A variety of sweet pastel marshmallows impaled on a stick, wrapped in plastic and sold in a store. Genius!

The Wonka Exceptionals line is available in special Easter holiday packaging.

The Wonka public relations folks sent me this box of their Wonka Exceptionals Scrumdiddlyumptious Chocolate Eggs to review. The box is springy, and I’ll say it veers off towards the feminine in a whimsy sort of way. (The Dove chocolate line’s packaging is more towards elegant feminine sophistication.) But I can also see kids taking a liking to it for the brilliant purple and icons on the packages of flowers, vines and butterflies. They also come in another variety, Wonka Exceptionals Chocolate Waterfall which I also have a sample of.

The box holds five milk chocolate eggs with scrumptious toffee, crispy cookie and crunchy peanuts. Wonka also says that they’re made with natural ingredients, but doesn’t mention on the front that they’re also made with not-so-natural ingredients which include, in descending level of appearance, soy lecithin (I’m guessing GMO), modified cornstarch and high fructose corn sweetener (I never see that used in chocolate, but I do see it quite often in cookies and cereal products so I’m assuming it’s an ingredient in one of the inclusions).

My eggs were a little worse for their trek in the mail. I find that stuff that’s shipped to me actually ends up in worse condition than items I pick up in the stores, so I expect that this is a worst case scenario.

The individual packages are just little plastic sleeve wrappers and are labeled for individual sale.

Since the portion is less than an ounce, the calorie count is much lower than some other “full serving” chocolate eggs. Both versions are 140 calories, and for a candy so high in fat, that’s a satisfying size. The Scrumdiddlyumptious Chocolate is already available in large bars or individually wrapped pieces. I reviewed them when they first came out last year. The combination of ingredients is interesting and definitely unique on the market at the moment.

The construction is simple, a 2.5” long and 1.5” wide egg is molded with mixed in items: crumbled cookies, toffee pieces and little bits of peanuts.

It smells green and nutty and a little milky. The crunch of the chocolate is good, it’s a little soft and immediately has a note of cinnamon and graham crackers. The toffee bits taste a little salty and the peanuts are few and far between but taste like they’re deeply roasted. The chocolate is mild and pleasant, it reminds me more of Cadbury than Nestle. It’s very sweet and at least the cookie bits provide a little relief from that.

It’s not that I loved this, but it’s so much better than Nestle’s other efforts like the Butterfinger Egg, it’s a wonder how they can continue making such waxy, poorly flavored chocolate when we now have proof that they know the difference.

The Wonka Exceptionals Chocolate Waterfall Egg is a a delectable combination of swirled milk and white chocolate.

I’m happy to report that there are fewer not-so-natural ingredients in this variety, just the soy lecithin.

White chocolate maybe the unofficial chocolate style of Easter and I was pleased to see that the white chocolate used here is the real cocoa butter variety.

The white and milk chocolate has a similar smooth texture, not quite Dove smooth, but smoother than other Nestle products. It’s quite sweet but has a milky taste and definite vanilla note to it.

The individually wrapped foil pieces are more consistently balanced between the milk and dark chocolate. I only had one sample of this so I can’t say it’s the same for all of them, but I felt there was too much milk chocolate and not enough white. Sometimes I find that white chocolate can taste a little off quickly, a little stale or rancid. In this case it just didn’t taste fresh to me, but I admit that it was stored with other flavored candies from Wonka, which might have contaminated it.

I like the shape, I like how thick it is and especially when there are chunks or layers in it, how it provides a nice cross section of flavors. The packaging isn’t as fun as the foil wrapped pieces, which I liked a little better, the colors on those are just as appropriate for Easter anyway.

It’s nice to see something a little different for Easter baskets or just snacking. These didn’t wow me with their ingenuity, but the quality difference from the earlier efforts from Wonka that were the Golden Creme Egg means that they’re winners just for showing up.

Related Candies

1. Nestle Butterfinger Pumpkin
2. Wonka Exceptionals: Chocolate Waterfall
3. Wonka Exceptionals Scrumdiddlyumptious
4. Wonka Golden Egg
5. Wonka Golden Creme Egg
6. Dove Truffle and Snickers Eggs
7. Hershey Eggs

I went all the way to Germany to buy a Canadian candy bar.

I picked up the Cadbury Wunderbar at a grocery store. I’ve actually seen them in the United States, heck, I’ve even bought them before, but they were always kind of melted and broken. This one looked lovely and in good condition. Wunderbar is a great name for a candy bar, it works on a couple of levels. First, it’s unique and a bit of a play on words because it sounds like Wonder Bar. But the German word Wunderbar (pronounce that w like a v) means Marvelous!

The front of the package doesn’t do much to illuminate what’s inside though. It just calls it A peanut butter caramel experience. The back, in teensy print, says crispy peanut bar with caramel and cocoa containing coating. Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a bar with a less appealing description, probably because it ends with some sort of comedic euphemism for mockolate (because of the alliteration of the K sounds).

I don’t want to think too much about this bar. It’s a candy bar and it’s supposed to be transiently pleasing. So I’m prepared for just that.

The coating was pretty good for mockolate, a little soft but not at all waxy. Smooth enough to not be grainy but not so great at the melt in your mouth creaminess. The flavor was okay, more milky than chocolatey but mostly it tasted like peanuts.

The center of the bar was like someone had chopped up the center of Butterfinger bar and mixed it in with some Chex cereal then reformed it into a log and coated it. That’s really not a bad idea and it does work. There’s a bit of a softer caramel in there as well, that keeps it all soft and crumbly. There are little shards of peanut butter toffee stuff, too.

I wanted more peanut flavor, but it wasn’t overly sweet and had a little hint of salt as well.

Really it just left me wanting a Clark Bar. But I admire it for not being another Clark/Butterfinger/Fifth Avenue knock-off. It’s more munchable and certainly less messy. It’s also huge, at 1.9 ounces and about six inches long. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it marvelous, since it would be better with real chocolate. So I’ll just call it Tempting (6 out of 10).

Some other views: Exquisite Candy and Jim’s Chocolate Mission.

Wonka continues its new strategy of candy releases which includes a bit more imagination and uniqueness. For Easter they have some new products that are basically reshaped regular items for the holiday but also at least one truly new conrection. Their Wonka Springy Double Yummy Gummies are a completely new introduction from Wonka’s edible garden.

They’re a layered gummi that features a base of fluffy marshmallow and a colorful fruity gummi on top. They’re vaguely similar to the Squishy Sploshberries, in that they’re layered and the bottom is a marshmallowy plank. (The Sploshberries were berry flavored, basically round and had a goo filling.) The big feature here that parents may be interested in is that there’s no artificial colorings used. They go with fruit and vegetable colors plus a little cochineal. The candies are made in the Czech Republic. (The plant also processed peanuts, nuts, milk, soy, wheat and eggs.) The package I got holds six individually wrapped candies.

The pieces are individually wrapped. Each one is about .6 ounces and just shy of three inches tall, so two is a nice serving and only 130 calories.

Strawberry Rabbit is rather ordinary but very satisfying. The strawberry layer is fragrant, tart and has a decent strawberry jam flavor to it. The marshmallow layer gives it a little vanilla ice cream note but mostly a lighter, foamy texture. It makes the chew a little easier, less of a rubbery pull.

Orange Duckling is very orange in color and it was easy to bite his head off. The flavor is rather similar to orange drink, it’s juicy but zestless. The marshmallow didn’t seem as thick on the two that I ate, but still gave a lightness to the large piece.

Lemon Lamb smells sweet and creamy. The foamy marshmallow base isn’t quite as sweet as a regular marshmallow, so it offsets the more intense tart and zesty lemon top layer without watering it down.

It’s a fun, nicely themed product and I appreciate the effort Wonka is making to get ahead of the artificial colors issue here in the United States. Of course it helps that I like all three flavors in the assortment. They’re not really that innovative or mind-bendingly fantastic, but they’re fun, good quality though priced a bit steep for a sugar candy.

Related Candies

1. Wonka Whipped Wingers Gummies
2. Wonka Exceptionals Scrumdiddlyumptious
3. Wonka Squishy Sploshberries Gummies
4. Puffy Candy Corn
5. Wonka Puckerooms
6. Necco Paas Gummi Baby Bunnies
7. Circus Peanuts

There was a time when tubes were the future. You know, back when the radio was being invented. This heyday of tubes continued into the mid-twentieth century and waned as things like transistors, liquid crystal displays and tubeless tires came into vogue. So maybe it’s quaint that so many candies are now being tubularized (that’s a word, promise). I noticed it a few years back with Wonka’s SweeTarts Squeez and Hubba Bubba’s Squeeze Pop. So maybe it is the wave of the future, that the confinement of candy to solid shapes was holding us back from confection perfection.

Something else aside from the fanciful thoughts of the idealized candy containment drew me to Chewbies Liquid Taffy, it was the fact that it said All Natural Flavors and Colors on the front. I actually looked at it in the store before Valentine’s Day and decided not to buy it, but then when I went back for my Easter prowl, I couldn’t resist the call of finding out what Liquid Taffy could be, especially when it was all natural.

I admit, the package looked an awful lot like another tube I already had in my shopping basket, which I shot a picture of for comparison.

The narrow tube is six inches high and holds 2.82 ounces. I picked out the Orange flavor, but it also comes in Strawberry and Apple. The back of the package says a serving is the whole package (280 calories). It also says that the squeezable confection is made in P.R.C. Honestly, I didn’t know what that was, I thought it might be a province or territory in Canada - after all, they keep making new ones and I have trouble keeping up. Nope, it’s the People’s Republic of China. Who puts PRC on a package? Probably people who don’t want you to know their product is made in China.

The ingredients aren’t quite taffy-like: Glucose syrup, sugar, water, palm oil, lactic acid, albumen (egg white), orange juice, soy lecithin, natural orange flavor, natural food color (paprika extract). Most taffy is sugar, corn syrup, corn starch, water, flavors, salt and sometimes a little butter or oil. There’s no egg white in taffy, but there is in nougat. But some other fine taffy-like candies also have egg whites, such as Bonomo’s Turkish Taffy. So again, I was inclined towards optimism.

Taffy is known for its chewiness and the name of the product is Chewbies. So I’m going into this thinking that this Liquid Taffy will be chewy. That maybe it’ll be latexy and have a sort of liquid Silly Putty texture. Or maybe it’ll be like string cheese. I was hoping it had that strange quality of not sticking to things, sometimes candies with oils in them are good at that.

The stuff comes out slowly and is quite soft, but a single touch to the surface and it yields stringy, hot mozzarella stickiness. How the product is supposed to be dispensed and consumed is a bit of a mystery, so I took to squeezing a dollop onto my finger.

First, the scent is quite orangey. It tastes quite tangy and has a good orange flavor that’s both zesty and tart. The texture is smooth but has no chew as it’s far too soft for that. It’s kind of like a thick sauce or slightly gummy yogurt. It got me to thinking that perhaps drizzled on ice cream it might toughen up, so I created a few dollops on a piece of waxed paper and popped it into the fridge for a half an hour. This made it cold. It became slightly firmer, but really no chewier.

My hopes were dashed but the reality of the product’s shortcomings. Though the flavor is decent, the price per ounce is rather high for the fact that it’s a sugar candy and the fact that it’s so sticky when dispensed is more than enough to cancel out any other positive attributes. I don’t actually need squeezable taffy, the plain old wrapped pieces will do me fine in the future.

Sugar Pressure also pointed out this in a store recently: Mallo Pals - marshmallow in a squeeze tube. Maybe the squeezy future is in marshmallow.

Related Candies

1. Pralus Creme de Noisette
2. Wonka Kazoozles: Cherry Punch & Pink Lemonade
3. Topps Blue Razz Wazoo
4. Bratz Candy Cosmetics
5. Shockers Squeez
6. Lorena Vaque Tona

Willy Wonka invented the Everlasting Gobstopper, a candy for children with very little pocket money. The basic concept behind a jawbreaker style candy is that they last a long time. The current, smaller versions of the Everlasting Gobstopper are not everlasting. In fact, they’re maddenly short lived, which is fine because they come in boxes that hold dozens of them. For quite a few years the Everlasting Gobstoppers have come in seasonal varieties, such as the Snowballs (white, green and red) for Christmas and Heartbreakers (thinner shells and heart shaped). For Easter there are Wonka Everlasting Gobstopper EggBreakers.

I love the little box. It holds 3.5 ounces and I picked it up for $.99 at Target, though I’ve seen it for as much as $1.59 at other stores. The box is really compact and cleverly designed and decorated. It’s easy to flip the little window open to dispense and the box holds what feels like a lot of candy.  I’ve seen Wonka use these before with their Wonka Runts Freckled Eggs.

The ovoids are about 3/4 of an inch high. They eggs come in five glossy colors: yellow, turquoise, green, purple and light red.

The outer color is flavored, but it’s all very light. The lemon is just a kiss of sweet lemon essence. The purple is more like a bouquet of lilacs than fruit-flavorful, the red is a dash of berry and green might be a just a whiff of apple.

The dissolve is smooth, smoother than most other jawbreakers on the market. The layers underneath become lightly tangy though no more flavorful. After two thin layers the shell on the compressed dextrose center is easily crunched. The centers are white and if they’re flavored it’s something generic. I get a bit of pineapple from it, but it could be lemon or even orange for all I can tell.

It doesn’t matter that everything is so muted. The look, sound, texture and the interactivity is what makes this a special candy. They’re lovely to look at, sturdy and are simply interesting to eat. The shape is mouth friendly (not quite a friendly as the Heart Breakers) and the flavor array is spot on. I know they could be more intense, but I liked the subtlety of them.

I plan on picking up more of these, especially if I see them on sale after Easter even though the regular Wonka Gobstoppers are about half the price.

Related Candies

1. Wonka Fruit Marvels
2. New Flavors: Skittles Sour & Wonka Runts
3. Cadbury Popping Mini Eggs
4. Gobstopper Heart Breakers
5. Atomic Fireballs
6. Anis de Flavigny
7. Gobs of Gobstoppers

One of the classic elements of Easter candy is the fact that it’s egg shaped and isn’t usually individually wrapped. This nestling quality applies to jelly beans and marshmallow eggs (the candy shell version).

Back in 2007 I reviewed the pastel version of Brach’s Fiesta Eggs. The only difference between the original review and this one is that these are white with speckles and those were pastels. What prompted me to pick them up again is the fact that so many readers were commenting on the original review because Brach’s seems to have changed their formula.

When I first reviewed the eggs Brach’s was owned by Barry Callebaut, a global chocolate giant based in Switzerland. In late 2007, Callebaut sold the American candy company to Farley’s & Sathers of Minnesota. In the Callebaut days I was hoping that they’d make the chocolate products from Brach’s better. In the Farley’s & Sathers days, I’m just hoping that the chocolate products stay real chocolate instead of going to some mockolate substitute like they did with the bulk malted milk balls. (Supposedly they went back to the real chocolate coating, but I have yet to find them in stores, they angered so many people I’m guessing the buyers for the chain stores are afraid of them.)

I prefer the white eggs because they have less of the artificial colorings on the shell. Those can sometimes interfere with the desirable flavors. (Red is a problem for me often.)

The eggs are large. Some are over an inch tall though others are as small as 2/3 of an inch. They sound substantial and clack and clunk together well. All were nicely shaped and had no cracks or broken spots. The shells are thick and crunchy but the chocolate layer beneath is rather thin and unremarkable. The chocolate is sweet and doesn’t taste like much at all, probably more like malt than chocolate. It’s a little grainy and fudgy so it’s hard to say that it’s real except for the fact that the label tells me it is.

The center is what I’m after though, the crisp malted milk center. It’s a fine malt, not terribly grain with a moderate level of malty-ness. It’s not overly sweet or salty ... it could use just a little more punch for me, especially since the shell is so sweet.

I can’t argue with the construction, my only real complaint is that the chocolate is so lackluster, and perhaps even out of balance. With better chocolate that layer could be thicker.

As far as widely available Malted Milk Eggs for Easter, these beat out the Necco Mighty Malts and Whoppers Robin’s Eggs in my book. But that’s not much of a recommendation.

I’m picky about my malted milk balls in the sense that I want specific ratios, texture of the center and high density of malt, but I’m not so picky that I won’t finish any malted milk ball placed in front of me.

Related Candies

1. Trader Joe’s Milk Chocolate Malted Milk Eggs (Plus a Bonus)
2. Brach’s Indulge Almonds: Coconut & Caramel
3. Brach’s Robin Eggs (Solid Milk Chocolate)
4. Whoppers Sno-Balls
5. Brach’s Fiesta Eggs
6. Jelly Belly Deluxe Easter Mix
7. Mighty Malts
8. Bulk Balls

For the past few years Mars has been trotting out their seasonal flavors of 3 Musketeers. This year they have a new one, Limited Edition 3 Musketeers Marshmallow for Easter.

The banner across the bottom of the logo says that this is Whipped Up, Fluffy Chocolate with Marshmallow Taste.

I don’t think they come in a full bar format, just this package of Minis. The bag weighs 9 ounces, but looks like it has a lot in it, probably because of all the teensy wrappers.

Mars thinks it can get into the marshmallow game. Actually, they’re not getting into the marshmallow game, they’re getting into the marshmallow flavored game. The one thing these have going for them is that they’re safe for vegetarians. There are egg whites in there, so it’d have to be lacto/ovo vegetarians. And those vegetarians would probably be better off never having tried a real marshmallow, so they won’t be quite as disappointed.

The pieces are tiny squares (almost cubes) - about three quarters of an inch at the base and a little over a half an inch high. They’re milk chocolate, though the chocolate coating is so thin it’s translucent in spots. The center is light and fluffy, though not quite foamy like marshmallow. The over-riding flavor is salty for me. There’s no malt to it and really no vanilla, so I was left with something that was trying to be less sweet but not quite succeeding. Though the salt covers up the sweetness on the tongue, it doesn’t disguise it in the back of my throat where it burns.

Plain marshmallows are airy and not quite sweet and are usually a generic vanilla flavor. These are just sugar flavored, I got no vanilla notes in there, and no toasted notes either.

Personally, a regular 3 Musketeers bar needs more flavor to please me. I even rechecked my 3 Musketeers opinion by eating some Minis side by side with the marshmallow version - there’s not enough cocoa or malt flavor and the texture is just too underwhelming. If you’re the kind of person who thought the classic needed less flavor, this is the candy for you.

The packaging says that 1 mini has only 25 calories, so it’s pretty easy to parcel out a portion of 100 calories. It also says that there’s 45% less fat than leading chocolate brands. Well, the calories per ounce are 124 by my calculation, so that’s more than a York Peppermint Pattie (113 per ounce) but less than a Twix (140 per ounce). I prefer both when it comes to taste.

Related Candies

1. HiCHEW Japan vs HiCHEW Taiwan
2. Peeps Peepsters (Milk & Dark Chocolate)
3. Campfire Mini Marshmallows
4. 3 Musketeers Cherry & Raspberry
5. 3 Musketeers Mini Mix
6. 3 Musketeers Mint with Dark Chocolate
7. See’s Awesome Nut & Chew Bar