It’s just a barley sugar chicken.

Name: Tic Tac Strawberry Fields plus Cherry Cola & Lemon Lime Fizz
Brand: Ferrero USA, Inc
Description: Tic Tac Strawberry Fields is our newest fruit flavor sensation! Tic Tac Strawberry Fields is a blend of sweet and tart strawberry flavored Tic Tac mints, the perfect way to escape into pure sweet indulgence!  Later in the summer try our refreshing, fizzing and electrifying new flavors for Summer 2012; Cherry Cola and Lemon Lime Fizz. Experience them and satisfy your thirst in a new way! 
Introduction Date: 6/1/2011 & 7/1/2011
Notes: Tic Tacs are veering away from mint these days with fruity flavors. Strawberry Fields strikes me as an ideal flavor adaptation, I’m surprised it hasn’t existed up until now. I’m really excited by the soda flavors and hope that maybe we can get a Root Beer someday. (The copy I was given says that the Cherry Cola & Lemon Lime Fizz were to be introduced both July 2011 and Summer 2012, I don’t know if one, both or neither are accurate.)

Name: Gimbal’s SOUR LOVERS
Brand: Gimbal’s Fine Candies
Description: NEW Sour Lovers! Sour Lovers is made with Real Fruit Juice and bursts with Real Sour Flavor. Sour through and through, Sour Lovers is High in Antioxidant Vitamin C with each serving supplying 25% Daily Vitamin C Requirement. Sour Lovers heart shaped candies feature 12 awesome true-to-life flavors! This unique and delicious assortment includes Pomegranate, Strawberry Daiquiri, Sour Blueberry, Mango, Georgia Peach, Fuji Apple, Bing Cherry, Meyer Lemon, Watermelon, Grapefruit, Tangerine and Baja Margarita.
Introduction Date: 03/01/11
Notes: This continues the line of Gimbal’s “Lovers” series of large jelly bean style candies they’ve been introducing over the past three seasons, the first was Cherry Lovers followed by Honey Lovers. I was so intrigued by this one though, since it includes Grapefruit and Tangerine that I ordered some online and I hope to have them next week for review. These appear to be sour sanded candies, not a smooth jelly bean shell, but I won’t know until I get to see them up close. Also of note, Gimbal’s facilities are free of the eight major food allergens and are Kosher, so they’re very inclusive of most folks with food origin/ingredient/manufacturing concerns.

Name: PEEPS Chocolate Dipped Chicks in a Caramel Flavor
Brand: Just Born
Description: Chocolate Dipped Chicks for all seasons in a variety of different colors and/or flavors. They are all available in both Milk and Dark Chocolate.
Season Availability:
Easter offers Chocolate Dipped Chicks coated in yellow sugar.
Valentine’s Day offers Chocolate Dipped Chicks in Strawberry Creme Flavor.
Halloween offers Chocolate Dipped Chicks coated in orange sugar.
Christmas offers Chocolate Dipped Chicks in a Caramel Flavor.
Introduction Date: 7/1/2011
Notes: I think the chocolate flavored dark chocolate dipped PEEPS Chicks were the best Peeps ever. The caramel ones sound intriguing, especially if there’s a hint of salt in them. Next they should make an Espresso version. I say should as a suggestion, not a prediction.

Name: Quench Grape
Brand: Mueller Sports Medicine
Description: Best-Selling Sports Gum in America now available in Juicy New Flavor! New Quench Grape will be added to our current assortment of mouthwatering flavors - Original lemon, juicy orange and tangy fruit. In addition, Quench is unveiling a whole new look to its products to coincide with the addition of grape with eye-catching packaging and merchandising displays.
Introduction Date: 06/01/2011
Notes: I did not even know there was a category of “sports gum.” Grape Bubble Yum was one of my favorites as a kid, even though I can’t stand it as an adult ... and I also chewed my fair share of Quench when I was a kid as well. So you can imagine the waves of nostalgia this combination is generating for me. (Of course I expect that would be short lived, I’d chew a few pieces and be satisfied until the next nostalgic kick was engaged some years later ... I’m probably not the target market.)

All images courtesy of the respective manufacturer.

Related Candies

1. Candy Tease: Sweets & Snacks Expo 2011 Part 1
2. Candy Tease: August 2010
3. Candy Tease: Just Born 2010
4. Candy Tease: Sweets & Snacks Expo 2010 - Part 2
5. Candy Tease: Sweets & Snacks Expo 2010

I love the combination of chocolate and cookies. The KitKat bar is a great confectionery combination of the two. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve craved sweets less and come to appreciate texture and taste a bit more. So an ordinary milk chocolate KitKat can be a little sweet for many snacking situations (and there are many snacking situations).

I picked up the KitKat Otonano Amasa, which is the “adult taste” version - a little less sweet and with more cookie texture.

KitKats from Japan come in smart little boxes instead of plain old plastic packaging. I suppose it’s wasteful, but they do protect the contents well. On the back there’s a little “To” and “From” section for gifting.

Inside the box are two individually packaged two-finger pieces. Each is listed as 95 calories each.

The bars are just like any other KitKat, cream filled wafers covered in chocolate. But the chocolate here has little bits of dark chocolate cookies incorporated. The taste is similar to the Oreo Bitter Bar I tried recently. But in this case the texture at the front is is the creaminess of the chocolate. The flavor is slightly bitter like charcoal or, well, Oreos. The crispy wafers are light and flavorless.

It was a great combination, I liked it so much that I bought another bag of the snack sized ones. Which is goofy because they’re ridiculously expensive for KitKats. The package here was $2.25 for 1.19 ounces, the bag was $5.89 for 5.29 ounces. I could get some fine chocolates (well, See’s) for about $16 a pound.

Which is what leads me to the trepidation I have about the bar. The ingredients.

Ingredients: Palm Oil, Sugar, Wheat Flour, Cocoa Powder, Salt, Cacao Mass, Lactose, Powered Skim Milk, Cocoa Butter, Yeast, Salt, Soy Lecithin, Baking Powder, Flavoring, Yeast.

Palm oil. That’s what the bar is. Most of the time I find palm oil candies to be greasy and stiff, but this was really well done for a rainforest destroying confection. Oh, and palm oil is bad for you. Far worse than cocoa butter. So if I’m going for a candy that has a whopping 160 calories per ounce (which is about as high as the scale goes), it’d better be exceptional. So while I enjoyed this candy physically like it was a 10 out of 10, the price and ingredients knock it back to 8 out of 10.

Related Candies

1. Oreo Bitter Bar (Japan)
2. Russell Stover Cookies ‘n Cream Nest
3. Eat with your Eyes: KitKat Cookies Plus (Japan)
4. KitKat Dark
5. Q.Bel Double Dark Chocolate Wafer Bar
6. Cookies ‘n’ Creme Showdown
7. KitKat Bitter & White
8. Twix Dark Chocolate

A few months ago I was contacted by Zeke’s Candy Company with an offer to try their Old Fashioned Cracked Butterscotch. I love butterscotch, but then I thought, what is butterscotch? Do I even know what the real stuff is beyond the artificially colored and flavored butterscotch disk hard candies that I grew up on?

Their website only added to the mystery, as there were no photos of the candy itself, just the containers. When it arrived, it was just as mysterious, a deep brown box. It rattled, like it was a jigsaw puzzle made out of ceramic. It was pretty heavy to, so this was some dense stuff. Inside were two sealed bags of powdery and jagged pieces. Pieces range in size from a half an inch across to an inch and a half.

The ingredients are simple: butter, cane sugar, unsulfured molasses, water, vinegar and salt. So there was no “flavor” for butterscotch, it was obviously what they did with these simple ingredients that made scotched this butter.

As an artisan candy, the pieces are not machine made in any fashion. They’re thin pieces of “bark” that are broken into pieces small enough to suck on and then tossed in powdered sugar to keep them from sticking together. This is a bit messy, as there is both a bit of powdery residue on the fingers and a few little shards in the bottom of the bag when you’re done. It also means that this candy really can’t be placed into a candy dish, it needs to be kept in an airtight container (a zipper plastic bag will do) or else it gets tacky.

Once the powered sugar is gone from their surface, it’s apparent to me that Butterscotch is just toffee cooked to a slightly different texture. Where toffee cleaves into crunchy pieces, butterscotch is like a hard caramel, it’s smooth and eventually warms enough to become a very stiff and sticky chew (but only do it if you have complete confidence in your teeth or dental work).

The flavor is great, full of deep notes of caramelized sugar, molasses, honey, toast and salt. It’s a slow candy, great for times when you need something to go with a pensive activity.

I had a really hard time not crunching on it, so it got to be a challenge for me to at least wait until it was soft enough to chew. I found the stuff satisfying and addictive at the same time. It’s nothing like any other butterscotch candies I’ve had, the deep creamy smoothness is so much better than a straight sugar and corn syrup base.

I don’t recommend it for humid areas as I did find that it got tacky and sticky if left uncovered even in the low moisture Southern California where I live. If you’re a fan of the style of hard lollipops from See’s, this is a great small piece version with fewer ingredients. I could see there being a few other versions of these, perhaps with nuts, cocoa or even some coffee.

Related Candies

1. Mandy’s Old Fashioned Confections: Butterscotch & Caramel
2. Eat with your Eyes: See’s Butterscotch
3. See’s Lollypops
4. Hammond’s Pantry Candies
5. Japanese Black Sugar & Tropical Chews
6. Werther’s Caramel Coffee Hard Candies
7. Goodbye Reed’s
8. Alcohol Arrows

I bought these Choceur Choco Dragees in Germany at an Aldi Sud market. They’re like M&Ms but have a stronger caramel milk flavor to them. They were also quite inexpensive and of course beautiful to look at even though they use all natural colorings.

Name: RJ’s Licorice Allsorts, Natural Licorice Allsorts, Licorice Chocolate Twists and Raspberry Chocolate Twists
Brand: RJ’s Licorice (New Zealand Natural Goods)
Description: RJ’s Licorice is adding four amazing licorice confectionery products to its existing line. RJ’s Licorice Allsorts, Natural Licorice Allsorts, Licorice Chocolate Twists and Raspberry Chocolate Twists are the new additions to their range and no doubt will continue to stretch the boundaries of licorice confectionery products available in the United States and around the world.
Introduction Date: 05/22/11
Notes: I’m all for more variety in Licorice offerings. The New Zealand style is similar to the Aussie version of soft eating licorice - meaty, with lots of molasses flavors and a wheat base (sorry gluten-intolerant friends).

Name: Werther’s Original Creamy Apple Filled
Brand: Storck USA, L.P
Description: A Smooth Caramel Candy Shell, with a creamy filling of the rich taste of caramel dipped apples. 
Introduction Date: 09/01/11
Notes: Tootsie has a caramel apple pop that’s tasty but lacking in curb appeal. Maybe Werther’s, the caramel kings, can also break through with something that’s a bit prettier.

Name: Bebeto Premium
Brand: Kervan Gida San ve Tic. A.S.
Description: Childlike happiness is coming to grown ups’ world with Bebeto Premium. It is much more than regular gummy; joy, health, magical flavor mixes…
- Raspberry & Blackberry “A Tempting Mix”: The taste of forest fruits which you cannot get enough of.
- Turkish Coffee & Mint “Just One Of It Has 40 Years Of Inspiration!”: At home, at the office or while working While watching TV, even with a cup of coffee. An amazing flavor one can enjoy everywhere.
- Tropical Pineapple & Tropical Orange “A Sweet Breeze From Tropic Islands”: When you desire to feel good, Just one is enough to change your mood…
Introduction Date: 01/15/2011
Notes: I was really excited when I saw these at the ISM Cologne candy fair. The idea of Turkish Coffee and Mint gummis, I think, is stunning. Let’s just say that I was stunned with the result. Now that I know that they’re introducing them in the United States, I’ll put up a full review in the coming weeks.

Product images are courtesy of the respective candy manufacturer.

Related Candies

1. Candy Tease: Nostalgia in 2011
2. Candy Tease: Mars 2010
3. Candy Tease: Just Born 2010
4. Candy Tease: Hershey’s 2010
5. Candy Tease: Sweets & Snacks Expo 2010 - Part 2
6. Candy Tease: Sweets & Snacks Expo 2010

Necco Wafers are iconic little disks of crunchy dried sugar and flavoring. They’re the shape and size of a coin but the texture of unfired ceramics. The All Natural Necco Wafers SmartFruits come in little mini rolls. There are 23 rolls in the 11 ounce package and feature four flavors: Raspberry+ Acai, Lemon + Goji, Pomegranate + Goji and Blueberry + Acai.

I bought these a few weeks ago at the 99 Cent Only store. They’re a bit of a puzzle, since it appears they don’t even exist. There’s no mention of them on the Necco company website, I can find only two references on the internet to them: a review in Spanish from 2009 and a notice of the registration of the trademark for “SmartFruits.” I know that the product is not that old because of the trademark and the design of the package cannot be before 2009. 

The pieces are muted and in most lighting situations I have trouble telling them apart without sorting them. Straight out of the package the little stack of 9 disks smells like ketchup and raspberry jam.

I wasn’t able to actually tell the flavors apart ... they all had a muted berry smoothie flavor to them. One was definitely lemony and tart but the rest were nondescript. They were not disgusting, but they were pointless.

The package says that there were real fruit antioxidants in here, but the nutritional panel doesn’t even register any vitamin C, which is easily the most palatable vitamin to put in a candy. The ingredients list lots of good things like freeze dried fruit (blueberry, raspberry, acai, goji berry) but it’s well after the sugar on the list, so they can’t make up much of the bulk. One roll is 50 calories. I can think of far better ways to spend your discretionary calories.

Like all Necco Wafers and Conversation Hearts, they contain gelatin and are unsuitable for vegetarians and are not Kosher.

Related Candies

1. Wonka Exceptionals Fruit Jellies: Grapefruit, Goji Berry & Red Apple
2. Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Powerberries
3. Necco Conversation Hearts (Sweethearts) 2010
4. HiCHEW World Fruit: Dragonfruit, CamuCamu, Durian & White Peach
5. All Natural Necco Wafers
6. Terra Nostra Pocket Bars
7. Necco Smoothies

Scho-Ka-Kola has a cult following, especially in Germany. The concept is simple, it’s a caffeine enhanced chocolate. They use both coffee and cola nut to boost the stimulant content which is where the name comes from, Schokolade (chocolate), Kaffee (coffee) and Kola (cola) . It was introduced at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin by Hildebrand as a “sport chocolate”. Later it was used during the war, especially by German pilots. Today it’s made by Sarotti, which is owned by Stollwerk which itself is now owned by international chocolate giant, Barry Callebaut. It’s still made in Berlin and the packaging has changed little over the years.

The tin is easy to carry in a roomy pocket (though I’d worry about melting). It’s about 3.5 inches in diameter and one inch high. There’s a helpful little thumb-print impression on one side of the lid, press it and the tin opens easily.

The round tin holds little “slices” of the chocolate disk. There are eight slices on each layer of the tin, separated by a stiff piece of waxed paper. A serving which would contain the equivalent caffeine as a cup of espresso. My guess (and part of this is from translating the package) is that a serving is four pieces and the actual caffeine content is about 50 mg. So it’s not a lot, but it’s a mild and even boost. It says to me that munching a few pieces an hour would be a good way to keep a steady dose of caffeine in your system without getting all jittered up.

The chocolate isn’t very intense or dark, it’s 52.5%, but the rest of the content isn’t all sugar either. It’s 2.6% coffee and 1.6% cola nut powder. Kola nuts (or cola nuts) are closely related to cacao and have a fair amount of theobromine as well as caffeine in them but far less fat.

The pieces are thick (just shy of a half an inch) and have these great ridges that make it easier to hold them without getting too warm from your hands and bite. (One piece is less than a quarter of an ounce, so it’s a fine mouthful if you won’t want to bite.) The flavors are quite deep and on the woodsy side. There’s a dry and bitter note to it in the flavor, but it didn’t leave me wanting a lot of water. The coffee flavor is muted, it’s mostly a roasted and charcoal sort of chocolate. Not intense but also not pansy. There were no acrid caffeine flavors for me, so the fact that the caffeine was still integrated into their natural sources probably helped. It probably also means that the caffeine is metabolized a little slower.

I picked up this little tin for 2 Euros, but in the States these things sell for about $6 retail. For $6 I could buy a truly extraordinary bar of chocolate. But if I were traveling in Europe and wanted an alternative pick-me-up to the sub-par coffee that’s found in far too many places, then this is the way to go. Easy to carry and share and with a reliable dosing scheme.

There is a little milk in there, so it’s not a vegan product. The tin also says that it may contain traces of almonds, hazelnuts and gluten.

Related Candies

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6. Pocket Coffee