Wrigley’s has released a new Life Savers Gummies variety. It’s called Life Savers Berry Bites.

They come in three flavors: strawberry, red raspberry and cherry berry (which is not a real thing).

Their construction is different from the usual Life Savers Gummis. First, they’re smaller, about same diameter as a hard candy Life Saver, but without the hole. They’re thicker and have two layers. The top is the semi-transparent gummi layer and the bottom is called a white “light textured layer” which is a foamy gummi, a bit denser than a marshmallow.

Strawberry is the lightest color, a pale pink which sometimes looked a little orange. The flavor is well rounded, a good combination of tartness and sweetness. Strawberry is pretty easy to do well, as Life Savers have done here. The foamy layer is also a little tart and seems to be less berry, but not quite creamy.

Red Raspberry is the red and was the least successful of the set. It was tasty, but not jammy enough for me and didn’t distinguish itself from the other two. It was sweet and has berry notes, but it was bland overall.

Cherry Berry is dark red. If it’s supposed to be a mixed berry, that was lost on me, because this was a true Life Savers Cherry flavor. It’s zingy and intense, except for the foamy layer which gives it a bit of air without diluting the flavor completely.

I appreciate that Life Savers didn’t go out and make too many berry flavors to fit into this mix, just because they do five flavors in their rolls. Three is a good mix and all three of these were successful, though probably not a good match for my favorite flavor ranking. Now ... if they make a citrus mix, we’ll have something to talk about.

Right now I think they only come in the large resealable package, but will probably be available in the king sized packages as some point. They’re similar to the Wonka Whipped Wingers which I believe had natural colors in them.

Related Candies

1. Storck Mamba Sour Gummies
2. Van Slooten Flowers & Butterflies Mix of Sugared Liquorice
3. Wonka Springy Double Yummy Gummies
4. Wonka Whipped Wingers Gummies
5. Puffy Candy Corn
6. LifeSavers Tangy Fruits Gummies
7. Lifesaver Gummies

Last month at the Sweets & Snacks Expo, Wrigley’s showed off their new Starburst Minis. They were kind enough to send me some samples of the new version which should be hitting stores this month.

As you would expect from the name, they’re mini versions of the regular Starburst chews. They’re also unwrapped. (Some folks who make chains from the wrappers will not find this to be a selling point.) The flavors are the same as the Original packages: orange, lemon, cherry and strawberry.

A wrapped Starburst is .75 inches square and approximately .33 inches high. Each is approximately 5 grams. The new Minis are slightly more than .5 inches square, though the sides are not straight, they’re pinched and are .25 inches high. So my calculations show that they’re about one third the size.

What’s more interesting is the ingredients list. Starburst contain gelatin. So, they’re off limits to vegetarians and have never been Kosher/Halal to my knowledge.

Starburst Minis do not contain gelatin. They use pectin, which is derived from vegetable/fruit sources. In addition to the artificial colors, the other ingredient of concern to some folks would be the use of confectioners glaze, which has shellac in it. Shellac is derived from insects,so it is not a vegan product. It is gluten free. Also, oddly, this is made in Mexico. (I checked my other recent Starburst purchase of Starburst Very Berry but confirmed that they were made in the USA.)

Aside from the size and the enhanced ability to combine flavors, the other difference is texture. I found that the pieces were slightly aerated. They weren’t as dense as a regular wrapped Starburst, and also not quite as intensely flavored. But they’re softer and easier to chew. The chew had the same long-lasting flavor and lack of grain ... but a lighter dissolve on the tongue (I think because of the aeration).

They don’t do well in humid climates. Humidity in Los Angeles, lately, has been around 40% and they’ve done well, but one damp morning and they were rather stuck together. I left them in the office overnight where it’s air condition and they separated again. So if you’re in a humid area, you might want to stick with the wrapped version or keep these sealed in a zipper bag when you’re not busy consuming them.

The key feature to recommend the Starburst Minis is not their size, it’s the fact that they’re unwrapped. But I’m sure there are a lot of folks who will hone in on the fact that they don’t have gelatin in them. I don’t like the texture as much, but I can see the appeal of these, especially in circumstances where the wrappers are a hindrance, such as snacking on a plane or in a movie theater. But mostly I figure Skittles are mini Starburst - not quite the same flavor array, but a good approximation and they don’t stick together.

UPDATE 9/3/2014: I picked up another package, because I’ve noticed some comments about the flavor and texture that were inconsistent with my initial review. Since that was a year ago and the candy has been in production for a while, I thought perhaps there were differences when the candy sits around on shelves for a few months or if they’d tweaked anything.

I found them to be quite firm, tough even. It’s workable, but not a feature I find comforting. The flavor is also off, especially on the citrus flavors ... I definitely got a little note of something metallic with the lemon and orange. If this is the way everyone else is tasting them, I’d downgrade them to a 6 out of 10. I’m sticking with regular wrapped Starburst.

Related Candies

1. KitKat Minis
2. Candy Tease: Sweets & Snacks Expo - Part 2
3. Starburst Very Berry
4. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups Minis
5. Skittles (Fruits, Wild Berry, Tropical, Smoothies & Sour)
6. Starburst

Dove is again expanding their line of foil wrapped pieces with Dove Mint & Dark Chocolate Swirl Promises.

Dove has done some wonderful things with white chocolate lately, the best thing is that they’re using cocoa butter instead of substitute oils. This is expecially noticeable in products like this one where chocolate and white chocolate are together. Dove did a great job with their Peppermint Bark for the holidays, it’s a great layered combination of chocolate, white chocolate and mint candy pieces.

I assumed that these new Promises would be similar to the Peppermint Bark but without the crunch. These feature a combination of the classic Dove semisweet chocolate swirled together with artificially-colored white chocolate flavored with peppermint.

Other than finding the color of them a bit unappetizing, I think these are great. They’re minty, but it doesn’t overwhelm the chocolate. They have an incredibly silky melt and just two or three are a satisfying treat. I don’t think they needed the coloring, in fact, I think it detracts from them. The foil does enough to denote the flavor inside, a white or off-white would have been just fine for most people.

I prefer them in the pieces, I don’t think I’d be up for eating a whole bar of this. I’m fond of Andes Mints, but these are much better ... better ingredients, better melt on the tongue, real chocolate ... and pretty much the same price.

Mars is moving towards using all ethically and sustainably sourced chocolate through Rainforest Alliance for their Dove line.

Related Candies

1. Dove 71% Cacao Silky Smooth Dark Chocolate (Rainforest Alliance)
2. M&Ms White Chocolate Peppermint
3. Dove Sea Salt Caramel Dark Chocolate Promises
4. Trader Joe’s Minty Melts
5. Dove Swirl Bars
6. Marich All Natural Holland Mints & Chocolate Jordan Almonds
7. Dove Peppermint Bark

Small and plentiful is the trend these days. Most of the top candy makers are creating unwrapped bites of your favorite candies if they don’t already exist. This isn’t new, they’ve come and gone as brand extensions through the years, but that doesn’t mean that they’re not a good idea.

The Mars Milky Way Unwrapped Bites are similar to the Snickers Unwrapped Bites I already reviewed. They’re little cubes, super tiny versions of the popular Milky Way bar. The base is a fluffy nougat, topped with caramel and coated in milk chocolate.

The little nuggets are 2/3 of an inch cubed. A serving is eight pieces, which comes to about 1.34 ounces. They clock in a bit lighter on the calories than the Snickers, mostly because they don’t contain peanuts, which are a bit fattier (but also contain 50% more protein).

They’re easy to eat, sweet smelling and have a soft bite and easy, aerated chew. There was a bit of a cereal note to the smell, but overall they were just sweet and tasty.

This is another interesting example of how ratios of different element can change a candy. I know that some die hard Milky Way fans will probably detest this, but I happen to like it much more than the bar. The bar was always too big, too filling and too sweet but also lacking in any distinct flavor element. In this version the malt of the fluffed nougat is the most forward; it also combines well with the slightly salty caramel to create a great balance.

My only complaint with the bites is that the thinner chocolate shell makes them more delicate. There were several clumps in my bag where one spilled its caramel and they got stuck together. I don’t see myself buying these regularly, but I can see them being great for recipes, especially as an ice cream topper perhaps inside cookies.

The new trend is reducing packaging. Well, maybe that’s what the food companies want you to believe. The new line of Unwrapped Bites from Mars means you get lots of little miniature minis without all the wrappers that become evidence of how much you’ve eaten.

Hershey’s launched something similar a couple of years ago, so it’s no wonder that Mars is in on it as well.

The package, with a zipper closure, holds a half pound of teensy Snickers cubes. Easy to dump into a bowl, or just eat out of the bag. They’ll also be available in smaller single serving bags.

Mars is utilizing this new icon system on the front of the package for serving size and calorie counts. The serving here is 8 bites or 41 grams, which comes to 190 calories. (3 grams of protein from the peanuts.) Stacked up, the little cubes are cute and hold their shape pretty well. They do get scuffed up in the bag, so they’re not that glossy, swirled perfection found in the individual wrappers.

I can see these being very useful for recipes ... though kind of expensive at 2.99 for 8 ounces, but no worse than premium chocolate chips.

What they got right here is the ratios. Even though they’re not perfect large Snickers ratios, these strike an extremely pleasing balance of nougat, nuts and chocolate. By far the nuts take center stage. Instead of omitting the nuts or putting teensy crushed ones in there, they’re still big peanut pieces. (Though I did get on that had no nuts.) There’s a hint of salt in the nougat which balances the sweet chocolate and caramel. The caramel really doesn’t do much here, maybe it adds a little chew.

What I really enjoy though is the portioning. I like that I can eat only three or four at a time, then maybe three or four later. A full portion is eight pieces, which is less than a regular Snickers, but feels like a lot. Of course the bag is 8 ounces ... nothing keeping you from eating the whole thing in one sitting. These are pretty much the antithesis of the Snickers Slice n’ Share 1 Pound bar ... and actually a better value since a full pound of the Bites retails for $6 instead of $10.

Snickers are made with peanuts, dairy, soy and eggs. They’re also processed in a facility with almonds and I cannot find anything that says that they’re gluten free. Mars has not rolled over to sustainable, ethical sourcing for their ingredients, though they’re on track for 2020.

Related Candies

1. Rolo Minis
2. Snickers Peanut Butter Squared
3. Hershey’s Drops: Milk Chocolate & Cookies n Creme
4. Snickers Charged
5. Snickers Dark

M&Ms are ranked as the #1 candy by companies who track such things. But that popularity has always been limited to the lentil type candies, not other candies branded under M&Ms. As an example, Mars launched the M-Azing bar, a chocolate bar with M&Ms in 2004 but it was discontinued in 2008.

Mars is trying again trying to flatten and solidify the candies with the new Milk Chocolate M&Ms Chocolate Bar. The tagline is chocolate bars are better with M.

The bar, as you can imagine, is a milk chocolate base studded with M&Ms (candy coated milk chocolate pieces). I was curious if the chocolate of the bar was the same as the chocolate inside the M&Ms. Looking at the ingredients list, it appears they are slightly different.

The embedded candies are the mini sized M&Ms, not the full sized. (As you can imagine, the bar would need to be pretty thick to full encapsulate them.) The minis have a much thinner shell, so less of a sharp crispness.

The bar is cute to look at. It’s nicely segmented and molded and breaks apart easily with a good snap. The scent is sweet and a little on the sugary side; it didn’t smell rich and reminded me of R.M. Palmer. The melt is pretty smooth overall, but there’s a slight cereal flavor to it, which I’m guessing is from the candy shells. It’s also has a slight sharpness to it, almost verging on a Hershey’s taste. On the whole, I was unimpressed.

The candy pieces inside gave a little crisp crunch to it and added sweetness. There was little difference in the flavor when it came to the centers of the M&Ms when eaten in the context of the bar. Overall ... the chocolate itself was never the strong suit of M&Ms, it’s always been the munchable, colorful portability of them.

If you’ve been looking for a milk chocolate bar with more artificial ingredients, this might be just the thing. Not only do you get the artificial colors on the actual M&Ms, there’s also the added bonus of PGPR,

Related Candies

1. Dove Cookies and Creme + Ghirardelli Cookies Jubilee
2. M&Ms Sweet & Salty Snack Mix
3. Crispy M&Ms
4. UK vs US Cadbury Dairy Milk
5. Hershey’s Miniatures
6. M&Ms Premiums
7. M&Ms Line

It was surprising to me that the Life Savers line of gummis is one of the most popular lines of gummis in the country, but I suppose part of it has to do with their ubiquity.

The new Life Savers Gummies Coolers are billed as Your favorite refreshing drink flavors have joined the Life Savers family.

The package has some nice cool pastel tones on it and an odd assortment of flavors. The Cooler name made me think of the Sour Patch Chillerz, which were infused with a little bit of menthol to give a cooling quality in the mouth. But the reality is, they’re just chilled drink flavors ... though not flavors I would readily order (there are no lemonades).

The package doesn’t match up the flavors to the colors, so I’m going to have to guess.

Cherry Limeade is the deep red. It’s an interesting mix of that classic Life Savers cherry and a little hint of citrus zest. I would have preferred more of the lime, but I appreciate that it wasn’t overly sweet and it certainly packed a lot of flavor in there.

Raspberry Iced Tea was the pale pink one. It’s funny to see two raspberry flavors in one bag. This one tasted like raspberry. I didn’t detect any tannins from the tea but there was a well rounded raspberry flavor that got both the floral note, a blush of tartness and a hint of the seeds.

Fruit Punch is probably orange. It tastes like fruit punch. Not much else to say except that I like it when my fruit punch doesn’t have quite so much artificial coloring in it, so at least this version had a little less of that bitter red in it. It didn’t make me like it any more than if it was bitter.

Blue Raspberry Slushy was blue. The raspberry flavor was sweet. That was pretty much it. It was sweet and a little soapy from the floral notes of the berry. There was very little sour to go along with it.

Watermelon Breeze was light green. I think this was just watermelon flavored, as I could detect no other note of breeze in it. The watermelon was definitely on the green side of the flavors, more about the tart note that you get when you eat close to the rind than the sweet and floral flavor of the center of the melon.

The diversity of the flavors was lacking, but then again, all of them were good enough that I’d eat any placed in front of me. The intensity is good and I enjoy the shape quite a bit. But on the whole, the flavor set just didn’t thrill me. Of the Life Savers line of gummis, I prefer the Sours best, mostly because of the transcendent tangerine.

Related Candies

1. Haribo Ingwer-Zitrone Gummis
2. Life Savers Gummies Collisions
3. Wonka Springy Double Yummy Gummies
4. Trader Joe’s Gummy Tummies
5. LifeSavers Tangy Fruits Gummies
6. Albanese Gummi Butterflies
7. Lifesavers Gummies Sour

Wrigley’s has quietly introduced a new Starburst flavor variety: Starburst Very Berry. The package features four flavors: Strawberry, Raspberry, Blackberry and Blueberry.

This isn’t Starburst’s first foray into the berry world, they used to make a version called Berries and Creme which had a creamy version in strawberry, raspberry, blueberry and mixed berry. This version is a bit more bold, dumping the creme for a more fruity intensity.

The package says Great fruit taste! Real fruit juice! (That’s apple juice. They all have apple juice, and less than 2% of it, too.) They also have 20% of your RDA of vitamin C.

I picked these up in their Easter box, but they’re also available in the single serve package and bags. The hazard with the bags and box is that you’re never sure of the ratio you’ll get. My box had an inordinate amount of blueberry and only one raspberry.

Blackberry

This flavor sounded great, even though I’m never sure what the difference in artificially flavored candies is between raspberry and blackberry aside from the color.

The flavor is, well, good. It’s very floral and deep with a lot of black cherry, cranberry and raspberry notes. But overall there’s a sort of softness to it, it’s not a lack of intensity, it’s just not puckery or dry like pomegranate can be.

Blueberry

I had a lot of these and I was a little put off by the color. It’s not the color of food, it’s the color of a drug or a toy. The flavor is balanced and does a good job of being blueberry “flavored.” It’s a mix of tannins, like iced tea and a floral note that reminds me of ball point pen ink. It’s a little tangy, between the tartness level of a citrus and the blander strawberry.

Blueberry is hard and the most interesting thing about blueberries, to me, is the combination of textures. It’s a difficult thing to mimic in a chewy candy, like the fuzz on a peach or the layers of flavor and mouthfeel of a concord grape.

Strawberry

Well, it’s the strawberry Starburst. There’s not much else to say except, “Welcome!” It’s a softer flavor, more like cotton candy than a sour berry flavor. There’s a light tartness to it, but mostly it’s sweet with a little kiss of floral strawberry flavor.

The wrapper is a different color pink or at least it seemed brighter. I’m glad it’s in this mix.

Raspberry

This is very floral and deeply jammy. There’s a hint of pineapple tartness but overall it’s a well rounded flavor with some cherry notes as well. It’s not wholly raspberry, it lacks a “seed” flavor to it. I can’t say much more because I only had one.

Overall, it’s a nice mix. It’s less sour than some of the other varieties that include citrus flavors. I liked the colors, and if you’re going for something like a glass jar that would be on display on your desk or at a party, the look is quite striking.

Starburst contain gelatin, so they’re not for vegetarians and not Kosher/Halal. They are gluten free.

Related Candies

1. Starburst Sweet Fiesta
2. Starburst Flavor Morph
3. Starburst Sour & Sweet
4. Starburst Retro
5. Starburst Baja California & Tropical
6. Starburst Berries & Creme and Fruit & Creme
7. Starburst