I’m a bit of a picky chewer, when it comes to gum. Part of it may be that I’m just such a minority in my tastes that it’s not profitable to make the kind of gum I might like.

I mostly chew gum made with sugar, not because I necessarily want sugar in my gum, but because it’s so hard to find sugar free gum that’s not made with artificial sweeteners like aspartame (NutraSweet), sucralose (Splenda), acesulfame potassium (AceK) and saccharine. It’s very rare to find a gum like the PUR line that is sugarless but also made only with xylitol, which is a sugar alcohol. Xylitol has been around for years and is often used in sugar free mints and gums, though usually in combination with artificial sweeteners. It has a light ans sweet note to it, but like most sugar alcohols, it also has an odd cooling effect on the tongue (which is usually a desirable feature for mints).

The PUR Gum is is gluten free, nut free, dairy free, vegan and free of GMO ingredients. I’ve tried the other flavors that were introduced when the gum line launched about three years ago:  Peppermint, Spearmint and Pomegranate Mint. I liked them quite a bit, though they’re not easy to find.

The pieces are simple chiclets, rounded rectangular pieces, a little rustic and uneven, measuring about 3/4 of an inch long and about 1/3 of an inch wide. A serving, for me, is two pieces. (With actual Chiclets it’s usually 3 pieces at a time.)

The chew is very soft at first, with a very cool note on top and a strong sweetness before the other flavors kick in. The sweetness is not the same as sugar, it’s less round, cool on the tongue and rather slippery.

The flavor is very odd. At first it was a bit on the wintergreen side, which some people find medicinal ... or repulsive. There are other notes to it, a little hint of eucalyptus and then another more balsam note, it reminded me of mastic, which is a resin that’s also used a chewing gum in the Mediterranean. (If you’ve never had mastic, it’s also similar in its flavor profile to tea tree oil, which is not meant to be eaten but is found in many natural personal care products.)

The wintergreen notes dissolve away and all that seemed to be left was that sort of resin note with a hint of something like jasmine tea. It’s pleasant, at least for me and did definitely freshen my mouth after eating some curry for lunch.

Cinnamon is predictable and comforting. It’s woodsy and a little on the clove side of spicy, but has a wonderful warming hotness to it. The intense and rounded flavors dissipate pretty quickly, but the lingering flavor is just sweet and with the lightest tough of cinnamon.

There’s no weird bitter note, either, which I think is often caused by artificial colors. There are no colors here, so it’s all about the gum flavor. The xylitol sweetness lasts for a while, I’d say the pieces are satisfying for about 15 minutes. After I tossed the gum, I still had that lingering warmth of the cinnamon for at least a half an hour. It definitely cut through coffee breath.

I’d probably still stick with the Peppermint (from the original review) for a gum to keep in my desk, but for travel, I think I would go with the Coolmint because I really felt like chewing the pieces longer than the other flavors. It’s a little expensive and the packaging takes up a lot of space for such a small amount of gum. (I might like it if the blister pack was scored so I could just tear off a few of them to keep them in my little case that I take on airplanes.)

The gum is not easy to find, and not cheap. I’ve seen it at natural food stores and grocers, such as Sprouts and Erewhon.

Related Candies

1. Oak Leaf Refresh Triple Mint Chewing Gum
2. Glee Sugar Free Gum
3. Tree Hugger Bubble Gum
4. Hollywood Chewing Gum
5. PUR Gum: Xylitol Sweetened
6. Wee Glee Gum
7. Mentos Cinnamon
8. Classic Gums: Black Jack, Clove, Beemans & Teaberry
9. Canada Wintergreen

I don’t chew gum often, but when I do, I chew it a lot. It’s particularly hard to find gum that’s still sweetened with only sugar and not artificial sweeteners like aspartame and sucarlose. I enjoy gum as a candy, which means that I chew all the sugar out of it and before the flavor has much chance to fade, I swap that piece out for a fresh one. (It’s probably a style of consumption that gum companies should welcome.)

I love chiclet style gum because primarily because it’s attractive, but also because it has texture to it; the crunchy shell has its own flavor and goes with the pleasing experience of chewing until the sugar is depleted. I can line up the pieces like Skittles or M&Ms on my keyboard. I got a huge sample bag of Oakleaf Refresh Triple Mint Chewing Gum from SweetWorks late last year and have been making my way through the bag. This is the kind of gum you’d find in a quarter twist vending machine, a little handful of pieces for some of the change in your pocket.

Wintergreen - these white pieces have little speckles of blue on them, some of the time. The flavor is clean and soft, with a good note of wintergreen. It’s not overpowering, but definitely strong enough that others nearby may think you’ve been rubbing lineament into your joints. There’s a little numbing tingle towards the end, as wintergreen can have that sort of effect. The flavor lasted longer than the sugar, but did taste a lot more medicinal after the sugar was gone.

Peppermint - is a nice medium blue. I don’t really need this much food coloring in my gum, as the point of minty gums is to act as a bit of a digestive but mostly to freshen my breath.  don’t want my tongue looking blue when I’m done with it. It’s fresh, it’s not terribly strong but very sweet. I found it comforting but not challenging.

Spearmint is a pretty rare flavor in gum these days, so it’s nice to see it here. It’s green, for some reason spearmint is green and peppermint is blue (or red and white). The flavor is good, it’s peppery at first and quite strong, but mellows out after chewing and mixing with the sugar.

Of the three flavors, I preferred the wintergreen, but I’m usually mindful of not smelling like wintergreen in social situations or closed spaces. So the spearmint was my go-to flavor of the variety, especially since I can get peppermint chiclets in the form of actual Chiclets that don’t have blue food coloring. But since I already have these, they’re being consumed.

I did find that they stuck to one filling in my teeth (just that one old amalgam, even though I have other fillings). It’s hard to rationalize the large amount I have, but it works for my consumption style. It would be nice if they came in boxes like Chiclets or perhaps a tin like Altoids. The company that owns Oak Leaf, SweetWorks was recently purchased by the Swiss company called Frey which makes chocolate but also has their own line of gums, so maybe they’ll start doing some more gum packaging.

Related Candies

1. Glee Sugar Free Gum
2. Tree Hugger Bubble Gum
3. PUR Gum: Xylitol Sweetened
4. Ball Gum Balls (Football & Tennis)
5. Classic Gums: Black Jack, Clove, Beemans & Teaberry
6. Tiny Size Chiclets
7. Gold Mine Gum
8. Razzles

Milton S. Hershey is one of great entrepreneur stories of the 20th century. Hershey always wanted to be a confectioner. He was apprenticed to a candy maker as a child and then later tried several times to make it on his own. He focused on caramels and small wrapped sweets, peddling them on a cart pushed around the streets. While working in Denver for another confectioner, he learned a new recipe for boiled sweets, a caramel that was extremely stable as well as delicious because of the use of milk in addition to butter. However, even in Philadelphia, Chicago and New York City ... each of these companies failed. In 1886 he returned home, in debt but still convinced that his new caramel recipe he learned in Denver could succeed. He convinced family members to invest once again and this time was the right time. He created the Lancaster Caramel Company which flourished.

He built this little enterprise into a full factory business by the turn of century, employing over 1,300 people and then sold it off for a million dollars in order to fund his new venture, the Hershey Chocolate Company. Hershey’s is finally introducing their own line of caramels, under the nostalgic name of Lancaster.

The new Lancaster Caramel Soft Cremes’ package looks nostalgic. What’s inside, though, is unlikely to be anything close to what Milton Hershey used to make in copper kettles. The package says “His [Milton Hershey] original caramel recipe is the inspiration for Lancaster Cremes. The ingredients tell the story of a modern confection:

Sweetened Condensed Milk (Evaporated Milk, Sugar, Water, Lactose), Corn Syrup, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Palm Kernel Oil, Sugar, Contains 2% or Less of: Dairy Butter (Milk), Glyceryl Monostearate, Salt, Soy Lecithin, Disodium Phosphate, Tocopherols, to Maintain Freshness, Sodium Carbonate.

Though I was a little disappointed to see the use of things like palm kernel oil, tocopherols and high fructose corn sweetener, I was more disappointed at the price for such things. Kraft Caramels are usually about $2 a bag on sale and contain similar ingredients but not the premium price. But, I was willing to give these a try.

The little nuggets are glossy and soft. They don’t smell like much, but have a beautifully soft and chewy bite. The chew and dissolve is impossibly smooth and rich, with good flavor notes of caramelized sugar and butter. It’s like a soft version of Pearson’s Nips. (I could imagine these as fantastic in coffee flavor.) It’s not a completely stiff caramel chew, like a Storck Chocolate Riesen, but much smoother than the soft bite of a Kraft Caramel.

As much as I wanted to hate these for their divergence from Hershey’s original simple ingredients, they are quite good. The texture, the consistency and overall not-too-sweet profile is really ideal. I begrudgingly love them. They come in two other varieties: Vanilla and Caramel and Vanilla and Raspberry. Honestly, I plan to quit while I’m ahead. If they come up with chocolate or coffee flavored ones, I’ll give those a go.

Oddly enough, the Lancaster Caramels are made in Canada, not Central Pennsylvania. Also, they’re not Kosher and there are no other notations on the package regarding nuts, wheat or eggs though the ingredients list dairy and soy as ingredients.

Related Candies

1. Slo Poke Caramel
2. Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Tahitian Vanilla Caramels
3. Kraft & Ferrara Pan Caramels
4. Hershey’s Miniatures
5. Coffee Nips
6. Werther’s Original Chewy Caramels
7. Sugar Mama
8. Goetze’s Caramel Creams

I’m a sucker for the look of candy, especially in bulk. I couldn’t help but pick up a five pound bag of these compressed dextrose hearts.

The weblisting for the product says that they’re pastel, but they’re much brighter than that. It’s hot pink, magenta/purple, turquoise blue and light yellow. The heart shapes are small, rather pillowy in form and about the size of a nickel.

I wasn’t really interested in how they tasted, at this price, it was more about having a pretty candy jar filled with little hearts before Valentine’s Day to share with co-workers. That was about two weeks ago and the jar is empty. (I didn’t eat them. But they were popular.)

These are not tart candies. I don’t think there are any acid flavorings at all in here. They might be flavored, but it’s so mild it’s hard to say for sure.

Purple is a lightly floral grape. Red has some strawberry notes. Blue is a kind of bitter raspberry, really the only flavor in the bunch I didn’t care for. Yellow is lightly lemony, quite fresh.

They’re pretty. They make a nice decoration, but not really very good candy. There’s nothing to offend anyone, no weird flavors because there’s barely any flavor at all. But I’m not saying that they’re not compelling, they’re gorgeous to look at and easy to munch. I’ve had other much more flavorful Oak Leaf candies before, so this must be from a much more subtle line of candy than I like.

Ultimately the review around the office was that they were too pretty to pass up. But no one wants me to buy them again. Kind of a weird relationship to have with candy. Personally, I’d prefer the Wonka Heartbreakers, so that’s what I’ve been eating while others have emptied the jar.

The SweetWorks website lists these as gluten free and nut free, though take care if you get them from a bulk bin (if you have concerns about cross contamination, it’s always best to get it in a factory sealed package).

Related Candies

1. Wonka Everlasting Gobstopper HeartBreakers (2014)
2. Candy Rings
3. Brach’s Ice Cream Conversation Hearts
4. Hello Kitty Lucky Stars Candy
5. Necco Sweethearts Twilight Fire & Ice
6. Runts
7. Cinnamon Imperial Hearts
8. Oak Leaf Candies

I couldn’t resist the look of these tins for Ginger Zingers made by Big Sky Brands. Not only are they a cute format, they also feature one of my favorite flavors: Ginger.

I’ve had quite a few “mints” from Big Sky Brands over the years, and appreciate their approach to their candies even if their flavor combinations don’t align with my tastes. The Ginger Zingers line (called Ginger Delights on their website for some reason) come in four flavors: D’Anjou Pear, Mango, Chai and Blood Orange. I picked up the last two, as they were the most appealing to me.

The back of the tin explains the candy:

We love natural ginger for its distinctive spicy sweetness and invigorating kick.  That’s why our Ginger Zingers candy is packed with genuine ground ginger root & carefully selected natural flavors for a delicious and stimulating on the go treat!

They aren’t kidding when they say it’s packed with ginger. The ingredients list pure cane sugar first, then ground ginger root.

The Blood Orange Ginger Zingers has a very faint orange cast to it but definitely smells like an orange gelatin dessert. The flavor on the tongue is immediately a sweet orange, but a little later this candy gets intense. The ginger is very warm and has a strong black pepper hotness. I found them too intense and the orange didn’t have any zest or tang, just the sweet juice note.

The Chai Ginger Zingers feature a full list of the spices on the package, which I really appreciated. Star anise (pictured on the box), cinnamon, cardamom, clove and black pepper are the chai to go with the ginger. This combination smells like vanilla at first, or more like a poundcake, with a sweet baked sugar note. The ginger is far from the intensity of the Blood Orange variety, but still warming. I caught a note of the anise, black pepper and a little clove, but it was a nice mellow blend. I found these very easy to eat one after another.

Each tin holds about 30 pieces of candy, about 1 ounce total. I picked mine up for $1.99 a package. They’re a bit pricy for mints, especially if I gobble them up. But the flavors were distinct and uncommon enough that I could see getting the Chai again, especially if I were looking for something to help with motion sickness. In the mean time, the tin is the ideal size for stowing my earbuds.

The package specifies that these are made with a vegetarian sourced magnesium stearate, but there’s no notation on whether the sugar is considered vegan. They are kosher and gluten free.

Related Candies

1. Trader Joe’s Organic Gingermints
2. Chimes Orange Ginger Chews
3. Tea Forte Minteas Lemongrass Yuzu
4. Maple Ice Mints
5. Newman’s Own Ginger Mints
6. VerMints
7. Jones Soda Grape Carbonated Candy

Candy Crush is a line of candy based on a game based on candy. Got that?

The candies are licensed by King.com and made by Healthy Food Brands, which also makes the Angry Birds gummi candies (snacks) and licenses the Sunkist brand as well.

The initial offerings for the Candy Crush line are: Candy Crush Sour Fruit Gummies, Fruit Mix Gummies, Jelly Fish and Color Bombs.

Earlier this week I reviewed the Gummies and Color Bombs, today I have the Candy Crush Jelly Fish.

Like the other candies, the boxes are big but they contain very little. They’re 7” x 4.25” - which is bigger than the more typical theater box that you’d see from Mike and Ike, Hot Tamales or Starburst, which are about 6” x 3.25” and holds 4-6 ounces. The Candy Crush line gives you between 3 ounces and 3.5 ounces in each box. I can’t fault the graphic design though. They’re bold and easy to tell apart but also easy to spot from a distance. The happy mermaid character on the front and depiction of the candy is great. At first I didn’t like package artwork but they grew on me this week.

Here’s the weird thing that you might notice right away. The flavor set listed on the box for the Jelly Fish is exactly the same as the Gummies: Blue Raspberry, Lemon, Lime, Cherry, Orange, Grape. I thought this was a great selling point, because Swedish Fish only come in four flavors. So this would be a similar candy with a different flavor variety. However, it’s pretty clear that the colors are Orange, Yellow, Green and Red. I thought maybe I didn’t get a full variety, but checking the Dylan’s Candy Bar website (which says it’s selling them exclusively in the first few weeks of the roll-out), I saw that they had the exact same description but still only showed the four colors.

The fish are soft with a matte finish to them. They didn’t stick together, but tended to tear and break when bent instead of just, well, bending. My assortment was in perfect ratios - four of each.

Red is Swedish Fish (Lingonberry) - lovely, sweet, floral and jammy. They’re soft and chewy and maybe stick a bit to my teeth.

Green is Lime - this is a dying flavor, so it’s rather strange to get it in a box (especially one that says that it’s going to be green apple). Tangy, zesty. Done.

Yellow is Lemon - a well rounded lemon flavor, a little on the zesty side without much of a tangy note.

Orange is Orange - this was good. Zesty, sweet with a hint of juicy tartness.

Even though the candies were purchased four days after their announced release, came in a sealed pouch inside a sealed box, they seemed a bit stale. Three of my fish were broken. Yes, jelly fish that were broken. They weren’t different from Swedish Fish. I love Swedish Fish, but there’s really no reason for me to buy these instead of Swedish Fish.

They’re expensive. Only 16 fish in the box. This is a sugar candy, not made with organic ingredients or all natural flavorings, yet it’s more than $22 per pound. It’s not even a unique set of flavors like it promised on the front of the box ... there’s no grape! (Which is missed by many in the Assorted Swedish Fish world.) The Mixed Fruit Gummies and Sour Gummies were at least in themed shapes that matched the game. These Jelly Fish had nothing about them that indicated they were anything other than a repacked existing product. Swedish Fish have either Swedish or Malaaco on them. Albanese Gummi Bears have a little A on their bellies. These have nothing that says anything other than generic. (Okay, I do recognize that in the game they don’t actually have a name on them either. But Jelly Bellies and M&Ms have little brands on them as well.)

For the entire Candy Crush line I can only say I’m disappointed. There’s really nothing here that’s new or innovative and since they’re more expensive than many other candies of similar quality, I can only surmise that the premium goes to the licensing fee.

Related Candies

1. Candy Crush Color Bombs
2. Candy Crush: Mixed Fruit and Sour Gummies
3. Swedish Fish Eggs
4. All Gummies Gourmet Fruity Fish (Swedish Fish knock-off)
5. Gummy Fishies
6. Swedish Aqua Life

Trader Joe’s always selects their confectionery products with a bit of an atypical flair. Sure, they have some organic mints in tins at the check out counter, but they’re also offering these Trader Joe’s Organic Gingermints as well.

The tin is cute and bold, featuring orange and salmon accents and some wasabi-green highlights. The mints are Kosher and made with organic ingredients, gluten free and vegan. The steel, hinged box holds 50 “mints” though they’re really just ginger flavored ... no peppermint or spearmint flavors in there.

The ingredients are simple:

Organic cane sugar, water, organic tapioca syrup, ginger oil, organic maple syrup, organic ground ginger root, agar, gum tragacanth

They’re rather creamy looking, just slightly off white which could be from the maple syrup or ground ginger root. They’re also very gingery. They’re smoother than Altoids, less of a chalky quality to them. When I let it dissolve, it was a little syrupy instead, kind of like a slippery elm lozenge. Mostly I crunch them, which means that I get a big kick of the ginger immediately. They’re sweet, but it’s more earthy and clean with a lingering heat from the ginger. They’re spicy, but the burn doesn’t accumulate, so I didn’t have trouble eating three or four in a row.

I suspect that these are just repackaged VerMints which are also made in Canada and have the same agar and gum tragacanth ingredients, but that’s fine with me these are certainly easier to find. Trader Joe’s also sells a straight Organic Peppermint tin as well.

Related Candies

1. Torie & Howard Organic Hard Candies
2. Newman’s Own Ginger Mints
3. GoNaturally Hard Candies
4. VerMints
5. St. Claire’s Organic Mints & Tarts
6. Anis de Flavigny

Here are a few Easter candies I bought but I’m not going to get around to doing a full review.

Ghirardelli Milk & Coconut Chocolate Eggs come in a little 3.5 ounce bag and like the other two versions available for Easter, they’re a bit on the pricey side. I paid $3.99 for this little bag.

I was actually out at CVS looking for the Cadbury Hollow Bunny that I noted in my roundup of products for 2013. (I was hoping it was on sale, because the first time I saw them, they were $4.79 for a 3.5 ounce bunny and I didn’t really want to fork that over for Cadbury chocolate.) While looking though I spotted this bag, which reader Kate mentioned was available last year.

They’re pretty and feature good quality milk chocolate. These were a little softer in texture and had a silky melt. The coconut mixed into the chocolate is crispy, though it does become chewy after a while. It’s a nice combination of textures and flavors. I found the coconut a little too, I don’t know, difficult to get out of my teeth. Still, I manged to finish the bag within 24 hours, so I must have liked them. I’ll still go for the Milk Crisp version over this.

Rating: 7 out of 10

I found Ferrero Tic Tac Bunny Burst at Target with all the other little Easter Basket stuffers. I didn’t see a press release on this, so I didn’t know it was coming out. Further, there’s no listing on the package or anywhere I can find on the internet that says what flavors are actually in the Bunny Burst.

The green is pretty easy to figure out. It was green apple. They’re sweet and tangy, with a very sweet, odd aftertaste. I didn’t care much for it and was hoping for better in the lilac colored ones.

The soft purple is a bit of a mystery flavor. The ingredients list dried apple, dried grape, dried acerola (West Indian Cherry) and dried lychee. So I’m going to call this one tropical. It has a light green grape note, I also tasted violets along with a floral melon and vague medicinal cherry note. At one point did think about lychees, as well. It’s interesting and unique. Not really what I’d call good or refreshing, but I didn’t notice the weird sweet and metallic aftertaste with this one.

They’re made in Canada and contain carmine, so they’re not suitable for vegetarians.

Rating: 6 out of 10

I bought this pair of Cemoi Classic Creamy Egg (Milk Chocolate) at Cost Plus World Market. I was actually hoping to find a dark chocolate version, perhaps more upscale, of the classic Cadbury Creme Egg.

This is not that. I can’t give it a full review because I didn’t actually eat it. Both were sticky and oozy under the foil wrap, though I made my choices from the box at the store very carefully. I opened both and found overly sweet, grainy fondant. The chocolate was marginal, it was all just very sweet and unappealing. So into the trash they went.

Rating: 3 out of 10

I reviewed the Snickers Peanut Butter Squared before when they came out. The Snickers Peanut Butter Egg is the same construction, only in hemispherical ovoid shape. It’s a little different because it’s molded instead of being enrobed. Of course the domed shape also means different bites have different ratios. But overall I noticed more caramel in it. The chocolate and caramel and peanut with peanut butter is a nice combination. The salty peanut butter keeps it from being too sweet. I enjoyed it more than the Square thing. I also reviewed the Santa version of this which also has different proportions because of the shape of the mold.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Related Candies

1. Ghirardelli Milk & Crisp Chocolate Eggs
2. Snickers Pumpkin
3. 3 Musketeers Coconut
4. Zitrone Honig Tic Tac
5. Tic Tac Pink Grapefruit
6. House Brand Creme Eggs
7. Dove Truffle and Snickers Eggs