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ChewsMonday, September 12, 2016
Hot Tamales Licorice BitesHot Tamales are a simple candy, they’re just cinnamon flavored jelly beans, in a long rod shape. Cinnamon candies aren’t always easy to find, so it’s nice that they’re pretty cheap, too. The newest brand extension for Hot Tamales, made by Just Born (the company that also makes Peeps and Mike and Ike) are Hot Tamales Licorice Bites. The concept of cinnamon flavored licorice is not new, Twizzlers has had them on and off over the years, and smaller companies like Kenny’s Licorice have also sold cinnamon licorice twists. However, as far as I know, Hot Tamales Licorice Bites are the only cinnamon licorice in stores now. Since they came out, I’ve picked up three bags. So, consider this your review spoiler that I like these. The format is very simple, they’re little licorice nibs, like stubby slices of thick licorice twists. There’s a little hole in the center. The texture is very similar to Twizzlers. It’s’ rubbery and crumbly and not really like anything considered food. The cinnamon flavor is pleasantly warm with a little sizzle to it at times, like a zap from a static charge. They do tend to stick my teeth ... and the smell of them will contaminate any other food stuffs nearby. But I found them rather addictive. They’re not terribly sweet (in fact there’s 100 mg of sodium in each serving) and since they’re made from wheat flour, they’re also a bit more satisfying than straight sugar candy like the regular Hot Tamales. These are a nice addition to the Hot Tamales line, similarly easy to eat and share. I hope they stick around. Related Candies
Wednesday, September 7, 2016
HiCHEW SoursHiCHEW are strange little candies from Japan made by Morinaga. They’re vibrantly flavored chews with a latexy texture. HiCHEW have become popular around the world since their introduction in 1975, they’re produced in several countries, including a new factory in the United States. Morinaga introduced HiCHEW Sours earlier this year. I had a hard time finding them in stores, though plenty of the shops near me carry the regular mixes (tropical, fruits and all strawberry) including Target and 7-11. Eventually I tracked them down in Little Tokyo at a store called Daiso, which is kind of like a dollar store, except most things are a dollar fifty. Currently HiCHEW Sours come in the format of individually sealed pieces in bags (not wrapped bars). The packages include random ratios of Lemon, Grapefruit and Lime. (I assume they’re random because I bought two bags and got far more lime in one bag than another.) Usually when I get a flavor mix, I find that I don’t like a fair fraction of the flavors. There are only three in this mix, but they’re all citrus flavors, so that’s an exceptionally promising start. It’s also refreshing to see the flavor lime being introduced in this day and age when apple is so usually favored. I’ll start with the star: Grapefruit. This citrus flavor is no stranger to Japanese candies, as it appears quite commonly in candies. These are packaged in pink, and like the regular HiCHEW these are two colors. This is inverted though for the sours. The outside is colored and the inside is white. The immediate scent is zesty and the flavor is both tangy and bitter. The texture of the Grapefruit starts our similar to the traditional HiCHEW, rather smooth. But it quickly becomes grainy though still very chewy with a flavor that lasts until it dissolves. Lemon smells exactly like Country Time Lemonade. It’s slightly tinny, quite tart and less zesty than I would prefer. The Lime is a rather strange green, light and minty looking. The flavor itself is a weird throwback. It tastes like the seventies to me, though I can’t put my finger on why. The limeade flavor is similar to the Lemon, but there’s more zest to it, though not the same type of bitterness that the Grapefruit had. I enjoyed all three flavors and really didn’t care by the time I got to the second bag what flavor I picked out. They were all tart enough to get my taste buds tingly, but not so acidic to blister my tongue after eating ten or so. It might be my imagination, but I feel like the chew doesn’t last as long for the sours. It could be that the sourness makes more saliva, so they dissolve quicker. But one of the great features of HiCHEW is that it’s almost like gum, the bouncy, latexy chew lasts a long time and the flavor never declines. These hold their flavor to the very end, but the texture is just not the same. Not a bad thing, just not the same thing. Related Candies
Tuesday, October 6, 2015
Mentos Incredible Chew!I found a new candy on eBay, they’re called Mentos Incredible Chew! and are available in Thailand and Australia (and probably other places). I picked up my packages on eBay from a Bangkok-based seller, so the packages are in Thai. Mentos new chews Incredible Chew! are more like Morinaga’s HiCHEW than Wrigley’s Starburst. The package are 45 grams and have 11 pieces of the same flavor. They boast no artificial colors, but I can’t say whether the flavorings are naturally derived. I did notice that the ingredients for the Australian version has gelatin in it, but this package and the Aussie version are Halal (so the gelatin is not from pigs). The three initial flavors are Strawberry, Grape and Green Apple. Mentos Strawberry Incredible Chew! is layered, a white outer layer with a pink center. The flavor also might be layered, though it’s hard to tell. The flavor is less of a jammy strawberry and more like a strawberry yogurt. There’s a creamy note, a sweetness and some floral notes and actually two tangy notes, one is a little bit like goat milk or yogurt and the other tartness is more like citric acid. The effect of this whole thing is only okay. It’s not as vibrant as HiCHEW and it doesn’t have the interesting texture that Mentos have. The texture is a smooth and bouncy chew, rather like latex. It’s kind of like a chewing gum at first, completely smooth and sweet and flavorful, and then eventually it disappears. Grape Incredible Chew! comes in a mostly purple wrapper, with big, round purple grapes on it.The pieces are white with a medium purple interior. The flavor is definitely concord and not the American SweeTarts grape. It’s a juicy flavor that has a lot of the notes I associate with actual concord grape skins. It’s a little tangy, mostly sweet with a smooth chew that starts bouncy but stays smooth. Of the three flavors, this was my favorite. It tasted clean and the flavor lasted through the texture changes as I chewed. Mentos Green Apple Incredible Chew! wasn’t even a flavor I was interested in, but when I ordered on eBay, half the cost of the initial package was shipping, so throwing in an additional package was purely an efficiency decision. The center is the same light green as the apples on the wrapper. The flavor is a cross between American Jolly Rancher Green Apple and the more subtle Japanese apple flavor. It’s tangy, and has a long chew but it’s also very artificial, especially towards the end when the sweetness that gave it an apple juice note dissipates and it’s just artificial flavor after that. Overall they’re a decent candy, I just don’t understand why anyone would buy these instead of Morinaga HiCHEW, which are available in far more flavors and have a much better flavor profile in my experience. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 3:31 pm Candy • Review • Perfetti van Melle • Chews • 6-Tempting • Thailand • Monday, May 4, 2015
Strawberry CajillionsYears ago, at my first visit to the All Candy Expo (now known as the Sweets & Snacks Expo), I was excited to see a candy called Gazillions. They were little boxes, probably sold for a quarter, that had tiny chewy candies in them, like mini Skittles but single flavors. They came in pineapple. And then I never saw them in stores. Here it is, 8 years later and I finally found a package at Economy Candy. Except they’re called Cajillions. They’re billed as The Tiny Tasty Candies. Ingredients: sugar, glucose syrup, hydrogenated palm oil, apple juice, citric acid, artificial flavor, gum arabic, malic acid, carnauba wax, artificial color (cochineal extract) They’re rather like teensy, rustic bits of deep fried Starburst chews. They’re about the size of lentils. I hesitate to say that they have an actual shell, but they’re definitely coated and sealed, so they don’t get sticky. The strawberry flavor is rather clean. The outside is sweet and a little like cotton candy at first, but upon chewing the bits, it’s tangy and pretty smooth. They’re a lot like Skittles, except there’s something that’s not quite right about them. It might be the fact that they use apple juice, so there’s a little note to it that’s just a bit like apple peels to me. But perhaps a little metallic as well. The shape is pretty good, they’re appealing to look at, though there was a bit of a yellow cast to mine, which made me wonder about whether they were fresh. They don’t roll around, but because they’re so small, they’re not easy to pick up with my fumbly fingers. About five makes a small taste, a dozen is a decent mouthful for a flavorful chew. I could see them working well in candy buffets, especially if they’re available in a wide array of colors and flavors. I don’t have much interest in the other flavors, which are Blue Raspberry, Green Apple and Watermelon in addition to the Strawberry. No mixes, no Pineapple. I’ll pass for now. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 12:09 pm Candy • Review • Foreign Candy Company • Chews • 5-Pleasant • China • Monday, January 26, 2015
Starburst Superfruit FlavorsWrigley’s releases a new Starburst assortment every year. This year they’re a little behind the marketing trends and present Starburst Superfruit Flavors. I wasn’t sure what a superfruit was, so I looked it up and apparently it’s just a marketing term. The general idea is that a superfruit is a fruit that has nutritional or health benefits beyond a normal fruit. Blueberries, goji berries and acai are included in this non-standardized list for their high antioxidant and flavanoid content. Many of these foods are sold with ORAC ratings on the package, which are meant to codify the antioxidant capabilities of the food. Of course a candy that’s simply flavored for these “miraculous” foods is missing the point. The new flavor assortment is: Raspberry Pomegranate, Strawberry Starfruit, Passionfruit Punch and Blueberry Acai. The ingredients are pretty much the same as the ingredients as all the other Starburst flavors, which are made from corn syrup, sugar, hydrogenated palm kernel oil and less than 2% apple juice concentrate. They add in a bit of vitamin C (20% of your RDA) and some artificial colors and flavors.
Strawberry Starfruit is much more tart than the usual Strawberry but with less of the floral and toasted sugar notes. The Starfruit might add that additional tangy zap, as the fruit is usually rather white grape-like with a note of green apple thrown in. Raspberry Pomegranate is the darkest red of the batch and comes in a purple wrapper. The chew is actually very intensely pomegranate and berry, not too sweet, very floral and with an almost dry finish that you can get with pomegranates. Passionfruit Punch comes in the magenta wrapper and does taste exactly like a fruit punch. It’s quite tart, which is refreshing and gets my salivary glands going. I’m not usually fond of fruit punch flavors, but this one had a sort of dry finish to it which kept it all from getting too fake or metallic at the end. I thought this was a stupid idea when I read about these for the reasons I introduced earlier. However, Starburst has succeeded in making each of the flavors distinct and intense. I don’t care for the smoothies or the cream flavors for Starburst, I prefer the really dense fruit chew that Starburst usually delivers. So, on that front they’re quite successful. I don’t know if I would want this mix over the traditional fruits version which has the citrus flavors I love, but I have to say that I actually liked each and every flavor in this package and have no reason to even look at the wrapper before eating. Related Candies
Wednesday, January 21, 2015
Skittles OrchardsIn the world of grouped things there are litters (kittens & puppies), packs (mules), troops (monkeys), prides (lions), passels (pigs), pods (whales & dolphins), scurries (squirrels), hives (bees) and orchards (fruit trees). So, Wrigley’s new variety mix is simply called Skittles Orchards since it contains Orange, Red Apple, Lime, Peach and Cherry flavors. Right off the bat, I knew this wouldn’t have anything berry or pineapple ... The package is a rich green color, so it was easy to spot on the shelf at the 7-11. Red Apple is different from the new green apple that appears in the Original Fruits variety. It’s not as sour and has a more juice and peel type flavor that you might get from cider instead of a Jolly Rancher candy. The Red Apple flavor is the lighter of the two red colors in this mix ...why they couldn’t make it some other shade of red, I’m not certain because I kept getting it confused with the cherry at first glance. Lime is, well, classic. It’s a little tart but mostly has the sweet and zesty notes of lime peel. I missed it. Orange is rather sedate. There are a lot of juice flavors but it lacks a more powerful zest note that the lime has. This was an opportunity for Wrigley’s to put in something like Mandarin Orange or Tangerine ... instead they just threw in a flavor they already make. Cherry is the darker red and I’m sure that lovers of the Starburst cherry are going to go nuts for this package of Skittles. I can’t tell if it’s actually different from the Wild Cherry that comes in the Wild Berry Skittles mix, but it is nice to see them putting Cherry into another mix. Peach is disappointing, though I actually liked it. It’s a little tangy and has an immediate sort of balsam note to it, but it lacks that peachness. There more like a vague tropical punch flavor, which isn’t a bad thing. As far as combining the flavors. Of course Orange and Lime went together, and Cherry and Lime went together. Peach and Orange were okay, but not stellar. And of course Red Apple was like the new Green Apple in the Fruits mix ... it just doesn’t combine well with anything but itself. There’s nothing innovative about this packet of Skittles, but then again, that’s not what folks want. If that’s what they wanted, varieties like Chocolate Mix and Fizzl’d Fruits would have survived. Instead this mix delivers solid contenders for “I enjoy this flavor” though nothing that would scream, “I love this flavor.” That’s probably enough in the Skittles world where it’s about the variety, it’s all about the rainbow, it’s never about one color. I don’t think this version will survive long, Wrigley’s will move on to another mix up of other tried and true flavors that it’s done before within 18 months. Just to clarify, there are at least 60 flavors that have been released in the US flavor mixes before. Here’s the list that I have (in alphabetical order): Banana Berry, Berry Punch, Blood Orange, Blue Raspberry-Lemon, Blueberry Tart, Brownie Batter, Bubble Gum, Candy Apple, Caramel Ripple, Cherry Tropicolada, Cherry-Lemonade, Chocolate, Chocolate Caramel, Chocolate Pudding, Cool Mint, Cotton Candy, Dark Berry, Forbidden Fruit, Grape, Green Apple, Green Slushy, Key Lime Pie, Kiwi Lime, Lemon, Lemon Berry, Lime, Mango Lemonade Freeze, Mango Tangelo, Mango-Peach, Melon Berry Burst, Midnight Lime, Mixed Berry, Orange, Orange Creme, Orange Mango, Peach Pear, Peppermint , Pineapple Passionfruit, Pomegranate, Punch, Raspberry, Raspberry Sorbet, Red Licorice, S’More, Sour Grape, Sour Green Apple, Sour Lemon, Sour Orange, Sour Strawberry, Spearmint, Strawberry, Strawberry Banana, Strawberry Lime Burst, Strawberry Milkshake, Strawberry Starfruit, Strawberry-Watermelon, Sweet Mint, Vanilla, Vanilla Swirl, Watermelon, Watermelon Green Apple Freeze, Wild Cherry, Wintergreen. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 2:50 pm Candy • Review • Skittles • Mars • Wrigley's • Chews • 6-Tempting • United States • 7-11 • Tuesday, September 23, 2014
Jolly Rancher Caramel Apple Crunch ‘n ChewLast year Jolly Rancher introduced Jolly Rancher Caramel Apple Lollipops for Halloween. They’re back again, along with a version of the more recent Crunch ‘n Chew in the same flavor. The Jolly Rancher Caramel Apple Crunch ‘n Chew is available in large lay down bags and even this little individual portion size. The individually wrapped candies are quite different from the traditional Jolly Rancher hard candies. In this case the candy features a hard candy shell in two flavors, caramel and apple. Then there’s a soft chewy filling in a caramel flavor. Crunch ‘n Chew were introduced in 2012 and come in the standard Jolly Rancher flavors (green apple, blue raspberry, watermelon and cherry). As I noted in my original review, they’re interesting but lack some of the great features I love about Jolly Rancher hard candies, which is the smooth dissolve without any voids and the light pliability of the candy as it melts. All that Jolly Rancher brings to the table here is the name recognition that basically invented the green apple flavor. The image on the front of the package isn’t quite accurate (it’s also enlarged to show detail). It shows that the candy filling is a large portion of the mass of the candy, and that the caramel and apple portions are equal. Cleaving a piece in half showed that the caramel is actually a thin layer on top of the apple (which is fine, really, because that’s the way actual caramel apples are), but it’s the relatively small amount of chewy filling that’s revealed here. The brown layer is polite and has a sweet brown sugar flavor. The green part is green apple, which is tart and artificial and mostly tasty. The crunch takes a little while. I don’t feel confident crunching right away, I usually let the candy dissolve for about 30 seconds. The filling is quite stiff and hard to chew, though the work is worth it. The center isn’t really much, it’s sweet and has a note of butter flavor to it. But the combination of all the elements chewed together is, well, impressively original. It’s probably not a candy I would buy in the large 10 ounce bag, but this little 1.55 ounces was fun and I’ll probably finish the bag. Of the three candies I’ve tried now: the classic flavor Crunch ‘n Chew, the Caramel Apple Lollipop and these Caramel Apple Crunch ‘n Chew, I think these are by far the most successful. Like the Caramel Apple Lollipops, these contain no dairy ingredients, so they may be a good option for someone who wants a caramel experience but is lactose intolerant. (There’s no actual allergen statement though, so check with Hershey’s if you have any allergy issues.) The candy also contains soy and gelatin (so it’s not vegetarian). They’re made in Brazil.
POSTED BY Cybele AT 10:36 am Candy • Review • Halloween • Hershey's • Chews • Hard Candy & Lollipops • 7-Worth It • Brazil • Target • Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Twizzlers Filled Strawberry BitesTwizzlers Filled Strawberry Bites have been out for a while, part of the morsel trend. Though Twizzlers already come in Nibs, this version of the fruity twists has a little twist of its own. Back in 2005 Hershey’s introduced Twizzler Twerpz which were little snips of Twizzlers (orange and strawberry) filled with a sour paste. They didn’t make it very long, but did have some strong fans who continue to post on that review hoping Hershey’s would revive them. More recently Twizzlers brought out Sweet & Sour Filled Twists which were full twist length in cherry and lemon. In this case, the little Bites, or niblets, are about a half an inch long. They’re cut from the extruded strawberry twist and filled with more strawberry-flavored goo. The packaging for this King Size bag is a little odd. I understand the goal is to create a candy bowl, but I don’t think it succeeds. The package is gusseted on both the top and bottom and the opening for the package is in the middle of the pleats on the top. That all worked fine when I opened it at first. However, later on I wanted to read the nutrition information, which was covered by a flap, I tried to lift the flap and ended up pulling the whole seam apart. The packages also don’t sit well on the shelf, they look slumped and hard to read. It’s a great idea, and I really hope they’re able to overcome some of these challenges. I think cookies have really solved this with the snack and reseal flaps. The pieces smell like strawberry - sweet and floral. The chew is like a regular Twizzler, but a little softer. The filling is lightly tangy and has no chew of its own, really no other properties except that it’s soft (I believe it’s a jelly made from pectin). The size of the pieces is good, it’s easy to eat one or two at a time. The chew has a little bit of a pasty quality towards the end, which is remedied by eating another. I ate them all, but I don’t think strawberry would be my favorite flavor from Twizzlers. I can’t see them making this in black licorice (what would the filling flavor be?) but raspberry or chocolate might be fun. They’re easy to munch on and are a better format for movie sharing. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 1:19 pm Candy • Morselization • Review • Hershey's • Chews • Kosher • 5-Pleasant • United States • Target • |
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