Candy Blog

After the reminder of how great Storck Chocolate Riesen are last week, I was happily educated that Storck makes a vanilla caramel.

And I was delightedly happy to find that the Dollar Tree carries Werther’s Original Chewy Caramels. So I left with a sassy little bag of them. I’d never had them before, but knowing the Riesen and the Werther’s Original Hard Candies, I thought they had to be good. Of course after I bought them and took the picture I started seeing them everywhere ... either Storck made a huge delivery to Southern California or I’ve been comfortably numb in my chocolate caramel bliss for a long time.

Taking them out of the wrapper they don’t look much different from Brach’s caramels or even Kraft’s. The little flat-sided rods are kind of uneven. At first they’re pretty hard, and a firm chew can be exhausting. But a few moments in a warm mouth (especially after coffee) and they softened up beautifully.

The chew is smooth and buttery with a good caramel taste and creamy consistency. It stays smooth all the way to the end, which is the mark of a caramel over a taffy or chew that will become grainy or just up and dissolve.

I wasn’t as keen on these as the Chocolate Riesen, part of it may be that the chocolate caramels are one of the few candies that seems to match up to the pictures on the wrapper, and the Werther’s Original Chewy Caramels just looked a little more weathered and worn than the images on the wrapper. I ate them all, but it took me a week instead of two days with chocolate version. They’re probably a better hot weather candy to keep on hand ... not that it’s been hot in Los Angeles in the past month or so.

Australia has not been left out of the KitKat craze, but they’re a little harder to get a hold of. One of my co-workers happens to be married to an Aussie, so on his last trip to visit family I gave him some bucks and asked for anything that caught his fancy (knowing me of course). Some I just ate, but these I thought I’d at least share a little about.

KitKat Temptations: Coconut Eclair: The big dome over the narrow little pair of wafers is filled with a sweet and mildly coconutty cream. The cream is kind of a cross between the inside of a York Peppermint Pattie and a truffle. Not quite smooth, not quite buttery, but not as crumbly as the fondant of a York.

The cookies don’t even take a back seat here, they’re on a trailer being towed behind. One of those shocks that would greet you as you were looking to change lanes and saw that the Coconut Eclair had passed you and you were trying to get out from behind some mollasses Slo-Poke and didn’t realize that they had that wafer cookie trailer bouncing along behind, without lights or any of those red dangly flags. Then you slow down and smack your own forhead and say, DUH! It’s a KitKat!

KitKat Temptations: Hazelnut Praline: This one smelled kind of like maple, but perhaps pecan, if we’re talking about nuts. I know Australia is a half a world away, but I also know they grow hazelnuts, so I can’t quite figure out the lame taste on this one. It’s all very sweet. The nutty cream center is rather like Nutella, but lacks that nutty punch. Instead it’s flavored like nuts, but doesn’t taste like them ... ya know? There are a few little crushed nuts in there (as there should be, the picture on the wrapper illustrates them) but they just didn’t strike me as hazelnuts. They could have been almonds.

Yeah, I’m just not getting the KitKat vibe here. KitKats are all about the wafers, grainy cream and chocolate. Anything added is great, but don’t muck with the basics.

You may have tempted me once, but you’ll not snare me again.

Following up on yesterday’s Starburst Sour, I thought I’d tackle some real sour stuff. I found Sour Extinguisher at the 7-11 a few weeks ago and thought it was a cute idea. There are three different flavors with different levels of sour along with an “extinguisher” that puts out the sour burn.

The first thing I noticed was that the “randomness” of my bag meant that I had an overwhelming number of yellow candies. (The bag makes mention that the assortment may vary, it also makes mention of the chance of mouth irritation.)

The candies break down this way:

Tangy Tangerine - a mild sour ...  (6 candies)
Super Sour Lemon - super pucker power. (15 candies)
Tongue Twisting Lime - will it be enough to burn your tongue? (8 candies)
Sweet Blue Raspberry - the sour extinguisher. (4 candies)

The little candies look more like pieces of lumpy gum. They’re matte in color and don’t smell like anything.

The Tangerine is nice. A little firm to chew, not quite a Chewy SweeTart or Skittles, it’s more like a Razzle that never turns into gum. Lemon is quite tart, but actually has some really good authentic lemon flavors in there, even a little bitterness that makes it taste like a freshly shaken lemonade. Lime is very sour, so much so that it takes a while to get to the actual flavor. Again, it actually tastes like lime eventually.

None of them was so sour that I had to reach for the Extinguisher but I pretended with some Lime anyway. The Raspberry was definitely sweet and it definitely smote the sour. The flavor was pretty bland, kind of like cotton candy.

The texture of the candies as a whole isn’t really my idea of great. They’re crumbly but never really chewy and then they disappear. I’d give them higher marks if I didn’t feel like the texture was due to being in the sofa cushions for several years. As an interactive candy that you really need to look at what you’re eating, it’s a fun idea, especially for kids who crave these sorts of things. I found, if nothing else, they really got my mouth watering.

See Candy Addict’s kid tested review.

UPDATE 6/9/2009: Big BOING, the company that developed Sour Extinguisher, sold it to American Licorice. It was relaunched in January 2009 with two flavor sets. Full review here of the new Chewy Extinguisher Sour Citrus & Chewy Extinguisher Sour Fruit.

Related Candies

1. Wonka Kazoozles: Cherry Punch & Pink Lemonade
2. Twizzlers Sweet & Sour Filled Twists
3. New Flavors: Skittles Sour & Wonka Runts
4. Red Vines
5. Twizzlers Rainbow Twists
6. Twizzler Sourz
7. Twerpz

Just when I think I’m done, I get pulled back in again! I thought I’d reviewed all the Starburst on the market today when I saw that the Starburst Sour have new flavors.

It’s not like I was that thrilled with the original set of flavors in the Starburst Sour array, so the new ones might be better.

As luck would have it I picked up the new flavors, then saw the original flavors at the 99 Cent Only Store. Before you go thinking that this will be a redux of the LifeSavers, both of these products are fresh.

Original Starburst Sour were manufactured in June of 2006 with an expiration of 8/2007. New Starburst Sour were manufactured in December 2006. (Curious how I know this, check out What Does that Mars Code Mean?)

Here’s the flavor breakout:

Sour Tangerine (was Orange) - I really had to work hard on this one. The wrappers were the exact same shade of orange and the candies were the exact same shade of orange. I had to admit that the new Sour Tangerine was different from the orange. It had a “high note” of orange and tartness that just wasn’t in the original. I can’t say I prefer one over the other, but I’m glad there’s something citrus in there.

Sour Green Apple (was Cherry) - I was pretty surprised that this wasn’t in the original mix. It’s definitely a synthetic sour apple taste, but it’s quite intense and of course sour. It has some nice real apple juice notes to balance it out, especially as the chew goes on.

Sour Strawberry (was Grape) - While I enjoy a sassy tart and crispy apple and even a juicy tangerine, I have a hard time with sour strawberries, as they’re so much better when they’re sweet and ripe. It smelled like strawberry - a cross between summer flowers and cotton candy. The chew though, was a little less pleasant. It was sour but it didn’t match up with the flavor, it was like a blind date that was going horribly, uncomfortably wrong. It made me break out in a sweat twice, not because it was too sour, perhaps because of the red food coloring. I didn’t eat the third one in the mix.

Sour Blue Raspberry (same) - still an insane blue, still an unnatural flavor for food. Tart and a little on the lime side, a little bitter/dry aftertaste that I kind of liked it this time around.

Overall, I prefer the much more rounded flavors of the classic Starburst. I can see these being a nice change of pace and if I were doing more bike riding or running where I wanted a little something to get rid of dry mouth, this might be the stuff because they’re so portable and of course a good variety in every pack.

Some of our wheat sensitive friends will be happy to hear that the new packaging now says that New Flavors Starburst Sour are Gluten Free (please make sure that your package says that if you’re gluten intolerant since the old flavor set does not say that!).

Related Candies

1. Eiffel BonBons
2. Starburst GummiBursts
3. Cinnamon Fire Twizzlers
4. Sour Extinguisher
5. Starburst Baja California & Tropical
6. Starburst Berries & Creme and Fruit & Creme
7. Starburst

I tried the Nestle Dark Stixx last year and thought they were pretty good. They’re a little crispy cookie wafer in the form of a tube filled with some cream and covered in chcoolate.

The Butterfinger Stixx were introduced at the same time, but it took a little while for me to find them super-cheap. They were stupidly expensive at $2.29 for a box of 6 when they came out. But at the 99 Cent Only Store this little package of two was a respectable 33 cents and still fresh (expiration July 2007).

What’s great about these is the one thing that you can’t get in a Butterfinger ... real chocolate. Not that the chocolate is great, but you know, if it’s not tasty at least it’s not fake.

The package describes this rather oddly with a little four point diagram:

What I suspect after reading that is that this is more like a Butterfinger Crisp bar (which may be running one of the lamest commercials of the year, sorry, as far as I’m concerned that girl has to be high if she’s enjoying a Butterfinger Crisp and thinks that’s really laugh-out-loud funny).

The little stick has that familiar peanut butter and buttered popcorn scent. The sweet chocolate and bland crunch of the wafer are a nice combo, not too sweet. The creamy center is nothing like a Butterfinger, it’s soft and reminds me of that peanut butter filling that comes inside those cheesy orange peanut butter crackers. The peanut butter flavor is pretty mellow and rather lost. It’s sweet and a little salty, not very creamy and not really notable beyond that.

The little sticks are tasty but not very satisfying. I completely missed the “sprinkle of candy bits”. On the plus side, this didn’t stick to my teeth like the industrial-strength-cement-like Butterfinger filling can. I think if I’m looking for a stick shaped peanut butter candy I’ll stick to Atkinson’s Peanut Butter Bars. (No chocolate, but still tasty.)

Other thoughts: Victoria at Candy Addict liked them, Taquitos.net gave them a positive, Chris at CandyCritic gives them a 3/3/4 Lord Jezo gives them two cheeses.