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July 2005Thursday, July 21, 2005
Mike and Ike Orange ‘n CreamName: Mike and Ike Orange ‘n Cream Mike and Ikes are made by the Just Born candy company. They make such love-‘em-or-hate-‘em products as Marshmallow Peeps, Hot Tamales and now Goldenberg Peanut Chews. Now, this review probably comes a little late as I’ve found no mention of these on their website (that’s what I get for shopping at the 99 Cent Only Store). They’re a special edition of Mike and Ikes in Orange ‘n Cream. Think of a chilly orange creamsicle. Then think of orange aspergum. It’s somewhere in between. Don’t get me wrong, I think Mike and Ikes are great. Well, I’ve loved Hot Tamales for years. They were like the original Jelly Bellys because they actually put lots of flavor into the candies instead of those bland jelly beans that were on the market before. In fact, Just Born makes a line of Teenee Beanees. Mike and Ike also put out a limited flavor last year called Root Beer which I liked in principle but not in practice. However, Just Born did the right thing by making the hotter version of Hot Tamales. So, to sum up, don’t buy really old candy that’s been discontinued. They probably stopped making it for a reason. Rating - 4 out of 10 POSTED BY Cybele AT 9:52 am Candy • Review • Just Born • Discontinued • Jelly Candy • 4-Benign • United States • 99 Cent Only Store • Wednesday, July 20, 2005
Canadian TreatsName: Chocolates made with Icewine Name: Maple Chocolate Truffles My husband recently went to Vancouver and picked up these Canadian themed candies. The truffles are maple flavored and the Icewine chocolates are in the shape of maple leaves. First, as far as I’m concerned a chocolate truffle is defined as the following: a soft chocolate made by combining good quality chocolate with cream and butter. It melts at a lower temperature than chocolate and is therefore extremely fatty and tasty. Chocolate truffles are usually covered in chocolate, so as to contain the melty insides (some places will just roll them in cocoa, but then they’re prone to melting and sticking together). It’s hot right now in Los Angeles and at eighty degrees inside the house, the innards of these truffles should have been more yielding. As it was, they were more the solid consistency of say, a frango. Basically just another flavored and rather solid chocolate inside a chocolate shell. That said, I think maple is a great flavor. It’s woodsy and sweet and reminds me of, well, maple. There’s not much else like maple. These were very mapley and extremely sweet. I think if I were inventing these I’d keep the center throat-searingly sweet but coat them in dark chocolate as a little respite. The chocolate was good quality but not excellent. As a gift from Canada, I think they were great, but it’s not something I’ll seek out next time I go up north.
Next up was a long box of chocolates with a tray of little maple leaf-shaped molded chocoaltes with a filling flavored with Icewine. I didn’t know what icewine was so out to the internet I go (and by the way, the website listed on the box is um, bad). Turns out icewine is made from grapes left on the vine through the winter (so maybe it’s really raisin wine?).
The idea of a cream center flavored with this sweet white wine is great. The chocolate shell was nice, a crisp milky chocolate. The center was not too large (sometimes a large center that’s really sweet kind of ruins the ratio of chocolate to filling) and smelled vaguely of fruit. However, there was something a little off. I tasted the fruity wine notes distinctly, but I also tasted plastic. I’m not sure if it was the tray that they were packaged in or what, but they were a little off. I ate them anyway, but didn’t find it a good combo. Ratings - Chocolates made with Icewine - 5 out of 10 POSTED BY Cybele AT 10:03 am Candy • Review • Chocolate • 5-Pleasant • 6-Tempting • Canada • Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Nestle Toll House Candy BarsName: Nestle Toll House Candy Bars If you’ve got a jones for sugar and something a little more satisfying than a candy bar, this might be the thing. Inside is a dense, crumbly cookie bar topped with caramel then a few chocolate chips and all enrobed in sweet milk chocolate. The cookie part of the treat was least impressive. Because it was so thick it lacked that cookie feel and tasted more like a blondie and had no strong flavor of its own besides sweet. The caramel was non-existent, as it’d been absorbed by the cookie part and had no distinct chewy-ness to it. The occassional chocolate chip was a nice addition as it provided some actual flavor. The milk chocolate coating is all sweet and milky, but no real chocolate taste. What makes a Toll House cookie is the balance of the sweet and bland cookie to the complex pop of the dark chips. There’s none of that here. However, I still enjoyed the bar and found it rather satisfying. If I had anything to say about it, I think I’d suggest leaving the caramel out and maybe making the cookie just a smidge saltier. I’ll give the brownie bar a try to see if the flavor balance on that one is bit better. I’ve also seen that Hershey started selling cookies a while back (I’ve had the York ones and enjoyed them quite a bit) so I’ll have to check those out. Rating - 6 out of 10 POSTED BY Cybele AT 3:42 pm Candy • Review • Nestle • Caramel • Chocolate • Cookie • Discontinued • 6-Tempting • United States • 99 Cent Only Store • Gummi SushiName: Mikakuto Osushi Gummy This has got to be one of the cutest candies I have ever seen. It’s gummi sushi. The fish is little fruit-flavored gummies, the rice is marshmallow and there’s a little chocolate goo inside the marshmallow (I’m not sure what that’s supposed to be).
Inside the box are eight individually sealed pieces. There’s a huge variety. As far as I can tell: a grape octopus, a pineapple roe, a raspberry tuna, a green apple something (looked kinda like edamame, but you don’t usually have that on rice), a berry shrimp ... I think that’s about it. I’m guessing the variety differs depending on random chance. There’s a little guide on the inside of the lid ... in Japanese, but at least it shows you all the varieties.
The gummi part is very fragrant, soft and fresh. The marshmallow is a really nice complement to the tart gummi, but the chocolate center just kind of ruins it for me. As a gift or stocking stuffer, this is great. It’s novel and well packaged (easy to wrap) and the images on it are really cute. It’s a little expensive, but I’d be willing to buy something like this for the right person. For just eating, I’ll probably stick to regular gummi bears. Interesting fact from wrapper: no MSG! Rating - 7 out of 10 (because of the price and funky chocolate filling) POSTED BY Cybele AT 8:06 am Candy • Review • UHA • Gummi Candy • Marshmallow • 7-Worth It • Japan • Monday, July 18, 2005
Wonka’s OompasName: Oompas Now, when I was a kid there was a candy called Oompa-Loompas and they were nothing like this. Well, they were something like this - they came in a bag and were about the same size as these but they were like a mash-up of M&Ms and Reese’s Pieces (this is all a vague recollection, correct me if I’m wrong). When you bit into the little disks (like fat, large, plain M&Ms) the top layer was peanut butter cream and the bottom was milk chocolate and it was all covered in a bright candy shell. Wonka discontinued those pretty quickly. Now we’ve got the new Oompas which are pretty much jumbo Skittles. Oompas are brightly colored and about the size of garbanzo beans (about two or three times the size of Skittles). Where most of us eat two or three Skittles at a time, I’d probably only eat one of these at a time. Thus losing out on one of the great things of Skittles which is flavor combos - you put a lemon and lime in your mouth at the same time. Generally with Skittles consumption I spill the bag out on my desk and separate them and eat pairs of comparable flavors - citrus with citrus, although lemon can be combined with grape or strawberry, etc. Okay, enough with the Skittles comparisons. Oompas come in six flavors: Green Apple, Cherry, Lemon, Orange, Grape and Strawberry. What’s especially interesting about eating these is that they’re very sweet when you start to chew and they get more sour and zesty as you go (which is the opposite in most chews). Though I don’t care for the intense sweet start, these have a nice finish and are less grainy that some other chews. Think of them more like Starbursts than Skittles. My thing about these assorted flavor packages of stuff is that I invariably only like a few of the flavors. I don’t care for the cherry at all, though it does have a strong flavor. I didn’t like the strawberry or green apple either, and again, that’s personal preference, I’m not saying they were bad. What I did like was the orange and lemon and the grape was just okay. If I liked the majority of the flavors, I think I’d be able to give this a higher rating. As it is, they’re pretty good and I wouldn’t turn them down if you put a big bowl in front of me and I could discreetly pick out the flavors I like. Interesting fact from the wrapper: made in New Zealand. UPDATE: Tracy commented that she can’t find an image of the original wrapper. Here’s one from Imaginary World of one version of the wapper and here’s another. UPDATED UPDATE (4/17/07): For lovers of the original Peanut Butter Oompas, you might want to try the Easter M&M Peanut Butter Speck-Tacular Eggs for a more consistent ratio. Rating: 7 out of 10 POSTED BY Cybele AT 10:21 am Candy • Review • Nestle • Chews • Discontinued • 7-Worth It • United States • |
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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