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Compressed Dextrose

Known as chalk candy, this is candy that's made from powdered ingredients, mostly dextrose (also known as glucose). Pieces are created compacting the powder with a small amount of binder in molds in a compression machine.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Runts

I was at the bulk candy shop at the mall last month and saw what looked like a new mix of Runts in the bins. Curious, I bought a little sampling of them. I thought they were Tropical Runts (which used to exist).

image

Instead, I found out that they’d reformulated the Runts flavors yet again.

The new assortment includes: Strawberry, Banana, Orange, Pineapple and Mango.

The previous version had: Blue Raspberry, Watermelon, Cherry, Strawberry, Banana and Orange.

image

The version before that, that I remember best was what they introduced in 1982: Banana, Orange, Cherry, Strawberry, and Lime. It was the best replacement for Wacky Wafers.

Back when they were that first assortment of flavors I bought them quite a bit. They were cute, they didn’t roll around when you sorted them out and the flavors were nice ... only one in the mix I didn’t like, which were good odds as far as I was concerned.

But when they went to the 21st century flavors, I lost interest completely. I didn’t like watermelon or blue raspberry or cherry ... so half the box was thrown out or given away.

This new version though, we’re back to 80% efficiency!

The Banana is quite artificial. It reminds me of Circus Peanuts and nail polish remover. Strawberry is sweet and flowery. Orange is bland and tastes like Tang or Jell-O mix. (That’s not a bad thing.)

The new Pineapple is awesome. It’s tangy, it’s fragrant, it’s a real hit. The Mango surprised me because I didn’t like it. I love mangos, I have a serious mango addiction when they’re in season (I’ll buy a half a dozen when they’re on sale and eat them in a weekend). But mango flavor is kind of like peach, it’s just not quite the same. It takes like pine needles and fake peaches to me.

A complaint I’ve heard about the new mix is that it’s no longer as colorful as it used to be. There are two yellows in there, no more blue or green. (Honestly, the Mango could have been green ... or even the Pineapple.) But I still find them very pleasant and are now back on my list of candies that I pick up every once in a while.

Wonka has always had the best names for their candies. Discontinued ones (that some will remember fondly): Wacky Wafers, Punkys, Oompa Loompas and Dweebs. Their current lineup still includes: Bottlecaps, Everlasting Gobstoppers (well, Roald Dahl came up with that one), Laffy Taffy (formerly Tangy Taffy) and of course all of the items swallowed up from Sunline like SweeTarts & Pixy Stix.

RuntsUPDATE 4/16/2009: Nestle (Wonka) has changed the flavors of Runts yet again.

The new flavor set is Green Apple, Banana, Orange, Grape and Strawberry.

Read more about it here at the revised review.

Related Candies

  1. Kasugai Fruits Lemonade
  2. Mentos - Pine Fresh (Pineapple)
  3. Oak Leaf Candies
  4. Goodbye Tart n Tinys
  5. Runts Freckled Eggs
  6. Bottlecaps
Name: Runts
    RATING:
  • 10 SUPERB
  • 9 YUMMY
  • 8 TASTY
  • 7 WORTH IT
  • 6 TEMPTING
  • 5 PLEASANT
  • 4 BENIGN
  • 3 UNAPPEALING
  • 2 APPALLING
  • 1 INEDIBLE
Brand: Wonka (Nestle)
Place Purchased: Sweet Factory & boxed sample from Candy Warehouse
Price: $.80 retail per box
Size: 1.8 ounces
Calories per ounce: 113
Categories: Chalk, United States, Nestle

POSTED BY Cybele AT 12:30 pm    

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Wonka Golden Egg

Wonka Chocolate Golden EggOkay, this isn’t a hollow chocolate rabbit, but it is hollow and it is chocolate and probably has bunny-shaped candies inside.

It’s the Wonka Chocolate Golden Egg. It’s Wonka because it’s made by Nestle. It’s chocolate because that’s what it’s made from. It’s golden because that’s what color the foil wrapper is and finally, it’s egg shaped.

It’s sold in a rather large box, which I suppose protects it well, but seems a bit of overkill for the amount of actual candy you get.

The whole confection clocks in at 4.5 ounces (the largest of my candy reviews in Hollow Chocolate Rabbit Week). What’s also different about this one is that it has something inside, a handful of SweeTarts Chicks, Ducks & Bunnies. The egg itself is 4.5” tall. The box that holds it is 7” tall.

Wonka Chocolate Golden Egg

The chocolate shell is woodgrained. Or maybe it’s supposed to look like a nut. I have no idea why it would be either. Eggs are smooth.

The chocolate itself is, well at least real. It’s very sweet, sticky and milky. It’s definitely not the wonderful Swiss milk chocolate that Nestle makes, but as novelty fare goes, it does pretty well.

Some pieces taste a little “fruitier” because of the SweeTarts.

My egg had eight SweeTarts Chicks, Ducks & Bunnies. Three red and five purple. I was spared the recent atrocity of the blue/tropical punch. I kind of hoped for more candy inside, but the amount matched the image on the box. Also, the candies rattle around inside and ding up the chocolate with little nicks and leave a SweeTart dust.

It’s fun, it’s well made (in Canada), but it’s a bit pricey at $7 to $8 retail (I haven’t found a store with them in stock, I got mine as a sample from CandyWarehouse.com). That ends up about $1.67 per ounce.

The Wonka Golden Egg is one of the few Wonka products that relates back to the 1971 movie adaptation. (And the best candy-themed musical rant ever.)

So if you have your own Veruca Salt at home, this might be the perfect featured item for an Easter basket.

Related Candies

  1. Palmer Bee Mine
  2. Wonka Golden Creme Egg
  3. SweeTarts: Chicks, Ducks & Bunnies (2006)
  4. Wonka Bar
Name: Chocolate Golden Egg
    RATING:
  • 10 SUPERB
  • 9 YUMMY
  • 8 TASTY
  • 7 WORTH IT
  • 6 TEMPTING
  • 5 PLEASANT
  • 4 BENIGN
  • 3 UNAPPEALING
  • 2 APPALLING
  • 1 INEDIBLE
Brand: Wonka (Nestle)
Place Purchased: sample from CandyWarehouse.com
Price: $7-$8.00 retail
Size: 4.5 ounces
Calories per ounce: 138
Categories: Chocolate, Chalk, Canada, Nestle, Easter, Novelty

POSTED BY Cybele AT 10:37 am    

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Peeps Chick & Bunny Candy

Chick & Bunny CandyI stumbled across these little Chick and Bunny Candy at the Dollar Tree in January and have been hanging onto them every since.

Now it’s Easter season and time to trot out these cute little baby farm creatures. The package calls them Artificially Flavored Marshmallow candies, which doesn’t really explain them that well. Inside there are 10 little pouches that hold 9 or 10 candies in each.

The candies come in two shapes: Chick & Bunny (could you have guessed?). They also come in four colors: yellow, lavender, fuschia and turquoise.

DSC03054r

They’re really cute. The colors are vibrant and actually go through and through, the insides are soft pastel versions of the exterior colors.

Each is about the size of a Flintstone’s Chewable Vitamin, but happily tastes nothing like it. They’re not a compressed dextrose candy (like SweeTarts), these are made of sugar and corn syrup (like marshmallows, actually).

They’re very crunchy and have a light marshmallow flavor. Marshmallow flavor? Well, it’s kind of like the lightest fake vanilla and light sugar. Kind of like a tasteless Altoid.

Not really something I want to eat as a candy, but they are really cute and the bags are really tiny, so it’s an appropriate size indulgence. (Heck, each bag has only 36 calories.) They’re probably better as decorations ... on cupcakes ... scatter them around on the table or maybe in a mix of other candies. I suppose you could also use them for a Peeps Mash Up. They certainly maintain the Peeps appeal as being one primarily of appearance.

Tulip PeepsJust Born raised a bit of a controversy last year when they introduced their Spooky Friends individually wrapped Halloween marshmallows. Instead of being manufactured in Bethlehem, PA, they were made in China. Though the company says that this is the first time they has outsourced their production, it’s not the first time that they’ve licensed their name. Flix introduced the Peeps Lollipop Rings & Slider Pops last year, which are also made in China, just as these are.

Just Born also added new Tulip shaped Peeps to their line this spring.

Related Candies

  1. Peeps Monster Mash Ups
  2. Peeps Mash Ups
  3. Peeps Lollipop Rings
  4. Peeps
Name: Peeps Chick & Bunny Candy
    RATING:
  • 10 SUPERB
  • 9 YUMMY
  • 8 TASTY
  • 7 WORTH IT
  • 6 TEMPTING
  • 5 PLEASANT
  • 4 BENIGN
  • 3 UNAPPEALING
  • 2 APPALLING
  • 1 INEDIBLE
Brand: Flix Candy (licensed from Just Born)
Place Purchased: Dollar Tree (Harbor City)
Price: $1.00
Size: 3.5 ounces
Calories per ounce: 103
Categories: Chalk, China, FLIX Candy, Just Born, Peeps, Easter

POSTED BY Cybele AT 1:19 pm    

Monday, February 11, 2008

Necco Conversation Hearts (Sweethearts)

If there’s an all-ages emblem of modern Valentines candy, it’s conversation hearts. The first “Motto Lozenges” were invented in 1860 based on Necco’s already popular Necco Wafers. They were shell shaped and then later assortments included both mottos and expressions of love and came in a variety of shapes such as horseshoes, baseballs and of course hearts. Eventually they were made smaller and thicker and had briefer messages evolving into the current Necco Sweethearts.

image

I’ve spent years avoiding a review of them. So I bought a couple of boxes this year (why not, they were on sale for 20 cents each).

I actually like Necco Wafers. I know that sounds odd, because they’re so dry and chalky. (I did not like the Necco Smoothies, though.)

imageIt used to be that the Conversation Hearts were just like the wafers, only thicker and smaller, same flavor rotation. Even though the Necco Wafers have remained unchanged, at some point they mucked around with the Hearts (I don’t know when) and changed up the flavors.

In an effort to be exhaustive (and sorry if I exhaust you), I’ve fully documented a random box of Sweethearts. They weigh one ounce and mine contained 36 hearts (one rather crushed though). There are six colors and they broke down in the following assortment:

  • 8 Pink Hearts
  • 2 Yellow Hearts
  • 7 Purple Hearts
  • 11 Green Hearts
  • 4 White Hearts
  • 4 Orange Hearts
  • Necco Sweethearts Color AssortmentEach year Necco adds new mottos to the little hearts. They always seem to be a little out of step with the modern world, but I think we forgive that lameness and just call them classics. (I didn’t find any that said Fax Me this year!)

     

  • 1 Home Sick
  • 2 Kiss Me
  • 1 I’m Sure
  • 1 Love Me
  • 1 Let’s Kiss
  • 1 Hug Me
  • 3 Be Good
  • 1 Chill Out
  • 1 Heat Wave
  • 1 Cloud Nine
  • 1 I Hope
  • 1 Love Bird
  • 1 Wild Life
  • 1 One Kiss
  • 1 My Love
  • 2 New Love
  • 3 Love
  • 1 So Fine
  • 1 And
  • 1 Be Kind
  • 1 Sweet Talk
  • 2 Marry Me
  • 1 Do Good
  • 1 Yes Dear
  • 1 Blank (I guess you can fill it in yourself)
  • 1 For You
  • 1 Home Sick
  • There were three others that I couldn’t figure out. This year featured an “eco” theme with the addition of the mottos like “Wild Life” and “Heat Wave”. What’s nice is that there is a wide variety of mottos. In the second box I opened I found others that I didn’t have in this box (IM Me, Real Love, Marry Me and Sun Shine).

    I have to say, I think the quality control isn’t very good on these. There were quite a few that were intelligible, like having a conversation while the garbage disposal is on. Some are a little bumpy and irregular in shape as well. But hey, they were twenty cents and come in a box ready for your own personal message to give as a Valentine, cheaper than a card.

     

  • White - Wintergreen, like a breathmint
  • Purple - foul bitter grapes (yes, you’d think they’d be sour grapes, but they were bitter)
  • Orange - orange, kinda creamy and sweet
  • Green - lime, mild sweet lime
  • Yellow - banana, not too bad
  • Pink - Cherry but sometimes it’s almost mild enough to be confused with strawberry but with a nasty bitter aftertaste like poison
  • In the Necco Wafers the purple is Clove (I also find that bitter too, but in a more natural way), Pink is Cinnamon and Yellow is Lemon (and there’s a Brown Chocolate one and a Black Licorice one). The changeup in the hearts is understandable, but the Red #40 is probably what I’m tasting ... my husband can’t taste it, so your mileage may vary.

    While I tend to lump Sweethearts in with the other “chalk” candies, they’re not compressed dextrose like many other mints and sour tablet candies are. They’re actually made from a real sugar-based wet dough (that also includes gelatin, my vegetarian friends). This gives it a bit denser feel and also a deeper sweetness than dextrose (a monsaccharide instead of a disaccharide).

    Having these reminded me that I prefer Necco Wafers. I like the tablet shape and how they clink together and are easy to crunch or dissolve. There are too many flavors that I don’t eat in this mix as well ... so I’ll stick with Necco Wafers. But I still might pick these up every year ... especially on sale after Valentines. They also come in: Spanish , Sour and Chocolate (one version is just the chalky chocolate and they also have foil wrapped actual chocolate hearts on the website, but I’ve never seen them in person).

    I was wishing I had a cute story about an experience with Necco Sweethearts ... but I bet some reader has a great one about these or some other conversation hearts.

    Sweethearts - 2010 FlavorsUPDATE January 13, 2010

    It appears that Necco has changed the standard flavors (and some of the packaging) for their time-tested Necco Sweethearts. Prompted by some readers who commented here, I picked up a new bag. They are fruit flavors, no longer the classic fruits & spices. (Strawberry, Grape, Green Apple, Lemon, Orange and Blue Raspberry.)

    Full review with pictures over here: Necco Conversation Hearts (Sweethearts) 2010

    Related Candies

    1. Necco Conversation Hearts (Sweethearts) 2010
    2. All Natural Necco Wafers
    3. Chocotelegram and Chocolate Dispatch
    4. Ausome Jewelry Kit
    5. SweeTart Hearts
    6. Junior Mints - Heart Shaped
    Name: Sweethearts Conversation Hearts
      RATING:
    • 10 SUPERB
    • 9 YUMMY
    • 8 TASTY
    • 7 WORTH IT
    • 6 TEMPTING
    • 5 PLEASANT
    • 4 BENIGN
    • 3 UNAPPEALING
    • 2 APPALLING
    • 1 INEDIBLE
    Brand: Necco
    Place Purchased: RiteAid (Vermonica)
    Price: $.20
    Size: 1 ounce
    Calories per ounce: 110
    Categories: Chalk, United States, Necco, Valentines

    POSTED BY Cybele AT 7:33 am    

    Friday, February 8, 2008

    Gobstopper Heart Breakers

    Gobstopper Heart BreakersYes, more heart shaped versions of popular candies. What’s different with the Wonka Everlasting Gobstopper Heart Breakers is more than the shape.

    I’ve always loved Gobstoppers, especially the ones that came out originally that were more Everlasting (tm) than the current mini ones. They were the size of real jawbreakers (about the size of a walnut) and would actually last for an hour. I found the flavor layers a little more vibrant than the Ferrara Pan ones I was used to. It also seemed smoother and kind of cool on the tongue, great for a summer treat. Later they were reformatted to include a compressed dextrose sour center ... which is kind of nice too, because it means I can crunch it. I’m a cruncher.

    Gobstopper Heart BreakersThe Heart Breakers are a similarly layered candy with a sweet & sour chalk center.

    The color variety is different here than the regular bright versions in the box and lacking a green/apple one. But they gain a pink/strawberry.

    The heart shape is soft and rounded, about the same diameter as a penny. They’re shiny and have the added bonus that they don’t roll around and off my desk like the spherical non-holiday version.

    Gobstopper Heart Breakers

    I think I might prefer these to the round ones. The fit nicely in the mouth, it’s easy to roll my tongue around on them or simply tuck it into my cheek discretely if I have to talk.

    The flavor is mild. The candy layers have a light sweet flavor of whatever layer, with the out layer being the strongest. There’s no tartness with the outer layers, it’s all sweet. The “SweeTart” center is also only mildly flavored and not terribly sour, just a little on the tangy side and of course grainy.

    They also look fabulous in the little jar, which is half the fun of candy. Of course they don’t last long in the jar. These would also make a fabulous candy for favors and candy buffets.

    I don’t miss the green ones and actually like the strawberry quite a bit. I found the price of $1.99 for 12 ounces to be a bit high for a sugar candy, but if I can find these on sale after Valentine’s they’ll probably keep for quite a while. (I know, this is strange coming from a woman who just wrote about spending $5 on a candy bar yesterday.)

    These Gobstoppers were made in Mexico.

    Related Candies

    1. Atomic Fireballs
    2. Anis de Flavigny
    3. Wonka Sour Nerds
    4. The Lemonhead & Fruit Heads
    Name: Everlasting Gobstopper Heart Breakers
      RATING:
    • 10 SUPERB
    • 9 YUMMY
    • 8 TASTY
    • 7 WORTH IT
    • 6 TEMPTING
    • 5 PLEASANT
    • 4 BENIGN
    • 3 UNAPPEALING
    • 2 APPALLING
    • 1 INEDIBLE
    Brand: Wonka (Nestle)
    Place Purchased: Target (Harbor City)
    Price: $1.99
    Size: 12 ounces
    Calories per ounce: 113
    Categories: Hard Candy, Compressed Dextrose, Mexico, Nestle, Valentines

    POSTED BY Cybele AT 8:10 am    

    Monday, February 4, 2008

    Palmer Bee Mine

    I bought this one just for you, dear readers. I’m not sure why I thought you wanted to read about it, but here it is, the Palmer Bee Mine hollow milk chocolate figure filled with compressed dextrose candies.

    Palmer Bee Mine - Yummy Honey Flavored Candy Bees Inside!

    This actually came in another variety, which featured a cow and some pun I can’t remember, like “you moo-ve me” or something like that. If they had a little train that said, I choo-choo-choose you, I would have bought a case even if they were made from mud.

    Palmer Bee Mine - out of packageBut the Bee Mine features Yummy Honey Flavored Candy Bees Inside! and if there’s one thing I have trouble resisting it’s Yummy Honey Flavored Candy Bees (tm). (Well, I don’t really know what Yummy Honey Flavored Candy Bees (tm) are, but I figured I’d find out and then I’d know for sure if they’re irresistible.)

    First, the box design is nice. It featured the choco-creature inside well, the cutouts are attractive. The box is a bit big, but I forgive that when it comes to molded chocolate items, as I know a little space tends to preserve shape. The foil design is also nice. It’s bold and endearing. It’s also a nice heavy foil that’s easy to unwrap and re-wrap.

    Palmer Bee Mine - UnwrappedThe little guy inside was also nicely designed. He happend to be kind of cracked open already, but I think that might have been because I kept shaking the box. I figured yummy honey bees liked to be shaken before being set free. The little face molded in chocolate actually matches the foil design.

    What’s more, it’s designed in 306 degrees. He has a little stinger and six little feet.

    Like many Palmer chocolate products, he actually smells pretty good too. On the smoky side of the chocolate smell spectrum, but not overly sweet. He has a nice sheen and was pretty blemish free thanks to the packaging.

    Palmer Bee Mine - Cracked OpenOnce I pulled the two hemispheres apart I found my bounty of Yummy Honey Flavored Candy Bees (tm).

    But first the chocolate. It’s Palmer chocolate. Basically, disappointing. Well, saying that I was disappointed means that I had expectations ... I have no expectations of tastiness when it comes to Palmer.  But I do credit them for cute and attractive products. It was far too sweet, had a grainy melt and virtually no taste of chocolate or milk. It was like a Tootsie Roll flavor. (I did a little computation and Palmer chocolate has 12% sugar in it than Hersheys ... which is already pretty sweet stuff.)

    My Yummy Honey Flavored Candy Bees (tm) are a compressed dextrose candy (like a SweeTart without the tart). They’re an attractive beige and smell like the Palmer chocolate. They’re shaped like a little bee, just like the package says they are ... in fact, the package has them at 100% scale. They’re okay ... I mean, who wants to eat compressed dextrose flavored like honey? It’s sweet and has a little dark honey flavor to it, but that’s about it. I give them points for originality though, I don’t know if I would have ever had a honey flavored compressed dextrose bee if not for this.

    This was only $1.50 on sale, so it’s not like I paid a lot. (I think they’re $2.50 regularly.) The back has a greeting card layout “to” and “from” so you can just use a bold Sharpie and hand this to someone instead of a Hallmark card and have change to spare. But I’d say only give it to someone you want to confuse with your intentions ... bad chocolate does not say you care. It says, I was thinking of you ... but I wasn’t thinking nice things.

    Oh, and for the record, I now have no trouble resisting Yummy Honey Flavored Candy Bees (tm).

    Note: the logo on the back proudly states that this product is Made in USA but the Yummy Honey Flavored Candy Bees (tm) were made in Malaysia.

    Related Candies

    1. Palmer Nest Eggs
    2. SpongeBob SquarePants Heart
    3. Elmer’s Chocolate
    4. Palmer Milk Chocolate Balls
    Name: Bee Mine Hollow Milk Chocolate
      RATING:
    • 10 SUPERB
    • 9 YUMMY
    • 8 TASTY
    • 7 WORTH IT
    • 6 TEMPTING
    • 5 PLEASANT
    • 4 BENIGN
    • 3 UNAPPEALING
    • 2 APPALLING
    • 1 INEDIBLE
    Brand: R. M. Palmer
    Place Purchased: Rite Aid (Vermonica)
    Price: $1.50 (on sale)
    Size: 3.5 ounces
    Calories per ounce: 146
    Categories: Chocolate, Compressed Dextrose, United States, Malaysia, R.M. Palmer, Valentines

    POSTED BY Cybele AT 7:05 am    

    Wednesday, January 9, 2008

    Kasugai Fruits Lemonade

    Fruits LemonadeSometimes I order stuff on the internet because I like the sound of the name. I saw Kasugai’s Fruits Lemonade (also known as Ramune Iro Iro) on JBox.com and since I was already ordering a gazillion rolls of Pineapple Mentos, so I figured I should get some other stuff too.

    From the description it was clear that these were just compressed dextrose candies like Smarties or SweeTarts. But the intriguing part was it looked like they came in pineapple. As I was in a pineapple mood, it was quickly in my cart and on its way to me.

    The little package is cute and has a variety of different sizes. Some are large sweets, about the size of four quarters stacked up. Others were little tablets in rolls - some were tiny, others were a little bigger (like the size of American Smarties).

    image
    (photo by Emanuel Treeson)

    Most of the rolls were of all one flavor: Lemon, Strawberry, Pineapple, Kiwi or Orange. They were color coded and had little images of the fruits, so I had no trouble figuring out what I was going to get. (Well, the green one was a bit of a puzzle, but I eventually figured out that it was Kiwi, either that or a honeydew.)

    There were a couple of rolls that were combinations of flavors. It was extremely hard to tell as they weren’t really different colors. I kind of liked that it was all about the flavor and there were no colors in there.

    image
    (photo by Emanuel Treeson)

    The texture was softer than Smarties ... in fact, the large ones were downright powdery. There was one larger roll (shown above) that had truly dense ones, but the rest were about the same. While I like a softer style most of the time, because you get right to the flavor, these had an odd chalky taste to them. It was like there was something else in there along with the sugar, maybe some sort of calcium carbonate and I’m actually getting some nutrition or something.

    Overall the flavors were more intense than Smarties, but not as flavorful as SweeTarts. They weren’t truly sour through, not like a lot of other ramune products I’ve had. However, the high proportion of Pineapple items in this was what made it truly tasty. Sure it’s called Lemonade Mix, but it was really all about the Pineapple.

    As a small side note, I’ve been experimenting with my husband’s Nikon D70 DSLR. He shot the two photos above in a little session we had over the weekend. I’m debating a move away from my point & shoot Sony DSC-V3. While I love my little camera, the control I have on the focus is a little frustrating sometimes. For now I’ll just borrow his for a while. (I think his photos turned out fantastic. It’s very hard to get a crisply focused shot on cellophane items, and the control on the depth of field is also amazing.)

    Related Candies

    1. Goodbye Tart n Tinys
    2. Candy Blox
    3. Ramune & Cola Bubble Ball
    4. Smarties Bubble Gum
    5. Bottlecaps
    6. Fragrant Gummies
    Name: Ramune Iro Iro (Fruits Lemonade)
      RATING:
    • 10 SUPERB
    • 9 YUMMY
    • 8 TASTY
    • 7 WORTH IT
    • 6 TEMPTING
    • 5 PLEASANT
    • 4 BENIGN
    • 3 UNAPPEALING
    • 2 APPALLING
    • 1 INEDIBLE
    Brand: Kasugai
    Place Purchased: JBox.com
    Price: $1.69
    Size: 4.59 ounces
    Calories per ounce: unknown
    Categories: Compressed Dextrose (Chalk), Japan, Sour

    POSTED BY Cybele AT 6:40 am    

    Friday, November 30, 2007

    Chewy Spree: Original & Mix’d Berry

    Chewy Spree - OriginalI had hoped to do a good history of Sprees and the newer Chewy Sprees for this review. What I found is that like many large families, the kids in the middle or towards the end get kind of lost in the shuffle. The novelty of their existence is lost and though they grow up admirably strong and fetch a good price when sold (oh, wait, we don’t sell kids any longer, do we?), it’s just not as interesting as the first.

    So info is kind of scant. Sprees came along sometime after SweeTarts, which came after Pixy Stix and Lik-m-Aid and were made by Sunline (Sunmark) brands (a little history here). I remember eating them as a kid. I loved the bright colors and the sound they made in my pocket (or when I unwrapped them from their roll and put them in the Gold Mine Gum bag I had because they both had that sunshine sweet juicyfruit scent). Sunline later sold out to Nestle which kind of folded the candies under the Wonka brand. The product, however, was happily unchanged except for the swap of Green Apple for Lime a few years back.

    Chewy SpreeChewy Spree come in a few different formats. You can get them in the bags shown here that holds 1.7 ounces and I believe they may still make the 1.73 ounce rolls. They also have a little plastic container of Chewy Mini Sprees that I’ve tried before as well.

    The original Sprees are a compressed dextrose tart with a bright candy shell. The Chewy Spree, however, is less tart. I don’t know why, but it is. They’re a mellow version of the Spree, which I’m guessing sets it apart from the much bolder SweeTarts Shockers, which have a sour flavored candy shell and tart chewy inside.

    They come in Grape, Orange, Lemon, Green Apple and Strawberry, otherwise known as the “don’t rock the boat” flavors of middle/later children.

    Chewy Spree - Mix'd BerryEarlier this year Nestle debuted their newest addition, the Mix’d Berry Chewy Spree at the All Candy Expo. They’re pretty, the same shape and size, same glossy paint colors.

    The package, however, gives little indication about what’s inside. Simply called Mix’d Berry, it occured to me that besides telling us that it’s a kick in the mouth, Spree packages offer no explanation of what they are. Most candies do! (And I often like to dissect those statements.) There’s no listing of flavors, and even the colors on the front of the package bear little resemblance to the real-life ones.

    Chewy Spree - Berry MixPackaging and vagueness aside, it’s pretty easy to figure out what to do with these. I ate ‘em.

    Then I realized I didn’t figure out which color was which flavor, so I had to stop at the 7-11 this morning and buy another package. And for the life of me, after actually paying attention, I can’t figure it out.

    Pink tastes like watermelon to me. I don’t think that’s a berry, even a mix’d one. Blue is raspberry, not terribly tart or intense, it has a good fragrant quality to it. The other two, I just didn’t know what they were. And after two packages, you’d think I would have figured it out. Purple might be mixed berry or maybe blueberry. I’ve never been good at figuring out what “flavor” blueberry is in candies. Red has me completely flummoxed. I suppose it could be Cherry?

    They’re pretty, but I think I’ll stick with the regular hard Sprees.

    Chewy Sprees have egg albumen in them, so are not suitable for vegans.

    Name: Chewy Spree: Original & Mix'd Berry
      RATING:
    • 10 SUPERB
    • 9 YUMMY
    • 8 TASTY
    • 7 WORTH IT
    • 6 TEMPTING
    • 5 PLEASANT
    • 4 BENIGN
    • 3 UNAPPEALING
    • 2 APPALLING
    • 1 INEDIBLE
    Brand: Nestle
    Place Purchased: 7-11
    Price: $.89
    Size: 1.7 ounces
    Calories per ounce: 113
    Categories: Chalk, Sour, United States, Nestle

    POSTED BY Cybele AT 2:04 pm    

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