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September 2006

Monday, September 25, 2006

Green Halloween

There are plenty of sites that can offer you info on all the gross and spooky treats for Halloween. I thought I’d offer up a series of posts that might help you make some more environmentally and socially aware decisions for Halloween.

bla-jackolanterns

It’s a good opportunity to give kids a special treat that isn’t necessarily full of artificial chemicals or results from a lot fertilizers and pesticides being applied to the earth. And just perhaps child slaves weren’t used in the creation of it. But who wants to be that house on the street that gives out toothbrushes or quarters or apples? There must be products out there that can satisfy everyone.

I’ll be posting for the next few weeks on the topic of different good tasting treats you can hand out to the kids, some that might even be affordable and available in your local area.

If you want a top-to-bottom approach for the whole Green lifestyle, Siel at GreenLAGirl is going to be helping me out by posting about the big picture. She started today with the first in her series. She’ll cover the politics of chocolate, organic and fair trade issues and of course positive changes we can all incorporate into our lives.

Here are a few of the organic and fair trade sweets I’ve reviewed to date. Not all are appropriate for handing out to Trick-or-Treaters, so I’ll make an effort to bring you more about those, but learning more about the brands that are available might help you make a decision at the store:

Endangered Species
Bug Bites & Bat Bar
Peanut Brittle & Rice Crisp

Equal Exchange
Espresso, Mint & Cocoa Nibs
Dark Chocolate Miniatures
Dark, Milk & Dark with Almonds

Green & Black’s
Maya Gold Bar
Espresso Chocolate
Ginger Chocolate
White Chocolate

Dagoba
Milk Chocolate Hazelnut
Dark Bars - Lavender, Roseberry & Xocolatl
Milk Chocolate Chai

Other Products:
Thompson Organic Chocolate Bars
Pure Fun Candy Floss
Divine Dark & Milk Chocolate

I’ll have some hard candies, lollipops and more chocolates soon!

POSTED BY Cybele AT 7:25 am     CandyGreen HalloweenReviewHalloweenNewsShopping

Twizzler Sourz

These were introduced almost two years ago, so I was a little confused by the NEW! starburst on the package. But I hadn’t had them anyway, so into the basket they went.

image

I don’t know when citrus flavors stopped being the normal “sour” flavors, but I’ve missed them a bit. It’s not like blue raspberry is any more natural as a “licorice” flavor than orange or lemon.

These are a wheat-based chew, which is what most “licorice” is. The center is flavored and then dusted with a sour sugar coating. They smell really nice as a combo - a little floral, a little fruity and a slight tangy essence. Leave them in a desk drawer and it’s kind of like an edible sachet.

They’re wee morsels, smaller than most licorice bites. They have the same basic star shape in cross section, which is great for holding onto all the sour dust.

Strawberry - mild in the strawberry department and with a decent tart bite.

Cherry - a nice chemical cherry flavor with a solid sour kick, but no complexity. A bit of a bitter aftertaste.

Green Apple - a pretty good sour apple flavor with a combo of the floral notes and that realistic apple juice taste and a sizeable tartness that satisfies. My favorite of all of them.

Blue Raspberry - floral and with an odd sort of yellow mustard note in there that confused the heck out of me. Not as sour tasting as some of the others and of course the mustard thing was kind of unpleasant.

Overall, they’re tasty, but don’t really provide any more candy satisfaction than some other tangy chews that I’ve had lately. I might even prefer the Sour Strings I had this summer or the SweeTarts Shockers - Shockers have the lead because of the variety in a single roll.

Name: Twizzler Sourz
    RATING:
  • 10 SUPERB
  • 9 YUMMY
  • 8 TASTY
  • 7 WORTH IT
  • 6 TEMPTING
  • 5 PLEASANT
  • 4 BENIGN
  • 3 UNAPPEALING
  • 2 APPALLING
  • 1 INEDIBLE
Brand: Hershey's
Place Purchased: 7-11 (Silverlake Blvd.)
Price: $.89
Size: 1.8 ounces
Calories per ounce: 100
Categories: Chew, Sour, United States, Hershey's, Kosher

POSTED BY Cybele AT 6:35 am    

Sunday, September 24, 2006

Have You Ever Ordered from Hometown Candy or Jordan Almonds?

There are some great candy webstores out there. And there are also that are not so great. I’ve been contacted twice in the past month regarding HometownCandy.com, which is run by the same company that runs JordanAlmonds.com and ebulkcandy.com. (I’m not doing any linking here where not necessary.)

The complaints I’ve heard are from people who place an order and never get their candy. Their credit card is charged but then nothing is shipped and of course their emails and phone calls go unanswered.

First, JordanAlmonds and ebulkcandy are not completely secured. Sure, when you put stuff in a cart and check out at either site, it is a secure page (that’s when you see the https:// in the address). But there are also prompts on JordanAlmonds to input your credit card on unsecured pages and on ebulkcandy. Bad form. You’re opening yourself up to someone else sniffing out your credit card number and other personal info.

Now, I haven’t ordered from either of these companies so I cannot testify one way or another personally. But here are the Better Business Bureau listings for them:

HometownCandy.com - 1 complaint which is unresolved. HometownCandy is not a member of the BBB.

JordanAlmonds.com - 7 unresolved complaints this year. Not a member of the BBB.

Former businesses:

EBulkCandy.com -  52 complaints, 4 resolved in Morrisville, PA. It’s not clear if this site is still in operation. It’s up, but doesn’t appear to have been updated this year. The have had several different locations, and each one has its own file with the BBB. Ewing, NJ (28 complaints, 2 resolved), Hamilton, NJ (1 complaint, unresolved), West Trenton, NJ (18 complaints, 3 resolved)

Also, go to Complaints.com and check any one of those business names.

Alexa and a domain name search reveals that ebulkcandy’s domain is held in the Czech Republic by the same contact info as HometownCandy but doesn’t show a direct relationship to JordanAlmonds (except for an address in NJ in common).

Now, for the record, just having complaints filed at the BBB does not make the company bad. Lots of large companies have complaints lodged against them (sometimes people go there first, without contacting the company directly). The key is whether or not the company is a member of the BBB and further, if they respond to and resolve the complaints. Volume has a lot to do with it as well. Even when you have 99.9% satisfaction, if you have 100,000 transactions a year you might have 100 unhappy people ... and if 10% of those don’t get a resolution through you, they’re gonna go complain elsewhere. It’s not just complaints that are important, but resolutions.

If you’re looking to buy something online and you feel a little odd, check around. It’s your money and your candy. Running a candy store is not rocket science. You put up a list of what you have, people order it and you send it out to them. There are lots of ways to screw it up (send the wrong thing, charge the card wrong, send it to the wrong place, pack things improperly), but lots of ways to fix it if you do make a mess. The fact that there are so many choices out there means that you can make informed choices.

The first thing to check for is a real address (usually found on their “returns” section), a real phone number and names of the people who run the company. Membership in the BBB, a Yahoo! Trusted Sites seal, a well organized site that uses the latest in web design and technology. Google the company and see if they have complaints against them. If you’re worried about it, move along, there are plenty of places to get candy.

So, if you’ve ever ordered from one of these companies, what was your experience. Good or bad?

UPDATE 2/22/2007: I got this email earlier today:

I have been asked by our Compliance Department to send you the following response regarding the complaints made against Hometowncandy.com:

Please be advised that as of February 1, 2007, Net Atlantic, Inc. terminated all Internet services to Ebulkcandy.com (a/k/a Jordonalmonds.com
and Hometowncandy.com) because of their failure to properly address unresolved issues brought to our attention.

Net Atlantic, Inc.
Compliance Department

This does not mean that the websites are gone, the obviously found other internet service, but it’s an interesting approach, getting the service provider involved.

UPDATE 4/9/2007
: To everyone who has commented, I recommend contacting the New Jersey Attorney General and their consumer affairs department:

http://www.njconsumeraffairs.gov/comp.htm - (Use the OCP complaint form.)

Since I’ve never ordered from them, I’m unable to file a complain on behalf of a third party.

Also, there is a website called Consumerist.com that helps people get the word out about bad companies. I’ve contacted them, but I’m not able to offer a first-hand experience. Check them out and see if they can give this issue wider exposure. Try this site as well: www.ripoffreport.com.

UPDATE 7/2/2007: Some commenters have noted that the NJ Consumer Affairs office refuses to investigate, saying that it is a federal matter. If you’d like to file a formal complaint, direct it to the Federal Trade Comission, which investigates mail fraud (and now covers internet transactions).

This should be the correct form (do NOT enter your Social Security Number in this instance, as that item is only needed when they’re investigating credit report scams or identity theft. You can read more about the rules governing internet commerce on this page.

POSTED BY Cybele AT 11:54 am     CandyNewsShopping

Friday, September 22, 2006

M&Ms and the Dark Movies Painting

M&Ms has launched another online promotion for their new ‘Dark’ Chocolate M&Ms.

It’s a little game that’s actually pretty fun and very well done. It’s a treasure hunt where you search an original painting for visual puns that are the titles of “Dark Movies”.

image

The style of the painting reminds me of Hieronymus Bosch

It’s flash based and kind of resource intensive (if you’re on dial-up ... anyone still on dial-up?). You move around the image and click when you think you’ve identified a pun and input the title into the little box. The box glows green when you get it right and the pun fades. You don’t have to complete the game all at once, you can save it for later by inputting an email address.

There are 50 movie titles. Check the comments section here if you want to cheat and see the list of titles (you still have to match them up with the images on your own).

POSTED BY Cybele AT 8:28 am     CandyMarsM&MsFun Stuff

Pigall & Brejk

A friend recently came back from Sweden, and you know that means I got some fun new European candy bars. The first one has the best name ever for a candy bar ... Pigall.

image

Frankly, a bar named Pigall is kind of scary. This bar actually had part of the label in English, so let me fill you in on the ingredients: sugar, hydrogenated vegatable oil, cocoa butter, rice crisps, dried partly skim milk, cocoa mass, milk, sugar, milk fat, buttermilk, hazelnuts, fat-reduced cocoa, emulsifier, salt, flavorings. The 40 gram (1.4 ounce) bar had 250 calories ... that’s 177 calories per ounce. (The label says it’s actually two servings) It might win an award for the highest caloric density product I’ve ever tried. Pigall is right!

The bar is long and kind of soft. The chocolate on the outside is very light in color and of course it smelled very sweet. On the inside there’s a “nut truffle” filling that I can only describe as a chocolate buttercream. It was seriously buttery though from what I could read on the ingredients, it’s some sort of whipped vegetable oil filling.

Mixed in with the buttercream filling are rice crispies.

I found the bar interesting, but too much like eating the frosting off of a piece of cake. The prospect of that much trans fat kept me from eating more than half the bar.

I didn’t know quite what to make of the second bar, Brejk. It’s hefty, clocking in at 56 grams.

image

It also came in two pieces, which I always like. Good for sharing, a little neater and you can save some for later. This one came on a little tray and I thought for a moment that they were Finnish 100 Grand bars.

The bar is built like this - a light chocolate cookie is covered with a stripe of dark caramel then the whole thing is covered in a light milk chocolate studded wtih crisped rice.

The chocolate is sweet and has that European milky taste and a kind of tang to it. The textures are interesting too, think of it as a cross between a Twix bar and a 100 Grand and you’d pretty much have this bar. The cookie center is crumbly and bland but maybe had a little hit of salt to it. The caramel is dark and chewy, but not too sweet. The milk chocolate covering it is sweet and creamy though there aren’t as many rice crispies as you’d get in a 100 Grand.

I thought it was a great bar and I wonder why we don’t have something like it here in the States. The only place that I reliably see Marabou products is at Ikea, so if you see this one there and you like

Trix

Twix or 100 Grand bars, pick it up for a try.

Name: Pigall & Brejk
    RATING:
  • 10 SUPERB
  • 9 YUMMY
  • 8 TASTY
  • 7 WORTH IT
  • 6 TEMPTING
  • 5 PLEASANT
  • 4 BENIGN
  • 3 UNAPPEALING
  • 2 APPALLING
  • 1 INEDIBLE
Brand: Marabou (Kraft)
Place Purchased: gift (thanks Russ)
Price: unknown
Size: 1.41 ounces & 1.98 ounces
Calories per ounce: 141 & 177
Categories: Chocolate, Caramel, Cookie, Finland, Kraft, Marabou

POSTED BY Cybele AT 7:18 am    

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