Lifesavers are known for being highly-flavored hard candies. If there were a candy model that Jelly Belly might have gone off of, it was probably Lifesavers - here is a hard candy, a little smaller than usual, but super-flavored and in a huge variety. Lifesavers got into the gummi game a while ago and I tried them when they first came out, but didn’t think much of them. I decided to revisit them, especially since they changed the flavors out on the five flavor tray.

The 5 Flavor variety bears little resemblance to the hard candy rolls that have been around since 1934. The flavors in this roll are Cherry (an original flavor), Watermelon, Green Apple, Blackberry and Strawberry. No orange, no lemon, no pineapple. Drat! The candies are much larger than the hard version, they’re soft, if a little greasy on the outside to prevent sticking and are positioned upright on a clear plastic tray inside the wrapper.

The Cherry is just as you’d expect it, great woodsy cherry flavor with a good tart bite. I’m not fond of cherry flavored stuff, but I actually find Lifesavers rather acceptable, probably because the flavor doesn’t seem as artificial as many others. The Green Apple, the lighter of the two green flavors, is rather mild, not too sour but good overall flavor. Watermelon is a darker green and bears little resemblance to real watermelon flavor but has a nice tart bite to it without that overwhelming fragrance that many watermelon candies have. Strawberry was a bit disappointing. It was sweet and had only the slightest hint of a berry flavor to it. I’d tell you about the Blackberry, but this roll had none. I think they’re dark purple. I’ll hazard that it’s the same blackberry flavor in the Wild Berries below.

The Wild Berry mix held more promising flavor for my tastes: Cherry Berry, Strawberry, Red Raspberry, Black Raspberry, Blackberry and White Grape.

The colors are a little bland, but I guess when you’re making a dozen different flavors you’re going to run out of primary and secondary colors. The White Grape was my favorite. Soft and delicate, it’s just a bit tart and has none of that artificial grape note that I only seem to like in Tootsie Pops and SweeTarts.  The Cherry Berry was remarkably similar to the Cherry in the 5 Flavor, but I’m not complaining. The Blackberry is the only one that seemed opaque, a lustrous dark purple it was tart and fragrant but hardly had a flavor different from the other berries. The Strawberry was the same as above. The rather lavender looking one was, I think, Black Raspberry. It was sweet and tart like the others and much more perfumed, as raspberries tend to be. The lightest red one was probably Red Raspberry and was similar to the Black Raspberry one, but perhaps a little tarter.

The good thing about this mix is that the flavors all blend together well, you can eat them one after another without the flavors fighting or combine them if you’re so inclined.

I like to eat gummies when my throat is bothering me, and I’m just getting over a cold (so if my tasting is a little off, it’s some sort of leftover malaise). They’re soothing and not too sour, so I don’t have to worry about burning my tongue like I often do on my overdoses of SweeTarts. I bought these in a Christmas Storybook on an after-holiday clearance for 98 cents ... so I certainly got my money’s worth for five packages of these.

While these flavors all have merit, I’d really like to have my favorite Lifesavers flavors - Lemon, Orange, Tangerine, Banana, Pina Colada and Pineapple. Actually, I’d be game if they wanted to try a Butter Rum gummi, too!

Chocolate oranges are a holiday favorite. We used to get them in our Christmas stocking when I was a kid, though not this brand. The chocolate orange is simply chocolate pieces shaped like orange segments assembled into a sphere. The Terry’s Chocolate Orange has a chocolate stem in the center and all the pieces are joined to it. They tell you to “whack and unwrap” to separate the pieces. (The ones I got as a kid had a plastic stem, so there was no need for whacking.)

The sphere is between the size of a handball and a tennis ball. The slices are textured to look like citrus fruit on one side, the other is smooth.

I’ve reviewed the Terry’s Chocolate Orange bar, and I find this chocolate to be similar. It’s not great quality, a little grainy and very sweet. The mint is quite overpowering in this version of Terry’s chocolate (just as I found Hershey’s Mint Mix).

It’s damn cute though and since it was half off, I don’t feel at all bad for plunking down $2 for it. $4 would be another matter.

Notes: This peppermint chocolate orange was made in Poland. Terry’s is credited with creating the first “Chocolate Orange” in 1932.

This was another one of the Eastern European sweets that a friend of a friend brought back that I’m just getting around to posting about. What I thought was rather interesting about it is that it’s made by a company owned by Kraft. I suspect that the original company has been around for more than a hundred years in Latvia or Lithuania and was bought by the international food corporation more recently and that the production has not changed markedly. But I am kind of at a loss to figure this one out, as the labels haven’t a bit of English on them ... not even any other languages I’m familiar with such as German, Italian or Spanish.

As far as I can tell, each 100 gram bar is milk chocolate. The Princas is dairy milk, the lighter of the two. It’s very smooth with a slight coconut taste to it. It’s exceptionally sweet with a good milky flavor. The chocolate is neither American style nor Swiss style. It’s less grainy than the American chocolates like Hershey or Mars but still as sweet. Overall it’s just good. Not great, but for mass-market chocolate it’s well packaged, fresh and tasty. It could use some more chocolate complexity but it’s certainly something that I’d pick up while traveling to keep in my purse for a little pick-me-up.

The Karuna was also very sweet, exceptionally smooth and had the same coconut flavor to it. It was a little stickier and with a slight hint of cinnamon-woodsiness to it. 

I’m not quite sure what the difference between the two is except that the Kuruna is darker. Of the two I prefer the Karuna but I’d probably be pretty happy with either one. I’d probably munch on it with some pretzels or some other savory or bland salty treat (or maybe some shortbread).

Name: Terry’s Chocolate Orange
Brand: Terry’s (Kraft)
Place Purchased: Sainsbury Deli (West Los Angeles)
Price: $1.29
Size: 40 grams
Calories per ounce: ~150
Type: Chocolate

When I was a kid, Santa used to bring Chocolate Oranges to us in our stockings. This bar is like that, but not sectioned and spherical, but a heck of a lot easy to stow in your handbag or backpack.

Like many holiday products, it’s the packaging and associations of the season that make them special. Most chocolate Easter bunnies I ate as a child were horrible waxy chocolate but as big as my arm; they were part of the holiday and any holiday that had a large container of candy involved was obviously good. Easter, as the last candy holiday of the year meant that all jelly beans and peeps must be eaten, because there will be no more candy until Halloween. I pretty much feel the same way about chocolate oranges, they’re not necessarily good when you look at them with the analytical eye of sophisticated adult tastes, but nostalgia makes up for a lot of that.

Here are the ingredients: Sugar, skimmed milk powder, cocoa butter, cocoa mass, butterfat, emulsifier (Soya lecithin), flavorings (orange oil, vanillin). See ... it’s sugar and some powdered milk ... then you get to the chocolate part. Terry’s is very sweet, very milky chocolate, and not milk in the sense of that deliciously smooth and creamy stuff, I’m talking that powdered stuff. You know, the stuff you drank when you couldn’t afford real milk. The stuff that reminds you of not being able to afford milk, let alone candy.

All that said, the taste of this is Christmas. It’s sweet and has the wonderful essence of orange (which is a really good complement to chocolate). The bar is delightfully shaped like a bunch of orange sections in a row and you can snap them off almost like the round orange. So just like I can’t help but gnaw on the waxy ears of chocolate rabbits, I can’t help but eat this whole bar even if it did make my teeth hurt.

Rating - 7 out of 10

Thanks goodness Ikea’s proclivity for sassy names does not extend to their treats at the food section. I have enough trouble buying candy shaped like rats that looks like the felt pulled out from a highlighter pen that I don’t need it to be further called Bjarf, Puke or Funkis.

Name: Licorice Boats
Brand: Aroma
Place Purchased: Ikea (Burbank, CA)
Price: $1.69
Size: 5.2 oz
Calories per ounce: 94
Type: Licorice

I gave these to Russ to try the other night and he agreed that, “The licorice in my licorice boat had already set sail.” These are definitely sweet - you just open the bag and the sugary smell permeates the air. But there’s no there there. The jelly center has a bit of a licorice perfume to it, but no bite. I think I’ve come to expect molasses with my licorice as it’s a good anchor for the flavor.

Name: Jelly Rats
Brand: Aroma
Place Purchased: Ikea (Burbank, CA)
Price: $1.69
Size: 5.2 oz
Calories per ounce: 94
Type: Jelly

They’re rather scary looking, and I’m telling you that’s the actual color - some sort of slightly translucent-neon hazard color. They also have a strong sweet smell infused with violet which didn’t thrill me, but biting into them I found a nice, tart and fruity jelly candy. The flavors aren’t complex or strong, but just nice. If I am planning on having a Swedish jelly candy though, I really want some Swedish fish.

Name: Marabou Milk Chocolate with Nuts
Brand: Marabou (a Kraft Foods division)
Place Purchased: Ikea
Price: $.99
Size: 2.4 oz
Calories per ounce: 128
Type: Chocolate/Nuts

This was the positive find in the whole experience. They’re little chunks of milk chocolate with crushed hazelnuts. Really creamy, very sweet with good nuts. The chocolate is smooth and the toasty taste of the nuts infuses it well.

It’s simple and satisfying. The roll is easy to share and I might make a point to pick these up at the start of my shopping experience at Ikea as a little boost. I ate them all before I finished typing this review.

Ratings: Licorice Boats - 4 out of 10
Jelly Rats - 5 out of 10
Marabou Milk Chocolate and Nuts - 7 out of 10