Candy Blog

This is another one of those products that I’ve only seen at the 99 Cent Only Store. These Sour Bloops are billed as “Intense Chewy Fruit Candies” and are made by Lance. Yes, Lance, that company that you makes those bright orange Cheese & Peanut Butter crackers that come in mini-bricks in vending machines.

As something you would find in a vending machine, these fill an important niche. They’re like mega-Skittles or fruity Mentos. The flavor assortment is definitely unique.

Each candy is a rustic looking Mentos, same size, same basic shape.

The name Sour Bloops may be a little pedestrian and unimaginative but the candy certainly lives up to it. Basically they were okay.

Green Apple - tangy, with a pretty good combination of apple juice notes and that fake green apple flavor of Jolly Ranchers. Pretty soft and pleasant. The flavor stays with the chew to the end.

Wild Cherry  - tastes like a red cherry Lifesaver, but much more tart. Flavorful and a smidge medicinal, especially towards the end where I get a little burning feeling in my throat.

Peach Lemonade - I haven’t the foggiest what this tastes like, since there were none in my mix.

Stick with Mentos or Skittles unless you really need a peach lemonade fix ... which I can’t comment on, as they’re so rare as to not make an appearance in my bag. If you’re stuck with what your vending machine offers, well, this is a far better choice than Garfield’s Chocobites. These candies may also appear in rolls called Chewz.

I’m not quite sure what’s going on here. I first saw these at the 99 Cent Only Store (but only in Strawberry). They’re billed as “candy and chocolate flavored pops” which I thought sounded kind of fun. Like a chocolate toffee lollipop.

The commercials aren’t really helpful, they call it half-crazy. And they have freaky & disturbing animation. Who are they aiming these at?

So maybe the wrapper will be helpful. There’s a little drawing of the candy on the package. But I don’t know what I’m looking at. Smacking the candy on the corner of the table reveals that one side is hard and the other isn’t. How about a look what they use to make them.

Ingredients: Sugar, Corn Syrup, Hydrogenated Palm Kernel Oil, Cocoa, Dry Whey, Natural and Artificial Flavors, Cocoa Processed with Alkalai, Skim Milk Powder, Buffered Lactic Acid, Soy Lecithin, Salt and Artificial Colors

Well, after opening up the little packet it’s much more obvious what this is. One third of the pop is a swirl of hard candy with a boat of mockolate stuck to it.

Cookies and Cream - this has nothing to do with cookies and cream. Things can’t be cookie flavored. What makes cookies cookies is the texture, not the flavor. The mockolate boat here is mild and cool on the tongue. Sweet and not very chocolatey, it tastes more tropical, a little like coconut and a little like fudge. The sliver of candy is rather nice. Super smooth and a little tangy like yogurt. It’s sweet and bland but perhaps a little creamy.

Chocolate Caramel - well, this is not caramel flavored. The mockolate is the same on all of them. The candy part is tangy and sweet but missing all the caramel notes I would expect. I’m getting tangy, I’m getting maple or pecan, but definitely not caramel.

Chocolate Strawberry - finally the tangy bite works with the flavor. The strong and fake strawberry flavor completely overshadows the mockolate.

The long narrow shape is pleasant for a pop, it certainly fits in the mouth better. The candy part is actually really good. It’s superdense so it’s great for a pleasant and smooth feeling on the tongue and if you’re a cruncher it’s also really easy to chew.

The quality is apparent here with just about every element. They’re nicely packaged, the metallic plastic wrapper protects and is easy to open. The sassy plastic stick means that the stick doesn’t dissolve while you’re still eating the pop. Even the name is pretty good, the swirly colors support the name Vertigo (which is a fancy way of saying dizzy).

But the candy quality goes astray with the mockolate. It’s just ghastly. I ate it, but I’m certainly not happy about it.

I would certainly buy this if it was just a hard toffee pop, like the See’s Pops (except these are actually smoother). But as a mostly mockolate product, I just can’t get behind it.

Note: Topps is an American company, but these candies were made in China.

I tried the Dove chocolate last year and was pleased with it. It’s kind of a slick chocolate, both in packaging and in texture. They market this as silky, and I’m not sure if it’s the level of fat in it or the size of the particles of cocoa solids ... or perhaps both.

While I’m not that keen on the plain bars, I got a note from some marketing folks offering me some of their other products and I figured, “what they hey!”

The Dove line is built around their plain dark and milk chocolate, sold in single-serve bars and the more popular “Promises” which I think of as a hybrid of Hershey’s Kisses and Perugina Baci (pure chocolate plus a little note in the wrapper).

These aren’t called anything ... just Smooth Milk Chocolate with Caramel. The bronzy foil holds a little rounded chocolate square with a filling of a caramel-like goo.

The wrappers also have little notes inside. Mine said things like Smile at yourself in the mirror and Sing along with the elevator music ... honey, I don’t need my candy telling me to sing out loud in public. I’m sure the folks at the Ralph’s on Glendale Blvd. are well aware of me belting out the 80s tunes when I visit and would probably hide these candies from me if they knew what they were telling me to do.

The chocolate here is smooth and creamy, perhaps a little sticky and sweet. The caramel filling doesn’t really have enough of the true caramel qualities I like, such as a burnt sugar taste or soft chew. I wanted more salt. But the whole thing is tasty and certainly worth the price of admission (free with my comp). But the thing that’s most appealing to me was how photogenic they were.

6 out of 10

The second item that’s much more up my alley is the Smooth Milk Chocolate Covered Almonds. I think the publicist who sent these to me intended to give me the dark chocolate ones, as there were two bags of milk chocolate in my little box. Oh well. The almonds are rather good, not as large and choice as the Trader Joe’s version that I often pick up, but there wasn’t a bad one in the bunch. They’re nicely toasted and crunchy. The chocolate is sweet and offsets the almond’s toasty flavors pretty well.

7 out of 10

At a regular price of $3.50 a bag, I don’t think I’d get these, except maybe if I was stuck in an airport and looking for something to bring on the plane. Both bags are easy to open and reclose, which is always a plus. I would probably pick them up on sale if I could get them for something like $2.50 though.

Related Candies

1. Dove Desserts Bananas Foster
2. Dove Silky Smooth Milk Chocolate Bars
3. Hershey’s Heart’s Desire
4. Sconza 70% Dark Chocolate Toffee Almonds
5. Cocoavia Chocolate Almonds

Sometimes I pick up crazy things at the Dollar Tree that I wouldn’t ordinarily buy. I’ve gotten a few emails about Jones Soda’s new line of fizzy pop flavored candies. I saw that they’re going for over $2 a tin for 50 candy bits but I couldn’t find out if they use sugar in them or artificial sweeteners so I decided to go on the prowl for the something else. (I was afraid they were going to be like those expensive and lackluster Bawls.)

I went to the Dollar Tree in search of Easter goodies and came away with this little sixpack. The little pop can looking packages hold 30-35 little carbonated candies in four flavors (two cans each): Grape Splash, Lemon-Lime Sprint, Orange Crash and Loca Cola.

The little candies are almost like the original Tart n Tiny candies (except these have a slight dome on either end of the bitty cylindral instead of being flat).

As a novelty item, I think they’re fun. I wouldn’t buy these and shovel them down day after day, but they’re a fun little diversion ... a novelty candy. Because the package comes with six little cans, they might make a nice little theme element if you’re planning a party or gift basket or just a little pick-me-up to leave in a co-worker’s cubicle.

Each can contains only 7 grams of candy that adds up to 25 calories. So they certainly have the portion control down.

(For a little perspective, the cans are 2” high and 1” in diameter ... in case you were going to look for them at the store and were expecting something as big as the picture on your screen.)

I’ve been feeling nostalgic lately, or perhaps just pining for the classics. So I went back to one of my favorite fair-weather candies, Sugar Babies.

They come in a friendly yellow package with no frills. Just a the name blazoned across it and the simple description “Delicious Candy Coated Milk Caramels.” Think of them as jelly beans with a heart of caramel. (Mmmm, caramel hearts.)

Sugar Babies were originally made in 1937 by the James O. Welch Company. Not only was he the producer of the whole Sugar Family (Sugar Daddy and Sugar Mama and later Sugar Step-Mama) but also Junior Mints and Milk Duds as well as a long-gone line of fudge bars. Welch sold it to Nabisco in 1963. The Welch family of products changed hands a few more times, going from Nabisco to Warner-Lambert then to Tootsie in 1993, who makes them to this day.

The little morsels are rather soft. The chew is a little grainy at first because of the sugar shell, then becomes smooth with some nice buttery tones and burnt sugar flavors. Then it gets grainy again at the very end before dissolving into a sweet mess.

They’re such simple little candies and complement a wide variety of snacks. I always enjoyed eating them with some salted popcorn or Fritos (I haven’t had Fritos in probably ten years). They go great with ice cream (they get rock hard, then soften up), pretzels, M&Ms or Reese’s Pieces. And they’re cute! Look how cute they are ... have I ever mentioned that my dog is the same color as Sugar Babies?

Sometimes they’re a little stale, but a quick warm up in the palm of your hand or inside of a hot car revives them. I tend to shun chocolate products during the hot summer months, but then I begin to crave creaminess - Sugar Babies kind of straddle that line with the rich caramel taste but added durability of the sugar shell.

For your enjoyment and education, here is the older Sugar Babies wrapper that I grew up with. The Tootsie site also features a recipe for a Molasses Spice cookie that uses Sugar Babies. You may also still be able to find the limited edition Chocolate Covered Sugar Babies.

Related Candies

1. Holiday Edition Sugar Babies