Nestle has decided to get into the chocolate numbers game.

They’ve introduced a new line of baking products with higher cocoa content than their usual products: Nestle Chocolatier. They have chocolate chips in 53% and 62% cocoa solids, baking pieces (chunks in 53% only) and baking bars. Their new website offers some pretty decadent dessert recipes to make full use of the purported smooth chocolate experience the higher quality product is supposed to offer. (There’s even a Molten Chocolate Cake which I suppose you’re free to use any other brand to make.)

UPDATE: They shut off new signups yesterday. Apparently they didn’t understand how quickly this stuff spreads and they’re retooling.

UPDATED UPDATE (10/17/2006) - The M80 campaign was pulled completely. I’ll have more later but I would rate this as a “debacle” as viral marketing goes.

There are a lot of candies that are not unique, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s good to have choices. But usually there are similar products on the market becaue they’re made by different companies. I ran across these recently: Chewy Mini SweeTarts and Chewy Tart n Tinys. SweeTarts and Tart n Tinys used to be nearly identical products, except for the shape of the little pieces. And that was fine because one was made by Sunline (SweeTarts) and the other was made by Wonka (Tart n Tinys). Then Tart n Tiny’s were glazed in a bright candy shell and they were suddenly a vastly different product and coincidentally now owned by the same company (Nestle).

But here we are again with the same thing?

Chewy Mini SweeTarts are little spherical versions of the larger Chewy SweeTarts which, in turn, are like the original SweeTarts. They come in five flavors: grape (purple), cherry (red), orange (orange), lemon (yellow) and apple (green). There are also Giant Chewy SweeTarts, which have been around since I was a kid.

They have a little glaze on them to keep them from sticking together and their colors are a little mottled, but not unattractively so. The chew is soft but grainy, with a nice cool feeling to it and a quick dissolve. The flavor is about what you’d expect from a SweeTart - a lot of tart at the beginning with a round, chemical flavor and then it finishes sweet and grainy.

Somewhere back in the distant past Tart n Tinys were not colorful - they were plain and chalky, like SweeTarts only pellet shaped. Then someone gave them a shiny color coating. They have little character versions of the candies on the package, but I’ve never paid much attention to them, but I guess that’s what sets them apart from SweeTarts.

The Chewy Tart n Tinys are little chewy pellets of tartness, a bit of flavor and a grainy chew all coated in a thin, crunchy shell. They come in five flavors: grape (blue), cherry (red), orange (orange), lemon (yellow) and apple (green). Sound familiar?

Besides the colorful coating and the difference in the color of the grape flavor, and the slight difference in size (the Tart n Tinys are 11% smaller than the Chewy SweeTarts Minis) they’re the same candy.

SweeTarts come in a handy dispenser tube (but I’ve seen them in the bags before, too), which is kind of fun for sharing and saving for later. There’s a little more in the Tart n Tinys package (1.6 ounces vs 1.75 ounces) but I guess it all comes down to how you want your candy to look. Chewy SweeTarts Minis look kind of like tiny Trix and Chewy Tart n Tinys look like little beads. Chewy Tart n Tinys have fewer calories per ounce, I can only guess this is because the tartness ingredients are higher on the list and perhaps there are more colorings in the Tart n Tinys, which take up mass but have no calories. Both deliver a lot of variety and a consistent product. Why they both exist from the same company is beyond me, but then again they stopped making Wacky Wafers because they said they were too similar to Bottle Caps, and I really miss Wacky Wafers.

In the end, the Chewy Tart n Tinys win out by a very slight margin. I’m not sure why, I think it’s just that I like the look of them better, and when the taste is the same, that’s just about all it comes down to.

Green Tea (Matcha) KitKats from Japan have been around for a while, but it took me this long to get my hands on some. I couldn’t even find a single-serving bar so I had to buy this bag of miniatures. At over $6, it’s not something I’m likely to repeat for a mass produced consumer candy.

These little wafer sticks are covered in a white mockolate flavored with real green tea. The color of the coating is real, it’s a pretty shade of creamy green. It smells of sugar and the delicate scent of matcha. The layers are flaky and crisp, just like a KitKat ought to be. The mockolate coating is very sweet though, so the matcha nuances are lost until you reach a saturation point ... at about the second stick.

A little about matcha. Matcha is a style of preparing green tea that starts with preparing the tea leaves before harvest, where they are covered from the sun for a few weeks before they are picked. After drying they are ground into a fine powder to create the matcha. This powder is used to prepare the tea and unlike regular brewed teas, the hot water is added to the powder and it is not strained out. Think of it as the difference between coffee and cocoa. With coffee we brew the beans by passing hot water through the grounds. With cocoa we grind the beans very finely and add them to hot milk. You get more complex flavors when you consume the whole leaf.

While I found these enjoyable, they were a tad sweet, which covered up much of the green tea flavors. The white mockolate had more of a greasy consistency, since the ingredients go: sugar, vegetable oil, lactose, wheat flour, milk powder and the cocoa butter. The American label on the package may or may not be correct, as I found a huge discrepancy in the reported calories for them and I had to puzzle my way through the Japanese listing. Luckily numbers are universal.

I think these are limited edition, as they’re no longer on the Breaktown.com site, maybe someone can read that label and let me know. (Dont’ worry, these weren’t expired candies or anything, the freshness date said 01/2007 on it.)

If there were ever a case study for how the internet and fan passion can change marketing policy of a corporation, it has to be Coffee Crisp.

Made by Nestle, the Coffee Crisp is a wafer bar with a coffee flavored cream and chocolate-like coating. They’ve been very popular in Canada for years, but for some reason they were never introduced in the United States. For at least five years a web petition/email/phone campaign was circulating to get them in the States and those efforts have finally come to fruition.

At first Nestle responded by allowing American stores order the Coffee Crisp to carry in their stores, but they made no real effort to advertise or give any special deals (as is very common with other candies). Instead Coffee Crisp were often seen in stores near the Canadian border, large urban markets and on internet stores that catered to the obsessed.

If you want to know where to find your own, check out the fan site called CoffeeCrisp.org - they have a special page called Coffee Crisp Sightings. I still haven’t seen them anywhere (including the places where I used to see them before their official introduction).

You can also find info on their official website: Nestle-coffeecrisp.com

The packaging for the bar was changed a little in the past year (as was much of Nestle’s product line) but the candy bars you’ll find here are still made in Canada. I’d hoped that they’d change the recipe a little bit to get rid of the hydrogenated oils ... the bar carries 1.5 grams of trans fats. Some purists probably celebrate them sticking to tradition.

Previous coverage about the petition here and I reviewed the Coffee Crisp last year (a bar I found at a gourmet market ... I wasn’t really that fond of it).

Nerds have been around since the early eighties and I’ve never tried them. I was an early member of the Wonka fan club (you had to send in proofs of purchase) and I’ve never tried them. There’s actually a pretty long list of very common candy items that I’ve never tried, but this was one I decided to tick off my list.

Nerds are little panned crunchy and sour candies. They’re made by taking a little crystal of sugar and then tumbling them with successive layers of sour coating, then a coat of color. Nerds are irregular with some as small as a sesame seed and others as large as a dried pea. The unique selling proposition with Nerds is that they come in packages with two flavors in them and a separate dispensing opening. The flavor combo that got me off my bum to try them was Lightning Lemon/Amped Apple.

What I found out is that I’m not really missing anything by not eating Nerds.

The texture is good and the consistent crunchiness has a lot to recommend it, however, there’s really no flavor there. The distinction between the apple and lemon is rather scant. They’re both tart but little else. As for the SOUR! emblazoned on the box, well, they were sour, but not in all caps.

I can see these being very useful for a decorative element for cupcakes, but I can’t see myself buying them again. I know they have their fans, but I think I’m going to stick with Tart ‘n’ Tiny. For the record, I’m not an ice-chewer, so maybe that’s who these are marketed for. I have actually purchased the new Nerds Rope twice, but I haven’t actually eaten them (I think I gave one away in one of the contests), but I suspect they’re better in combination with something else like a gummi.

(While I’m on the subject of decorating with candy, check out Candy Addict’s Swimming Pool Cake ... if he decided to make an aquarium instead, this would make great colored gravel.)

I got to try the Dark Chocolate Raisinets at the All Candy Expo a couple of months ago and I was pretty underwhelmed. They handed them out in little sample cups, so there was no packaging to look at and after eating two sample cups I asked if they were the new dark ones, because they honestly didn’t taste that way. But these were on sale so I decided to give the retail product another try.

The new Dark Raisinets herald their healthiness on the package as a “natural source of antioxidants from fruit & dark chocolate” as well as “30% less fat than the leading chocolate brands.” I’ve got no complaints with either claim, although comparing Raisinets to a Snickers or Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups seems rather like apples to chocolate covered oranges.

My other complaint is that they say it’s Dark Chocolate when really it’s just darker milk chocolate. The ingredients for the coating go like this: Sugar, Chocolate, Cocoa Butter, Milkfat, Soy Lecithin, Nonfat Milk, Lactose, Vanillin, Natural Flavor.

But really, who cares? The big questions are, do they taste any different than the regular Raisinets and do they taste good?

They’re actually rather nice. The raisins are plump and often big. The chocolate coating is a little grainy and very sweet but provides a nice counterpoint to the tart chewiness of the raisins. I’ve been spoiled by Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Covered Raisins for a long time which are wonderfully rich and complex and these are far from rivaling those. However, as a single serving pack that’s easy to find anywhere, I’d pick these up as a healthier alternative to a full on candy bar. There’s still 22% of your daily saturated fat intake in here including 5 mg of cholesterol (really, why’d they have to go and do that?), but also 2 grams of fiber and 2 grams of protein. And all those antioxidants, whatever they are.

A little history about Raisinets, Goobers and SnoCaps. All three were originally made by the Blumenthal Chocolate Company. Goobers were introduced first, then Raisins and finally SnoCaps. All were popular movie candy and for a long time the only place I could find them was at the concession counter. Nestle bought Blumenthal in 1984 and the candies gained wider distribution in a variety of packages with some slight changes in their recipes. Raisinets are a Kosher (OU D) product.

Related Candies

1. Nestle Cherry Raisinets
2. Sno-Caps, Goobers & Raisinets

I’ve been a fan of Sprees since they first came out. They’re the more attractive out-of-town cousin of the SweeTart (who is of course your mousy best friend). They’re tasty and drop dead gorgeous when spread out on your desk in neat rows of colors like some sort of stereo equalizer display.

Chewy Sprees happened onto the scene a while back, but I never paid much attention to them. But then I got a hold of these Mini Chewy Spree. They come in these cool little plastic packages that look kind of like popsicles and have a little flip top.

The color array is exactly the same as their larger, harder counterparts. Red is cherry, Yellow is lemon, Purple is grape, Orange is orange and Green is now apple (though it used to be lime back in the day).

Chewy Spree are, well, chewy. The outside of them is lightly flavored and completely sweet. But there’s no candy shell to it, just an inside that’s soft and chewy. They’re actually easily crushed with your fingers, like M&Ms are. But they’re lacking the “Kick in the Mouth” that the package heralds. (It says the same for the rolls of regular hard Spree.)

They’re just not as sour, not as flavorful. They’re not bad, they’re just ... I dunno, shallow.

As cool as the plastic tube they come in (that says “flip your lid!”), I feel a little bad about the overpackaging. But to allay my guilt about that, I looked around on the Nestle website and they have crafts that you can do with the empties (a Rain Gauge). At the moment I’ve got one filled with band-aids and alcohol wipes as a little first aid kit. You could store little things in there too, or refill with bulk candies. I think you also might be able to make your own popsicles with them, too.

But as the price difference goes, I think I’ll stick with the regular roll of Sprees and their minimal packaging and true “kick in the mouth” taste.

When I came up with the idea to do this head to head comparison, it was because of the most obvious similarities between SweeTarts Shockers and Mentos Sours. They’re both rolls, they’re both sour and they’re both chewy pastilles. But they have completely different flavor mixes (the only flavor in common is green apple), different shapes and rather different takes on what a sour chew should be.

Mentos has always been known for intense chewy mints, so it seems only natural that they’d develop Mentos Sours. The package is a little odd because it says “The Chewy Mint” above the Mentos logo ... but these are not mint flavored. I guess “mint” has become a kind of candy, not a flavor.

Mentos Sours come in three flavors: Watermelon, Green Apple and Lemon. The colors are beautiful, and if they weren’t candy you’d want to string them into a chunky beaded bracelet. The finish on them is matte and not quite a continuous color. They don’t smell like much.

They’re soft and chewy, the shell is a tad bit waxy only lightly sweet. Upon biting into them the flavor erupts.

Green Apple: typical fresh sour flavor. Not too tart.

Watermelon: at first it’s sweet, like a cotton candy flavor with some floral overtones, then it kicks into sour gear. This is a really nice flavor, not too chemical tasting.

Lemon: immediately it has a good zesty essence to it and then the sour follows quickly behind to combine into the protype of lemony goodness.

Basically, they’re nice without being radically toxic feeling on the tongue. There’s a strange waxy thing that develops at the end of the chew though. I’m not sure if it’s the remnants of the “glazing agents” on the shell, but it’s an odd, undissolveable substance on my teeth that tastes only vaguely like the chew.

Mentos Sour are made in Brazil. (Note: the packaging I have may not be the way you see it in the stores - the website shows them in little reclosable boxes.)

Green Apple: intense and chemically flavored, it dissolves away into a sweet grit pretty quickly.

Orange: oh, this is the best! There’s an immediate blast of blisteringly sour tangerine on the tongue. Not as long lasting in the chew department as the Mentos.

Grape: it’s like a Purple Pixy Stix made chewy. It makes my mouth water just thinking about it. (TMI Alert - for some reason the grape ones make me burp.)

Cherry: the sour outside tastes like a very cherry candy, much like the SweeTarts, but with a stronger flavor instead of just more sour.

Blue Raspberry: an immediate sour hit is followed by some fragrant notes that remind me of cotton candy and violets.

All of the Shockers are intensely sour on the tongue from the moment you place them in your mouth but then mellow out to have a pleasant cooling sensation towards the end, but the chew doesn’t last long before they descend into sugary grit.

As all round chews, the Mentos Sours are middle of the road - they’re exceptionally pleasant and can be shared with adults who might ordinarily be afraid of something called “sour”. The SweeTarts Shockers, on the other hand, are a blast but you can’t keep eating them if you’d like to preserve the tasting functions of your tongue.

The packages hold slight different masses - SweeTarts Shockers clock in at 1.65 ounces (which the label says is three servings) and Mentos Sours are 1.32 ounces (which the label says is 14 servings ... one Mentos is a serving). Both contain hydrogenated oils, but not enough to warrant any fat content on the nutrition label.

Personally, I love the Shockers, if only for the intense orange ones. But the Mentos Sours have a much longer, consistent chew, especially the full flavor of the lemon ones, and I would probably pick them up in a pinch.