) is See’s Scotchmallow - which is a marshmallow top on a disc of caramel covered in chocolate. Their mallow has a bit of a honey note to it, which complements the caramel well.

Anyway, this little delightful cup is made with milk chocolate with bits of coconut mixed in and crushed of almonds. Inside that is an incredibly light and foamy marshmallow creamy filling. I also liked the package. The graphics are bold and smooth and appealing.

The complex flavors really blend together well. The bits in the chocolate offset the sweetness of the chocolate and the foamy center gives a smooth texture and lightness to it all. The thing is, I’m still not sure if I’ll buy these again. Maybe if I get a jones for a scotchmallow and I’m not in the mall.

Rating: 7 out of 10

POSTED BY Cybele AT 9:56 am     CandyReviewAdams & BrooksChocolateCoconutMarshmallow7-Worth ItUnited States99 Cent Only Store

Monday, July 11, 2005

Lorena Vaque Tona

Name: Vaque Tona (Chocolate and Caramel)
Brand: Lorena
Place Purchased: Big Lots
Price: 33 cents
Size: 1.05 oz
Calories per ounce: Unknown
Type: Frosting?

In an attempt to be more international, I picked up these curiosities last week at the Big Lots, after being sent there by a blog posting about ice cream toppings.

Now, I know I said that buying candy at dollar stores is scary. And I don’t think this review should dissaude you from that notion.

I could not get an accurate translation of Vaque Tona on the web. I tried both Spanish and Portuguese (the manufacturer is in Brazil) but didn’t get much out of it. So I’ve decided these are called Cowbells. I think that’s what they’re supposed to look like. Unless they’re udders.

What they are is a little tube that ends in a mesh dome. You press up on the plunger inside the tube to dispense lickable goo ... something akin to frosting. You can suck it right from the plunger or smash the little ring into it and lick it off of that.

The two flavors I picked up were chocolate caramel and caramel.

 

It’s basically frosting. A cutesy delivery device for frosting. And that’d be okay if it was actually good frosting. Frosting isn’t that hard to make, so it’s beyond me why these can’t be good. First, they’re rather stale tasting. Sure, they’re sweet, but the chocolate one doesn’t really have a cocoa punch to it, more of a cardboard taste to it. It’s mostly smooth and creamy except for a plethora of little chunks of what I think are sugar. They don’t seem to be distributed consistently enough to be a feature, but they were both like that. The caramel one was very strong in its flavor, which I think is kind of an artificial vanilla flavor.

I’m gonna have to give this one a resounding thumbs down. Though the packaging and concept is sound, the execution is, well, unappealing.

Rating: 3 out of 10

POSTED BY Cybele AT 4:25 pm     CandyReview3-UnappealingBrazil

RealAudio and PodCast for Good Food

If you missed the broadcast of KCRW’s Good Food with Evan Kleinman on Saturday morning, it’s now available at their website:

Listen here with RealAudio

or

Download the podcast here.

You’ll find my segment starting at 34:20 (though they’re all great fun, especially the drive-in food segment before mine).

POSTED BY Cybele AT 2:54 pm     NewsRadio Interviews

Page 4 of 6 pages ‹ First  < 2 3 4 5 6 > 

Meticulously photographed and documented reviews of candy from around the world. And the occasional other sweet adventures. Open your mouth, expand your mind.

 

 

 

 

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