Candy Blog

The idea of this candy is more than puzzling. Sour Patch Kids are basically a sour coated Swedish Fish. Sour Patch Chillerz say that they’re a soft & chewy candy with a surge of cooling.

I didn’t really know what that meant. Maybe it’s like menthol or mint added to a sour candy?

When I got the sample back in May in my box of stuff from the All Candy Expo folks, I dutifully logged them in and took a photo of the package and then ignored them. But then I got a few comments from some readers about them ... so I was intrigued.

The front of the package of new Sour Patch Chillerz shows three smiling, waving & scarf-sporting, mitten-wearing Sour Patch Kids. Purple, Yellow & Red. On the back of the package is lists the flavors/colors ... and there’s some blue child, completely missing from the front. I guess he missed the photo shoot.

They come in four trademarked flavors:

I found them quite odd, but not bad really. My bag was pretty heavy on the grape but light on the berry punch, so it worked out pretty well. My favorite was the lemon, but that could have been that it was the most readily related to something I already found pleasant.

It’s a fun experiment and I can actually see myself craving these during a cold since they have some of the same elements and so much of the flavor doesn’t depend on the nose, instead it relies on the taste buds and textures.

Note: The package I reviewed was marked “sample - not for retail sale” so I cannot be certain that the package is exactly as sold at retail, though I’m pretty sure the product on the inside is.

Related Candies

1. Candy Tease: All Candy Expo 2009 # 1
2. Mike and Ike Italian Ice
3. Peruvian Candies
4. Mentos Ice Pomelo
5. Starburst Icy Bursts

I got an email recently pointing out that I’d not reviewed Haribo Happy Cola gummis before.

I’ve been fascinated with Japanese cola candies for a while, and I think I completely forgot about the German cola candies. (I did review the Haribo Fizzy Cola a few years back.)

The great thing about Haribo is that they make an incredible variety with a huge variation of flavors and shapes. The bad thing about Haribo is that the quality varies depending on which factory they’re made in. These were made in Spain.

The bottles are nicely formed, they’re plump and have the shape of a soda bottle. The candy is created using two different colors - a dark amber and a clear, the bottom of the bottle is the darker color and gives the impression of a glass bottle filled with cola. So simple, but so convincing.

These are rather firm but still have a pleasant cola scent when I stick my nose in the bag and inhale. It’s a little lemony citrus and a bit of spice.

The firm bite doesn’t burst forth with much flavor. It’s at first citrusy ... a little tangy. Later I get the cola notes, which is a little woodsy and mellow spice. But it’s very bland. It’s like lemon soda with a splash of cola instead of a cola splashed with lemon.

I want something a little more intense, something that gives me a lot of cola flavor. Maybe I’m spoiled or impatient ... these are still fun though, a great summer vacation candy to munch on while on long drives.

Related Candies

1. Fresh Cola Mentos
2. Haribo Saure Dinosaurier
3. Ramune & Cola Bubble Ball
4. Haribo Fizzy Cola
5. Haribo Gummi Bears vs Trolli Gummi Bears

I’m on vacation. Or on my way to my vacation.

So this review will contain slightly more photos than normal ... so you get all your candy goodness for the day and I get a little bit of a rest (since I’m writing these reviews in advance).

In Europe folks get to enjoy different versions of the Terry’s Chocolate Orange quite regularly. In the United States we get a novelty version about every two years (I had the white chocolate version before). I heard about the Terry’s Chocolate Toffee Crunch Orange at the Fancy Food Show earlier this year and was hoping that I’d see it in stores in advance of Christmas (which is high season for chocolate made into slices of of fruit & reassembled into a sphere).

I picked out a smashed box in my haste, but was happy to see that it didn’t matter to the product inside, which was well protected with a plastic form.

Inside the plastic form, inside the box, is a plastic wrapped sphere that includes directions: WHACK & UNWRAP.

I’ve been around enough to know that’s a bad idea. Either that or I whack to hard and end up with a big handful of crumbles. Instead I just open the package and insert a knife and pull out a few slices.

This particular orange was very nice looking. The slices inside were glossy & had a good snap.

What surprised me was the orange scent. Honestly, I thought the “orange” part on this particular orange was just going to be the shape, not the flavor. For some reason I didn’t think they’d do toffee and orange.

It smells like orange frosting ... very sweet.

The first ingredient on the list is sugar, the second is milk ... so this is a very sweet & milky product.

The texture of the chocolate is smooth, but a little on the fudgy grain side. The milk was a bit overshadowed by the orange flavoring. Within the chocolate were little salty toffee chips. The texture combination is great - the chips were crispy and crunchy. However, the whole thing was just throat searingly sweet. I liked it, but after two slices my throat just ached. Better with some black tea or in combination with something like pretzels or nuts.

Since I picked this up in the off season (though it was very fresh), it was pretty expensive for what’s otherwise rather cheap chocolate. The novelty of the shape is great, and really helps with the portion when sharing, but of course a big 3 or 5 ounce bar is a much better deal. In this case the flavor combination was the unique selling proposition. For gifting chocolate, these are great ... for eating on an every day basis I think I’ll stick to a Scharffen Berger Milk Nibby or for a toffee chip experience I’ll review a new Lindt bar soon.

(Okay, so this review didn’t end up being as short as I thought it was going to be.)

Related Candies

1. Seeds of Change: Dark Chocolate with Mango and Cashew
2. 3400 Phinney: Fig, Fennel & Almond and Hazelnut Crunch
3. Terry’s Chocolate Orange Confection
4. Terry’s Peppermint Orange
5. Terry’s Chocolate Orange

Sometimes I pick things up to save you the trouble. Because I know that you’re the babbling ill-nurtured ingested-lump that’d be tempted to buy Shakespearean Insult Gum. The little “shelf” of “books” is actually a set of boxes that hold two gumballs and a line from one of the scribe’s plays.

William Shakespeare was the master of the witty insult and now you can amaze your friends with these highbrow putdowns!

It’s like an episode of Frasier, but with gum!

The assortment of boxes feature names of Shakespeare’s tragedies on the spines: King Lear, Macbeth, Romeo & Juliet, Henry V, Hamlet, Richard III and Othello. My fobbing idle-headed whey-face couldn’t remember that many insults from the great dramas, figuring that just a transcription of The Taming of the Shrew is probably all the insults one would need for any novelty product. (You remember the wildly popular Katherina doll called the Spewing Shrew that you pulled the little cord on the top of her head and she would animate and push you out of your chair and call you names ... they were pulled from the market pretty quickly so they’re quite the collector’s item.)

Each little box contains two gumballs. They came in a variety of colors, though four of the boxes had one green and one white. I feared, knowing they were made in China that I would end up with spongy long-tongued botch.

The gum itself are solid little balls (though not quite spherical), not those hollow ones that slanderous flap-mouthed skainsmates try to pawn off on unsuspecting gum-chewers. They were pretty small, so it’d probably be more of an engineering issue to make them any lighter. Even two pieces didn’t make a decent chewing amount.

Pink was cherry. A little tangy, rather soft but mercifully free of bitterness. Yellow was lemon which was a soft flavor that dispensed some tartness as I chewed it. Green was probably supposed to be apple, but it didn’t taste like much. White was watermelon, and while it was no spongey hell-hated odoriferous stench it did remind me of an Avon lady’s neck.

Really, it wasn’t bad so much as it was pointless. What do gumballs have to do with Shakespeare?

There are quite a few things wrong with this, besides the price of $1.99 for 14 Chinese gumballs.

First, I’ll spoil the surprised and show you 7 out of the possible 25 quotes you could get:

Macbeth = Dissembling harlot, thou are false in all (Comedy of Errors)

King Lear = How foul and loathsome is thine image (The Taming of the Shrew)

Henry V = Bless me, what a fry of fornication is at the door (King Henry VIII)

Richard III = A plague on both your houses (Romeo and Juliet)

Romeo & Juliet = Base dunghill villain and mechanical, I’ll have thy head (Henry VI Part 2)

Hamlet = Thou art likest to a hogs head (Love’s Labour Lost)

Othello = Hang, beg, starve, die in the streets (Romeo and Juliet)

Two of them, I’d reckon, are not insults but actually curses.

What’s sad about this is how completely hobbled it is by its own parameters. Only 25 insults? They’d better be the best ... but they’re not! Here, have some fun with this random Shakespeare insult generator (where I got the ones peppered in here ... you don’t think I actually remember that much from college, do you?).

Why are they tucked into these little volumes like this? They don’t match the spine, so there’s no way to even chose what you think might be the right one for your occasion.  And then, why do I have to tear the little boxes apart to get at the insult?

The website says Sure to offend the intellectuals and confuse the dimwitted!. Yeah, I’m not sure I’m an intellectual, but I’m certainly offended that this was such a dimwitted product. What do they take me for? An unmuzzled tardy-gaited hedge-pig?

Related Candies

1. R.M. Palmer Quax - The Yummy Ducky
2. Big Bite Gummy Bear
3. Bratz Candy Cosmetics
4. Gummy Fishies
5. Gold Mine Gum
6. Bear Bubble Gum

Sometimes house brands can be a little mystifying, but this one really caught my eye. Walgreen’s Candy Classics Australian Traditional Black Licorice Smothered in Real Milk Chocolate.

The matte beige & powder blue wrapper does give it that classic look, though the mylar/plastic packaging made it feel modern (as did the presence of a web address on the back of the package).

It also comes in a raspberry licorice version, which I also bought but was disappointed to find it crumbled to bits (so I’m not reviewing it now).

The bar is attractive and looks like it could easily be an unsalted pretzel rod covered in milk chocolate.

It smells nice, a bit like anise and chocolate cake.

The bite is soft, the chocolate barely flakes, which is a great relief after the red licorice catastrophe.

The licorice at the center is quite soft and has a strong molasses flavor - the chew is almost jelly like, but has the satisfying rib-sticking of a wheat-based confection. The anise and licorice notes are rather mild and more of a generic spice cookie feel. The chocolate is sweet, not terribly chocolatey but seems to seal in all the flavors well.

It’s nice to see an Aussie licorice being sold at American candy prices. It was a nice change up from Twizzlers, Good & Plenty or Crows, which are really the only plain licorice products sold in single serve packages any longer.

My big hesitations are why they put artificial colors in a chocolate covered item. But my guess is that this licorice is available bald.

Aussie readers, do you recognize this bar? (I was thinking it was RJs but those aren’t real chocolate.)

I’m eager to try the raspberry again and see what else Walgreen’s is going to put in their Candy Classics brand.

Note: The calories made no sense on this package. 220 calories for 1.4 ounces is insane for a chocolate covered licorice. It says 2.5 grams of fat, 22 grams of carbs and 2 grams of protein (that makes 120 calories or so) ... I can’t figure where the rest of the calories are coming from. The ingredients are Sugar, Treacle, Wheat Flour, Molasses, Chocolate, Hydrogenated Coconut Oil, Licorice Extract and then a bunch of less than 2% things.

Related Candies

1. Trader Joe’s Chocolate Covered Gingersnaps
2. Kookaburra Choc Coated Liquorice
3. Darrell Lea Licorice & Ginger
4. Kookaburra Licorice
5. Panda Bars