Name: Narbles
Brand: Ferrara Pan
Place Purchased: Sav-On
Price: $.69
Size: 2.17 ounces
Calories per ounce: 97
Type: Chew

I had no idea Ferrara Pan came out with a new candy. They’re best known for Lemonheads, which are the best lemon hard candies ever. I figured these would be like Skittles.

They’re about the same size, maybe a little larger but a bit harder feeling. There’s a candy shell with a bit of flavor to it and then a chewy center. The center doesn’t taste like anything at all, just sweet and the shell is tart and sweet and crunchy. The cool thing about the shell is if you bite it right, you can get just the shell to come off, which is where the flavor is. The center isn’t quite a gummy, not quite a jelly bean. It’s hard to describe and not really that good. If they really wanted to make everyone sit up and notice their first new candy line in 40 years, a combination between a Skittle type chew and the Lemonhead’s flavored shell would have been awesome.

Sadly, they did not consult me.

The flavor variety is nice: orange, lemon, grape, green apple and cherry but the colors are a little off. The grape is not purple as shown on the package but more like a navy blue. The colors were also not consistent or even, which is too bad because I’ve always liked the way Lemonheads looked.  The name is cool, like marbles but with an N, only I don’t know what the N stands for. It also feels like the candy is trying to hard to be cool, calling them “slammers” and positioning them as “awesome” and “get narbleized”. But their website is a little odd when you click on “where to buy” it says you can’t find them in stores for your state ... but I did!

If Ferrara Pan wants these to be a big hit, I really think they need to add that Lemonhead layer, you know, the one under the candy shell that’s a little grainy and bursting with sour goodness. That fills a hole in the fruit chew market and would put these up on the list of candies that I’d buy. It’d not only make the candy tastier, it’d set it apart from other sours and chews because of the interactive element of waiting for the sour layer or trying to peel it with your teeth. I know it’s probably more expensive to pack that much flavor into them, but at over two ounces per package, I’d be willing to settle for 1.5 ounces of really tasty candy. For now, I’ll just keep picking up Skittles.

Rating - 5 out of 10

Chocolate Obsession is on board with the “candy season” idea. There are some great sales out there (I found some good things at Sav-On yesterday on the sale table, including 10 cents for York Peppermint Patties in the shape of snowflakes and filled raspberry hard candies for 49 cents instead of $2.49).

Lake Champlain is having a pretty amazing sale that’s not just holiday themed stuff, you can get their 5 Star Bars for $14.40 instead of $24.00. I might have to order that up, or drop lots of hints for my upcoming birthday. Hint, hint.

Godiva is also posting their “Chocolate Covered Sale” items at up to 50% off. Not my favorite brand, but I certainly wouldn’t turn up my nose at it.

I also shopped at Cost Plus World Market yesterday and found that all of their holiday candies were 50% off (even the Hanukkah stuff, even though we’re only half-way through). Much of it had been picked over, but they had some nice tins of candy that you can still bring as hostess gifts for New Years or of course just snuggled down with yourself.

Crate and Barrel has some stellar mark downs on their candy as well, you can pick it up in the stores or order online. 18 ounces of Mint Cookie Joys for $4.50? Buy a dozen! I loooooove Mint Cookie Joys.

No sign of sales on Dean & Deluca or Zabars and Williams-Sonoma doesn’t have the treats on their site at the moment. Look sharp, there are some great deals out there. Post if you’ve found something!

I saw a news item that said that Starbucks is pulling Chantico, a scant year since it was introduced.

It may not be completely gone:

Audrey Lincoff, a spokeswoman for world’s largest specialty coffee retailer, said the company will start selling two new chocolate drinks in mid-February, but would not provide any further details Wednesday.

I actually liked the stuff, but my positive review earlier this year was hardly enough to keep it on the menu. I’ve had the drink a total of three times, I don’t go to Starbucks very often (even though they are everywhere). I try to frequent the independent chains, but I would actually patronize them more if their fair trade coffee was always one of the drip coffee options.

Name: Donutz
Brand: Wonka (Nestle)
Place Purchased: Sav-On
Price: $.69
Size: 1.6 ounces
Calories per ounce: 138
Type: Chocolate

It took me a long time to figure out what a chocolate donut has to do with Wonka (the books or movies), but after mulling it a bit it came to me that there’s a line in Veruca Salt’s song “I Want It Now” in the 1972 version of the movie:

Veruca: I want a bean feast!

Mr. Salt: Oh, one of those

Veruca: Cream buns and doughnuts and fruitcake with no nuts So good you could go nuts.

Yeah, that’s a stretch, but there you have it, the donut Veruca was insisting on.

It’s okay, the Wonka Donutz has as little to do with the bakery donuts as they do the movie. They’re donut shaped. There’s no bready, fried dough in there at all. It’s chocolate, through and through except for the fun little colored nonpareils. But whew, these are chocolatey.

The Donutz is a plump, milk chocolate hoop with a firm, creamy chocolate truffle-like center. The outside chocolate is mild and sweet, like that found in a Nestle Crunch bar. A little on the grainy side, but pleasant. The inside of the candy is a sweet and melty filling of chocolate with a slight rum aroma to it. The sprinkles (half of which are guaranteed to not make it into your mouth) provide a fun little crunch.

I wasn’t really that interseted in this candy until Alexander, a reader, sent me his own review. Overall I was expecting something fudgier and sweeter (which would have been a bad thing). Instead it was just very mildly chocolatey and mildly sweet with some textures to mix it up a bit. I would probably eat it if you put it in front of me, but I don’t see myself buying them unless I’m going for a Wonka theme thing. This candy bar was made in Brazil.

Rating - 6 out of 10

My site designers/programmers Susie & Travis (from Hop Studios) sent me a bag o’ treats a few months ago from their trip to Singapore. I don’t really have any specs on the candies since it was a mix, so here’s a sample of what they looked like:

It took me a while too steel myself for trying so many mysterious things, but I’ve finally plowed through most of the treats. Some were just variations on the candies we have available here, different kinds of mints (chewy, hard, soft), coffee hard toffees, ginger chews (made in Indonesia) and of course fruit hard candies. Some were rather normal, based on the ubiquitous citrus fruits but a good number were curious.

Durian and Tamarind top the list of scary candies. I’ve heard horror stories of Durian, which is rather common throughout Southeast Asia. It’s a sizeable and formidable looking fruit and I’m told an acquired taste for outsiders (and some who’ve grown up there have never been fond of it). It’s a divisive fruit, actually, as so many people can’t stand it because of its rather pungent odor, it’s not allowed on public transportation in many large cities.

The durian hard candy is probably just as much an acquired taste and not one I’m likely to accomplish. This hard candy tastes okay at first, a little sweet, a little tart and then rather like boiled shallots. Yes, onions or garlic or perhaps a little like Slim Jims.

The Tamarind, which I’ve never had and is surprising as I live in Los Angeles and it’s all over the place, was actually nice. It’s a little toasty, rather ordinary after all being so worked up about trying that.

The most curious one was the Creamy Corn. It tasted just like it sounds. Like creamed corn. Only in a hard toffee instead of running on my plate into my fried chicken. I have to say that it was very faithful to the name, and I ate the whole thing and was fascinated by it, but I can’t say I enjoyed it. It’s rather like eating the Buttered Popcorn Jelly Bellies. It’s a novelty, not a pleasure. At least not for me.

Mango was actually really nice, better than any other mango candy I’ve had, probably because they did more than make it taste like peaches. There were a few mango flavored ones, but the best overall were the ones branded Lot100 (the Blackcurrant was good, too). It had a nice pine essence to it, which is one of the things that I find so interesting about real mangoes, they have a woodsy flavor to them.

The best one was called Great Monster and I think was simply an orange hard candy. Simple, tart and zesty.

I had high hopes for those labeled barley sugar candies, but they didn’t really taste like the barley sugar I know of here in the states. They were nice, especially the lime torrone one (which was not at all like an Italian Torrone).

There are still a few I haven’t tried, but give me a few more days to get my courage back.

Rating - 6 out of 10 overall (some higher some lower ... it’s an average)