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6-TemptingWednesday, February 10, 2016
Tic Tac Be Mine MixLast year Tic Tac had a Valentine’s flavor called Be Mine Mix. It featured Strawberry & Wild Cherry in one box. The new version for 2016 has a couple of twists. First, there are three colors in the package, though the flavors are still listed as Wild Cherry & Strawberry Flavors. The appealing new feature though is that they’re printed. Tic Tac introduced printed little pieces last year with the Minions promotion (which was pretty genius in appearance, though in the States the flavor was not banana as expected, instead it was Passion Fruit). Since Tic Tac invested in this new printer technology, they’re trotting it out for other versions, including the Candy Cane version for Christmas, which were just peppermint Tic Tacs with little red candy canes printed on them. There are only three conversation starters here: I (heart) You, Hug Me and Be Mine. The type is quite wee, very hard for me to read without my reading glasses on, but love is for the young and able-eyed. The lightest pink tastes a bit like Strawberry Cake. I have no idea what it’s supposed to be but the shell part is smooth and sweet with very little flavor at first, the next layer down has a tartness and a definite strawberry flavor note. The center is softer and has more strawberry flavor but a really pronounce “cream flavor” which is not to say that it’s actually creamy, it just has a vanilla and maybe even touch of butter note. I don’t like it much. The medium pink is Strawberry, but this one, instead of the weird vanilla, the center has a menthol note on top of the berry. The red is Wild Cherry. This is well done. The outside is slick on the tongue with a very mild cherry sweetness. The next level down introduces the more varied cherry notes, a deeper jammy flavor and of course the tart bite. The center has a bit more chalky tartness. As a whole, it’s pretty good. I’m not usually fond of cherry, but this was the best one in the mix ... but it could be because I really didn’t like the others. All three go together pretty well, but as mints they’re not very refreshing as breath fresheners. The box is cute, but not distinctive as a Valentine’s item. I’d really only get this for someone as a gift or myself if I knew that I liked the flavors. The printing is certainly a novel addition to the brand, but it does decrease the enjoyment of the texture (the printing does not dissolve in the same way as the regular coating does). Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 1:46 pm Candy • Review • Valentines • Ferrero • 6-Tempting • Ireland • Target • Tuesday, December 22, 2015
Dum-Dums Holiday Pops (Limited Edition)Dum-Dums are pretty basic, kind of small lollipops. They’ve always come in a wide variety of flavors that have changed based on popularity. Only recently has Spangler, who makes Dum-Dums, come out with holiday themed product packages of the pops. The Dum-Dums Limited Edition Holiday Pops is a bag of eight different flavors of individually wrapped lollipops. I believe they were available in 2014, but I just picked them up this year. Green Apple Grinch - there’s nothing grinchy about this flavor, it’s straight up fake green apple. The pop is bright green, the flavor is rather thin but definitely sour apple flavor and not actual apple. Apple Cider is one of the amber colored pops. The flavor is similar to the Green Apple, but less bright, more muted and it has a more apple sauce or honey note to it. Sugar Cookie is an opaque cream color. It’s pleasant but bland, as are sugar cookies. The flavor is creamy without a heavy dose of butter flavor. It’s a little vanilla, a little marshmallow. Pretty much a good lollipop. If they added a little nutmeg, I’d call it Egg Nog (and I’d be pretty happy). Sugar Plum is purple and very pretty, like a little gem. I don’t actually know what a real sugar plum is but I can tell you that this one is vaguely grape. Hot Cocoa looks like the Gingerbread or Apple Cider pop, but it’s a little more milky or opaque. I was expecting this to be horrible, but it’s actually a passable chocolate marshmallow flavor. The cocoa smells a little musty and thin, but the flavor has a creamy vanilla note, like a marshmallow that holds it together. Gingerbread is one of the beige ones. It’s sweet and has a light note of spice that features a little ginger, a little cinnamon. One of the things about gingerbread-the-baked-good that I like is the molasses, and there’s no note of that here. Polar Punch is very blue. It’s a tropical punch flavor with a distinct raspberry note to it. There’s a long-lingering aftertaste of the berry flavor that isn’t necessarily unpleasant, but I also had a blue tongue for a while. Merry Cherry is red. I haven’t had a cherry Dum-Dums for a while, so I can’t say if this is any different. It’s sweet and don’t really have a tangy fruit note to it. It wasn’t like a wild cherry Life Saver, it was more like a cough drop. I find cherry to be rather medicinal, and this was especially so. But I know some folks like the flavor. I love this idea, and I’d like to see it with a few more specialty flavors, like an Egg Nog, maybe something Cranberry, Peppermint Stick, Rum Raisin. If they’re making things that are bacon flavor, they can absolutely go way out there with Speculoos and Bailey’s Irish Creme. Each pop is about 25 calories, so they’re a petite treat that should fit into most regular diets. They last a little longer than a traditional hard candy because it’s on a stick and is a bit more interactive. Dum-Dums are made in the USA in a facility free from major allergens: peanuts, tree nuts, milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, wheat and gluten. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 3:55 pm Candy • Review • Christmas • Spangler Candy • Hard Candy & Lollipops • Limited Edition • 6-Tempting • United States • Walgreen's • Monday, November 30, 2015
Ritter Sport Nut Crescent CookieRitter Sport Winter Edition Nut Crescent Cookie comes in a rich red wrapper with a matching snowman in a red hat and scarf. This Winter Edition of the classic square Ritter Sport is a cream filled chocolate bar with 16 little squares. I found mine at Cost Plus World Market, which has been a pretty reliable source for the winter versions (though less often the summer ones). They’re a smidge more expensive than the regular Ritter bars at $2.99, but they’re also placed with the Christmas candy, not the ordinary candy bars. The bar is described as milk chocolate filled with hazelnut creme and hazelnut cookie pieces. I love the hazelnut bars that Ritter Sport makes, so this was a really enticing idea. The bar, once broken, looks an awful lot like the chai one, no real perceptible nuts or nut paste or cookie bits, just off white cream. The bar smells milky but with an actual hazelnut note to it. The cream center is a bit on the greasy side, but does actually have crunches of cookies and some small hazelnut bits. That roasted hazelnut smell, that Nutella scent, takes over the chocolate though. While the coating is milk chocolate, it definitely tastes more like gianduia. The bar is decent, but not special enough for me. It’s a little on the bland side, and the greasy cream filling doesn’t have enough of the hazelnut punch I’d hoped for. The cookie bits are too few and of course the cream filling is really high in palm fat. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 3:27 pm Candy • Review • Christmas • Ritter Sport • Chocolate • Cookie • Limited Edition • Nuts • 6-Tempting • Germany • Cost Plus • Monday, November 23, 2015
Ritter Sport Vanilla Chai LatteRitter Sport has introduced seasonal varieties for the past five years or so (or at least that I’ve been able to get a hold of). The newest set for Winter include a new version called Ritter Sport Vanilla Chai Latte. The description on the English label on the back says that it’s milk chocolate filled with vanilla cream, spices and black tea extract. The ingredients are actually a little less creamy and a bit more oily:
Like other Ritter Sport cream filled bars, this one clocks in at 164 calories per ounce, which definitely on the high side, especially when it has 9 grams of saturated fat per a 38 gram serving. It smells a bit like a pumpkin cheesecake. There’s a spice note, which is pleasant but not terribly distinct, just some generic nutmeg, clove and cinnamon. I’ve actually had my fair share of spiced chai over the years, so I know that the spices vary quite a bit. But they’re not that dissimilar to Pumpkin Spice or Gingerbread Spices. What sets it apart here is the black tea extract. Or at least it should. The milk chocolate bar is very sweet, the chocolate part is milky and creamy but not at all intense, it’s quite overpowered by the spices in the cream. The filling is a little more fudgy and thick, but not at all grainy or oily. The black tea part gives a little tannic note, but mostly the flavors are nutmeg and clove with maybe a little allspice. It’s an interesting bar because of the warming spices and the cream filling, but I’ve mentioned before that I don’t think that the cream bars that Ritter makes are their strongest item. The flavoring overpowers the chocolate experience, which is usually very good for the price point (much better than Toblerone). I’ll pass on this one if it comes back again next winter. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 2:50 pm Candy • Review • Christmas • Ritter Sport • Chocolate • Cinnamon • 6-Tempting • Germany • Cost Plus • Monday, October 19, 2015
Trader Joe’s Toffee ChipsTrader Joe’s Toffee Chips come in a pretty simple little box packed with a half a pound of toffee planks covered in either milk or dark chocolate. It’s a pretty good deal for a half a pound of candy made with all natural ingredients, though Trader Joe’s doesn’t say where the chocolate comes from. The product popped up at my local Trader Joe’s about a week before it was listed on the website, so I bought a box. Then I ate it all, so this is my second box. (You’d think it would get a better rating than a 6 out of 10 if I’ve eaten a full pound.) After the first box I figured I’d pick up another, but it disappeared from the three Trader Joe’s I frequent for nearly a moth. I think this is intended as a hostess gift item, or perhaps something you’d buy to put out for guests at a party or after dinner. The tray holds 8 pieces of each variety, so I’ll go ahead and calculate that each is a half an ounce (and about 75 calories). The tray is rather flimsy, and the box doesn’t reseal after you open it. The whole thing, oddly enough, felt a little like a See’s item (they also use a lot of black and white in their packaging, but this has some brown elements and the full product image). They’re very attractive. The first box was unphotographable because the heat got to it, though it was still edible. The little planks have a squiggle of chocolate across them, making for a lot of chocolate heaped on the top. The milk chocolate variety is very sweet. The milk chocolate is milky and creamy, the toffee inside has a salty note and an excellent crunch but it falls apart into a bit of a grainy mess, like eating brown sugar towards the end. (I love eating a pile of brown sugar, but not when I think it’s supposed to be toffee.) The dark chocolate version had the same crunchy then grainy texture and excellent butter flavor, but the dark chocolate really meant nothing. The flavor of the dark chocolate was so non-descript I really kept wondering what it tasted like. If I shaved it off with my teeth, it was like a creamy dark chocolate baking chip, but eating with the toffee it just became a texture. I don’t think these are bad, mostly I ate the whole box because I was trying to figure them out, but I never really liked them much. They’re better with something else, like crushing them up on ice cream or with some strong coffee. As a hostess gift, they’re probably acceptable, especially for the price point. I don’t see myself buying them again though. They’re made with milk and soy and may also contain traces of wheat, eggs, peanuts and/or tree nuts. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 4:16 pm All Natural • Candy • Review • Christmas • Trader Joe's • Chocolate • Kosher • Toffee • 6-Tempting • United States • Tuesday, October 6, 2015
Mentos Incredible Chew!I found a new candy on eBay, they’re called Mentos Incredible Chew! and are available in Thailand and Australia (and probably other places). I picked up my packages on eBay from a Bangkok-based seller, so the packages are in Thai. Mentos new chews Incredible Chew! are more like Morinaga’s HiCHEW than Wrigley’s Starburst. The package are 45 grams and have 11 pieces of the same flavor. They boast no artificial colors, but I can’t say whether the flavorings are naturally derived. I did notice that the ingredients for the Australian version has gelatin in it, but this package and the Aussie version are Halal (so the gelatin is not from pigs). The three initial flavors are Strawberry, Grape and Green Apple. Mentos Strawberry Incredible Chew! is layered, a white outer layer with a pink center. The flavor also might be layered, though it’s hard to tell. The flavor is less of a jammy strawberry and more like a strawberry yogurt. There’s a creamy note, a sweetness and some floral notes and actually two tangy notes, one is a little bit like goat milk or yogurt and the other tartness is more like citric acid. The effect of this whole thing is only okay. It’s not as vibrant as HiCHEW and it doesn’t have the interesting texture that Mentos have. The texture is a smooth and bouncy chew, rather like latex. It’s kind of like a chewing gum at first, completely smooth and sweet and flavorful, and then eventually it disappears. Grape Incredible Chew! comes in a mostly purple wrapper, with big, round purple grapes on it.The pieces are white with a medium purple interior. The flavor is definitely concord and not the American SweeTarts grape. It’s a juicy flavor that has a lot of the notes I associate with actual concord grape skins. It’s a little tangy, mostly sweet with a smooth chew that starts bouncy but stays smooth. Of the three flavors, this was my favorite. It tasted clean and the flavor lasted through the texture changes as I chewed. Mentos Green Apple Incredible Chew! wasn’t even a flavor I was interested in, but when I ordered on eBay, half the cost of the initial package was shipping, so throwing in an additional package was purely an efficiency decision. The center is the same light green as the apples on the wrapper. The flavor is a cross between American Jolly Rancher Green Apple and the more subtle Japanese apple flavor. It’s tangy, and has a long chew but it’s also very artificial, especially towards the end when the sweetness that gave it an apple juice note dissipates and it’s just artificial flavor after that. Overall they’re a decent candy, I just don’t understand why anyone would buy these instead of Morinaga HiCHEW, which are available in far more flavors and have a much better flavor profile in my experience. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 3:31 pm Candy • Review • Perfetti van Melle • Chews • 6-Tempting • Thailand • Thursday, August 13, 2015
Mega Smarties ‘n CremeA couple of months ago on Candyology 101 we were talking about a new product called Mega Smarties ‘n Creme. It’s a layered Smartie candy with a creamy The roll is substantial, both in the packaging and the contents. I was initially shocked at the price of $2.49 for a roll, but it is 2.25 ounces. The wrapper is a paper/foil style that is easy to open and actually re-closes pretty well, too. The pieces are 1 inch in diameter. I pulled out some Giant Smarties I had sitting around as a comparison in the photo. There’s a vanilla note to the pieces once they’re unwrapped, but only from afar. The candies come in five colors/flavors. In a little diversion from the standard Smarties, there are blue ones in there. The disks remind me a lot of game pieces or poker chips. One side is lightly colored and flavored, the other side is white. I can’t tell if it’s a distinct flavor of its own. Purple is Grape and largely floral in flavor. It’s lightly tangy, but no actual grape flavor is in there. The floral notes are on the violet side of things. Orange was disappointingly bland. Yellow is Peach and by far the most tart of the array but not terribly peachy. Blue is Blueberry, another floral flavor, but there is a light tart and jammy note in there. It actually ended up being my favorite flavor of the group. Pink is Strawberry which is rather mild, which I think most people would be disappointed by. Though I found them pleasant enough, there was a weird “B vitamin” note that I had trouble getting around. Though they’re certainly better tasting that Flintstone’s Chewables, at least then I’d be getting my RDAs. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 3:14 pm Candy • Review • Ce De Candies • Compressed Dextrose • 6-Tempting • United States • Monday, June 15, 2015
Russell Stover Pecan Delight MinisRussell Stover is probably best known for the inexpensive boxed chocolates sold at drug stores. I happen to like them for their holiday novelty candies, but more recently they’ve tried to get into everyday snacking with their Big Bite pieces. At first these were just larger versions of the seasonal favorites, but more recent items are completely original to the format. The opposite spectrum of this trend is morselization ... and Russell Stover has introduced some teensy versions of their more popular items. I picked up their Russell Stover Pecan Delight Minis, which are nugget-sized pecan turtles. These candies that have the word pecan as the first word in their name and they need more pecans. A lot more pecans. Currently they’re little pecan bits, where are nice, they’re a good textural element, but they’re not dense enough ... I need some crunch in my chewy caramel and creamy milk chocolate. The size is good, they’re poppable. The vague sprinkling of pecans does give a woodsy maple note to the whole thing, the tough of salty is just about right. The caramel is a little too flavored and not authentically caramelized sugar and cream. As a candy, they about as good as other morsel things at the same price. They’re certainly better than Brach’s. I can’t say that I liked these better than the Demet’s Minis, which also suffer from too few pecans, but I do think the chocolate is of better quality here. (And less expensive.) Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 4:44 pm Candy • Morselization • Review • Russell Stover • Caramel • Chocolate • Nuts • 6-Tempting • United States • Walgreen's • |
Meticulously photographed and documented reviews of candy from around the world. And the occasional other sweet adventures. Open your mouth, expand your mind.
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