Candy Blog

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?

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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

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Starbucks Chocolate is a study in short attention spans.

It was launched barely more than a year ago with little promotion to support it, no website (just a page on the Starbucks site) and a baffling retail plan where it was sold everywhere except Starbucks.

The line included coffee & tea infused chocolate bars, tasting squares and truffles. The packaging echoed Starbucks strong image, was all natural and made no direct mention of Hershey’s as the manufacturer. For Christmas special flavors were created that echoed the seasonal coffee drinks. However, the new brand was a tad on the expensive side and entered the mass-manufactured upscale chocolate market just terms like staycation entered the vernacular.

So last week as Hershey’s announced huge second quarter profits, it also formally announced that they were discontinuing the Starbucks Chocolate line.

CNN Money summed it up pretty well:

But that new line was badly timed because the economy started slowing soon after. Consumers slashed spending last year and early this year, turning away from most extravagances, including pricey chocolate. “The timing of the launch of the Starbucks proposition, frankly, we just missed the window,” said Hershey Chief Executive David West during a Thursday conference call. “Our partner obviously had some other business challenges and the consumer at that price point wasn’t sustainable.”

Added to that happy news about their profits (which were the result of cutting manufacturing costs by closing factories in the US, moving to a Mexican facility, raising prices and using cheaper ingredients), Hershey’s also formalized the discontinuation of Cacao Reserve, Hershey’s own branded high end chocolate line. (Hershey’s also closed Joseph Schmidt, a chocolatier line based out of San Francisco earlier this year and moved all production for Scharffen Berger to Illinois.)

With this news, I grabbed the last Starbucks product in their line that I hadn’t reviewed yet (and as illustrations for this little death knell post).

The Caramel Macchiato Truffles come in a nicely packaged pair at the ghastly price of $1.39 at the drug store. Honestly, if this sort of truffle pair was available at an actual Starbucks to accompany my plain coffee, I might have gone for it more regularly. With the “startling news” that coffee drinks contain huge amounts of calories which cause cancer, a simple cup of coffee with cream and two truffles would actually be a smaller indulgence than an actual Caramel Macchiato.

I’ve never had a Macchiato (I’ve never actually had anything fancier than a latte or mocha in all my years), so I can’t comment on how well it mimics the frothy creation described thusly by Starbucks:

A signature Starbucks(r) beverage. A creamy mix of vanilla and freshly steamed milk marked with intense Starbucks(r) espresso, topped with velvety foam and our own proprietary buttery caramel sauce.

The milk chocolate shell is nicely molded. It holds a fudgy, smooth cream that tastes a bit like a mocha cheesecake. Sweet, a little tangy with a light coffee taste and maybe, just maybe a hint of toffee (caramel).

It was pretty sweet but with coffee it works ... though the actual coffee overpowers the not-much-coffee-taste.

In the end, I don’t think it was bad timing that sunk this line. I think it was bad merchandising - it should have been available at actual Starbucks. And a year is far too little to decide the success of a new line of chocolate. My view is that Hershey’s is uninterested in building brand loyalty through quality.

The only thing that makes sense about this is the statement on the side of the box:

Starbucks is committed to purchasing cocoa and coffee that are grown and traded in an ethical, transparent and sustainable manner.

To learn more about our cocoa-purchasing practices, please visit us at www.starbucks.com/cocoa

Watching Cadbury & Mars move more and more towards ethically traded and sustainably grown & harvested cacao, I’m not seeing much for Hershey’s except from their Daboga arm. I can see where this Starbucks line is just a liability for profits. Hershey’s has shown itself to be more concerned with profits (and high profits, not just tidy ones) than the quality of its products and place within the economies it locates itself.

Related Candies

1. Hershey’s announces closing of Joseph Schmidt & Scharffen Berger Bay Area Facilities
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5. Starbucks Chocolate

Hershey’s has been pushing its Special Dark line, promoting the products as a Natural Source of Antioxidants | Flavanol Antioxidants.

The new Hershey’s Special Dark with Almonds joins Hershey’s standard Special Dark bar as the companion with nuts.

Hershey’s dark chocolate isn’t daringly dark, it’s just 45% cacao content, which these days isn’t even as chocolatey as some milk chocolates. It’s nice to finally have the option of a dark bar with almonds at the convenience mart or drug store ... though it’s a little late to enter the game as Dove beat them there and even Lindt, Ritter and Ghirardelli are available pretty widely now.

The bar is lovely, it’s molded just like the Hershey’s Milk Chocolate with Almonds bar. 

It’s not a huge bar, but still a nice portion, clocking in at 1.45 ounces and 190 calories if you’re counting.

Ingredients: Sugar, chocolate, almonds (roasted in cocoa butter and/or sunflower oil), cocoa butter, cocoa processed with alkali, milkfat, lactose, soy lecithin, PGPR, vanillin and milk.

As almonds were a little lower on the list or ingredients than I expected, I counted them. 10 whole almonds. Not bad. (Though they’re about the size of peanuts.)

My first reaction is that it’s sweet. My second reaction is that it tastes like cocoa. The almonds have a good crunch and were fresh. Because of the almonds, for the most part I chewed the bar instead of letting it just melt on my tongue. But for the purposes of this review I found some pieces without almonds just for tasting the chocolate.

It’s sugary and a bit grainy, there’s a distinct chalkiness that isn’t that “this is really dark chocolate dryness” instead it’s more like the chocolate’s not fully combined with the sugar. The cocoa butter isn’t really supporting the chocolate, it’s standing next to it so everything just kind of falls apart.

It’s not terrible, but it’s like eating a bunch of chocolate chips. Chocolate chips are meant to stand up to baking and are almost always used in combination with other elements. Here the almonds just can’t cover up the lackluster flavors & texture.

If you’re desperate for a non-milk chocolate bar (that actually has milk products in it) and nothing else is around, this is certainly more palatable than the straight Special Dark. I found it filling, but not satisfying.

Related Candies

1. Hershey’s Almond Joy Pieces
2. Hershey’s Special Dark Miniatures
3. Hershey’s Miniatures
4. Dove Promises (Caramel & Almonds)
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6. Equal Exchange Miniatures
7. See’s Awesome Nut & Chew Bar