I found this smart looking bar at Mel & Rose Wine and Liquors a few weeks ago, before it got blisteringly hot and I’m adverse to buying chocolate.

The Nestle Aero line is a fun sort - it’s aerated chocolate. That means that air bubbles are trapped in the chocolate, making it light and fluffy, kind of like chocolate pumice. This is rather foreign to us here in the US where aerated chocolate isn’t that common. Europe Cadbury has a whole Wispa and Diary Milk Bubby line of products and they’re also popular in Israel where Elite makes some bars.

The Aero 70% Cocoa bar was a little more expensive than some of the imports I find, I paid $2 for mine, though in Canada, where these are from, they might be more reasonably priced. It’s five inches long and 1/75 inches across making it seem like a large bar. It only weighs 1.41 ounces, which is a great portion for chocolate but at this size it looks large but feels a bit puffy. Well, that’s because it is. The wrapping is simple and elegant. There’s a lot of info on the bar but they balance it well with the bubbly graphic elements and the matte paper keeps it from being too chaotic.

Inside the foil wrapper, the bar is nicely molded, the shape is great and does a great job of highlighting the bubbly attributes while still making it easy to portion. The bubbles vary in size, but are consistently distributed throughout the bar - no solids spots.

The bite is easy and doesn’t flake or crumble. The scent is odd, almost alcoholic - like whiskey with hints of tobacco and cedar. The chocolate flavors are similarly woodsy and rich with just a hint of tannic cherries. The melt is creamy and slick. It’s amazing how good this is for a Nestle bar. Like all the best things about Nestle Chocolate Morsels, but even creamier.

The nutrition label was kind of shocking. The reason the melt was so smooth was the level of dreamy cocoa butter in the bar - it has one of the highest calorie counts per ounce of a whole chocolate product: 169. There are 16 grams of fat in here, but also 4 grams of fiber, 21 grams of sugar and finally 3 grams of protein. There’s a shocking 35% of the Canadian RDA of iron & 25% of the magnesium. The front of the package also says that there are 500 mg of polyphenols. The ingredients are also simple and easy to understand: cacao mass, sugar, cocoa, cocoa butter, soy lecithin & natural flavor.

I happened to have some of the Bubble Chocolate 60% Dark bar around to compare it to, and the Nestle Aero is surprisingly richer and smoother. I ate the whole bar and would probably buy it again if I saw it - it’s my favorite of the aerated bars I’ve had.

Related Candies

1. Bubble Chocolate (2010)
2. Nestle Noir
3. Vanilla Beans KitKat & Bitter Orange Aero
4. Elite Aerated & Lotte Airs
5. Dairy Milk Bubbly
6. Mint Aero
7. Aero

In the flurry of new Wonka products, I’ve neglected the most recent introduction in their Wonka’s Edible Garden Gummies line. The Wonka Whipped Wingers Gummies are definitely different from the usual translucent fare.

The hook here is that the texture of the candies, they’re “whipped” like the base of the Squishy Sploshberries and some other Haribo and Katje gummis that I’ve had from Europe.

Like the other Wonka Gummies, these are free of artificial colors and flavors and are made with fruit juice (apple juice). They come in four shapes and four flavors: Watermelon, Orange, Pineapple and Tropical Punch.

The gummis come in four shapes: hornet, beetle, butterfly and midget dragonflies. Okay, I made those names up, I’m not an entomologist - I’m a candy reviewer.

The foamy texture is like a dense marshmallow, not quite fluffy but with a bouncy latex quality. This made them a little lighter than expected, so while the package had only 5.5 ounces in it, they definitely looked like “more” than a comparable non-fluffed product. (The standard packages for the Sluggles and Puckerooms come in 6.5 ounce peg bags.)

The candies were matte, soft and pillowy. They didn’t stick, which was nice for just setting them around on my keyboard.

Orange was perfectly ordinary. Tangy and juicy, but with a very bland flavor that reminded me of flavored drink powder.

Watermelon was pink and quite a surprise. I enjoyed it because there was no artificial metallic chemical note. It wasn’t quite like real watermelon, it was actually somewhere between a generic punch flavor and green apple but with a light floral note.

Tropical Punch was the soft purple one. The flavor was just like punch, a soft and non-distinct sort of thing with a little berry tang to it and a citrus note. It wasn’t my favorite of the set, but I also on got four of them in the bag.

Pineapple was yellow and the one I was looking forward to the most. It’s floral and tropical but the tartness is more along the lines of canned pineapple. Mild and merely pleasant in the whole scheme of things.

I enjoyed the chewy foamy texture (up until the point it gave me the burps). It seemed to give it a creamy texture without any actual dairy products in it. It was an odd sensation though, because they were squishy and pliable, it was like chewing on boneless baby toes (which I know is pretty tempting most of the time anyway).

I loved the shapes and the colors plus the fact that Wonka is making an effort to create candies with kid and tween appeal without artificial ingredients. The flavors weren’t as intense as I would have wanted, but the novelty of the texture kind of made up for that.

Though the other Wonka Gummies are made in the Czech Republic, these appear to be American. It’d be nice if Wonka could also make their products in less allergy-laden facilities. This one was made on shared equipment with wheat, dairy, peanuts, tree nuts, soy and eggs. It also contains gelatin (since it’s a gummi) so it’s not vegetarian. One of the natural colors is cochineal, for those who avoid that (but I though it was kind of funny to have an insect shaped candy made with insects!).

Related Candies

1. Au’some All Natural 3-Dees
2. Wonka Exceptionals Fruit Jellies: Grapefruit, Goji Berry & Red Apple
3. Wonka Fruit Marvels
4. Meiji Poifull
5. Wonka Kazoozles: Cherry Punch & Pink Lemonade
6. Choco-Fudge Mallow Sundae
7. Big Bite Gummy Bear

New Nestle Butterfinger Snackerz are crispy bite-size candies with a smooth Butterfinger-flavored center.

They come in a rather petite package, it weighs only 1.28 ounces, which is a pretty remarkable difference compared to the standard Butterfinger bar which clocks in at 2.1 ounces. Of course that does mean that there are fewer calories per serving, here a bag is only 170 calories (133 per ounce) while a bar is 270 calories (129 per ounce).

The package is a simple pouch, a little taller than a bag of M&Ms and in a bright yellow and orange with blue accents.

The Snackerz look every bit as appealing as the actual Butterfinger bar. They’re a bit chalky and smell like sugar and fake butter. They’re about 1.25 inches long and .75 to 1.00 inches wide. They’re decorated with little zags of orange icing confection. They’re an irregular puff shape, there’s a little pocket of Butterfinger creme in there.

The crunch is like a sweet version of Fritos or a breakfast cereal. Inside the sweets, salty and buttery flavored cream has a little hint of roasted nuts. The cereal and peanut butter combination is fun and different enough. The mockolate coating is a joke, it’s fresh so there’s no hint of rancid cocoa or anything that I get from Butterfingers now and then. But there’s no rich cocoa to go with it.

A few years ago I tried something called Butterfinger Stixx, which were a little wafer tube filled with a similar creme, but the difference there was that they were covered in real milk chocolate. That was a great idea. This is mediocre at best ... a smaller portion than most candies offer at this price but sub par ingredients.

After seeing what Nestle did with the Wonka line to create products with better ingredients, this is just plain disappointing. I know they can do better.

Made in Mexico, no Kosher statement on the package.

Related Candies

1. Baby Ruth Crisp & Nestle Crisp Bars
2. ReeseSticks (Revisit)
3. Whoppers Reese’s Peanut Butter Flavored Candy
4. Twix PB
5. Butterfinger Stixx

Nestle continues its expansion of the Raisinets line. First it was Dark Chocolate Raisinets and then they really blew our minds with Cranberry Raisinets (which have no raisins! and they’re dark chocolate!). This year they’ve introduced Cherry Raisinets which are “dark chocolate” covered dried cherries. So they’ve ignored two of the three defining features of Raisinets - no raisins, no milk chocolate (but they’re still individually panned candies).

Still, it’s a great idea. How many real fruit candies are there? I loved the idea that they were also using dark chocolate, which I think is an excellent mix with the tartness and wine-notes of dried cherries.

The ingredients list in classic Raisinets is mercifully short: milk chocolate, raisins, sugar, tapioca dextrin and glaze. The ingredients for the new chocolate covered sunshine Cherry Raisinets are Dark Chocolate [with dairy], sweetened dried cherries (cherries, sugar, sunflower oil, citric acid), sugar, tapioca dextrin, confectioners glaze, cocoa processed with alkali.

The package makes some claims:

GOOD to KNOW
Cherry Raisinets are a natural source of FRUIT AND DARK CHOCOLATE ANTIOXIDANTS which help maintain good health.

Fact: the nutrition chart makes no mention of measurable antioxidants. There is no Vitamin C, no Vitamin A. There is 2% Calcium and 2% Iron.

GOOD to KNOW
You get a 1/2 SERVING OF REAL FRUIT in every 1/4 cup of Cherry Raisinets.

I love fresh cherries and even the dried ones, I’ve never seen the need to add extra sugar to them.

But maybe I should ignore the package and expectations and get on with the actual tasting. I was expecting cherry bits, that these were going to be similar in size and shape to Raisinets. Instead they’re actual whole, pitted cherries. The nuggets are about an inch across, though some are larger, flatter or rounder.

With the Cranberry Raisinets I was irritated at how sweet the centers were. Even though they added sugar to these (or maybe because they also threw in some citric acid) they were tart, moist and chewy. The dark chocolate is sweet and rather cool on the tongue. It’s only vaguely chocolatey, but not too waxy or distracting. The cherry notes are well rounded - the woodsy and tangy chew is soft and complex. It gets tarter the longer I chew, so the very end is a lot of cherry flavor.

These are by far my favorite Raisnets product so far (but that’s not hard because I’m not that fond of Nestle’s take on chocolate covered dried fruit). I wish it was better chocolate, of course, and wasn’t so sugary ... but the prospect of getting chocolate covered dried cherries in a vending machine or at the movie theater is tantalizing. I wouldn’t eat them as a health food, but they’re a snappy snack and probably better for you than some other things.

The retail price of $3.29 for 4 ounces is a bit steep for low-quality chocolate candy ($13.16 a pound) but these may end up on sale for less.

Note - I got mine as a sample from the National Confectioners Association as part of their preview of new products. Nestle did some wide sampling and giveaways, mostly with the mommy blogs (that I didn’t care to participate in), so mine is hardly the first review of these even though I have yet to see them in the stores.

Related Candies

1. Recchiuti Asphalt Jungle Mix
2. Nestle Cranberry Raisinets
3. Nestle Noir
4. Sno-Caps, Goobers & Raisinets
5. Dark Raisinets
6. ChocoCherries

While the news that KitKat is now available in both Dark and Milk Chocolate is hot news here in the United States, Nestle continues to churn out fantastically inventive versions for Japan.

Japanese KitKat are getting easier to find in the United States, I picked up mine in Little Tokyo at various grocery stores. The price is a bit steeper than an ordinary KitKat, usually between $2.00 and $3.00 depending on the variety and the store. (Here’s one store in Little Tokyo.)

Royal Milk Tea has oodles of imperial ingredients, like palm oil and tea extract.

I get the impression that Royal Milk Tea is the Japanese version of what we know here in the US as Thai Iced Tea, a strong black tea mixed with lot of sugar and milk (in the case of Thai Iced Tea the shortcut is sweetened condensed milk).

It smells lovely though, like a cross between Jasmine and Earl Grey Tea. There are sweet vanilla notes and a little roasted barley or lapsang suchong in there. The actual texture of the white confection (a mixture of milk, palm oil and sugar) is a little greasy but otherwise smooth. The flavoring of the coating is mellow and a little spicy, like a hint of chai. Inside there’s more of a darker tea. It’s quite milky, as the whole Royal Milk Tea name might imply. I’m not much for milk in my tea, so that part of the confectionery simulation is lost on me.
Ginger Ale sounded fantastic and horrible all at once. Ginger Ale is a great beverage, best served ultra cold so that it bites on the tongue with the chill, the peppery ginger flavors and the tangy/sour bite of carbonation.

I didn’t know that Ginger Ale was that popular in Japan, but I guess it must be if there’s a KitKat for it. Or Nestle has run out of ideas to make into KitKats. (Where are my Pixy Stix KitKats?)

It smells like ginger ale, right out of the wrapper. It’s amazing how they did it, it’s at once like cola, lemon and ginger.

The flavor of the white confection outside is sweet and a little lemony. Inside the cream has a warm and woodsy burn of ginger. There are little specks and pops of sour, like carbonation.

It’s a weird bar. It’s not comforting like I find actual ginger ale. But then again it’s more exciting, probably because I’ve never had a candy bar like this before. I can’t say that I’d buy it again, but I can see where it has its place.

Sparkling Strawberry KitKat had a pretty package. Pink and red with a couple of strawberries set off by oodles of little soda bubbles.

I wasn’t quite sure what the actual flavor was, is there a strawberry soda that it was referencing, like those Ramune ones? Was it supposed to be like strawberries in champagne?

After opening I at least found out that it was a pink, strawberry flavored confectionery coating with the standard wafers and a tangy strawberry creme between.

The berry confection is milky and has less of a strawberry flavor than I would like. It’s kind of like the milk at the bottom of a bowl of Frankenberry. The startling and inventive part of this bar is the cream filling. There are little “pops” of flavor which emulate carbonation well. They’re not pop rocks or fizzing powder. Instead they’re granules of what I’m guessing is citric acid and/or salt. So the tongue gets lots of little explosions of intense sour or salt. It’s a good mix and fun to eat. I would have preferred more strawberry flavor or even dark chocolate (so it’d be like a dark chocolate covered strawberry with a glass of champagne).

Kinako Ohagi KitKat shows a mochi with kinako (and probably bean paste inside). The idea of converting that into a KitKat, honestly, isn’t that appealing to me. I thought the red bean KitKat I tried a few years ago was interesting, but putting all the flavors of mochi into a KitKat just seems like too much. A KitKat is a KitKat and needs to maintain certain aspects. Throwing too many things into the mix just means that something is going to be done poorly and that leads to disappointment.

I was relieved to see that this was at least a milk chocolate bar.

It smells deep and roasted, milky and a little like corn chips. The milk chocolate is soft and fudgy but passably good. The wafers are crisp and crunchy and the kinako is, well, like soy powder. It’s a cross between the flavor of corn meal and peanut butter - it reminds me of protein supplements. The toasty flavors go very well with the wafers and milk chocolate. But the traditional KitKat was good before. This doesn’t make it better.

The last one confused me (and I didn’t take a picture of it, but you can safely substitute the Royal Milk Tea. It’s Milk Coffee KitKat but based on the box I thought it was Sakura Tea or something. What I also didn’t properly note was that this was on of the KitKat mailers, a box that has a little “dear” and “from” form on the back so that you can give it to a student to wish them luck on exams.

It smells sweet and milky and just slightly off. Biting into it the first time, I thought I was being poisoned and had a bad package. The center cream was just intensely bitter. Then when I caught on that it wasn’t cherry and it was coffee the bitterness didn’t seem so caustic. But still intense. Too intense to allow actual coffee flavors.

At least it was called Milk Coffee, with the milk first I was getting much more of the sweet white confection than coffee notes. Chewing helped, instead of my usual eating of the cream as a layer. It just didn’t have the rounded and complex coffee notes, it reminded me instead of what I thought coffee was when I was seven or eight years old - expensive bitterness.

Overall I was less than impressed with the heavy use of white confection instead of actual chocolate. (Nestle has been in trouble lately with animal activists over its use of poorly/unethically/unsustainably farmed palm oil - their response here.) I guess I’ve found after all this exploration (trying about three dozen different kinds over the years) that the plain old ones are great and the ones made with even better chocolate are phenomenal. They don’t need fancy flavors. But I’m not going to begrudge anyone who wants to have a little fun now and then.

Related Candies

1. Ginger Chews: Hot Coffee
2. Japanese KitKats: Yuzu & Red Bean Soup
3. Vanilla Beans KitKat & Bitter Orange Aero
4. KitKat Temptations: Hazelnut & Coconut
5. KitKat Chocolatier (Strawberry & Green Tea)
6. KitKat Milkshake
7. Pocky Kurogoma (Black Sesame)
8. Head-to-Head KitKat vs KitKat!

The new line of Wonka Exceptionals includes new chocolate bars to replace the classic Wonka Bar and the completely new Wonka Fruit Marvels.

The Wonka Exceptionals Fruit Jellies are a bit more classic. They’re simple cubes of real fruit jelly made from all natural ingredients in Mexico. They come in single flavor boxes, the initial varieties are Grapefruit, Goji Berry and Red Apple.

They are packaged similarly to the Fruit Marvels. The label sleeve is over an eye-popping magenta and maroon box. Inside the box is an unlabeled purple mylar bag. It’s a lot of layers, and while I enjoy the fancifulness, it’s really wasteful.

The package simply describes them as fantastically flavorful soft jellies dusted with sugar. I also got a press release that said:

Made with natural ingredients, no artificial colors and 25 percent real fruit juice, these cheery confections are perfect for everyday indulgence or casual gift giving.

The ingredients go like this:

Sugar, corn syrup, water, pear juice concentrate, and less than 2% of pectin, natural flavor, beta carotene and citric acid.

The beta carotene is the only ingredient that isn’t marked as all natural, though it’s certainly not an artificial color.

I’ve had a lot of pate de fruits over the years, which are full fruit jellies. They’re usually thickened with the actual fruit instead of corn starch though sometimes there’s additional pectin (depending on the fruit). Though the new Wonka Fruit Jellies don’t quite rise to the level of pate, they do a good job with the texture and are less sweet than gum drops or fruit jellies like Boston Fruit Slices.

Grapefruit is light yellow, none of this pink grapefruit stuff for Wonka.

The scent is a beguilingly authentic grapefruit peel. Grapefruit is a favorite smell for me, even clinical testing backs up its use for aromatherapy - the smell of grapefruit soothes, engenders trust and youthfulness (for women being sniffed by men, anyway). I like it because it smells like something I want to eat. It’s a mix of balsam, lavender, lemon and windy beach.

The half inch jelly cubes are rough and dusted with sugar. They’re a little messier than a gum drop but not as dusty as Turkish Delight. They’re soft to the touch but firm enough that they can’t be squeezed flat very easily. The moist jelly has a nice give, it’s not a sticky as a gum drop, these are more of a jam you can eat.

The flavor is mostly about the zest and grapefruit peel but there’s a light juice note with a little tangy snap. They’re not too cloying or sticky sweet, but not quite intense enough for me to call them a true pate de fruits.
 
While I’ve had a lifetime of experience with Grapefruits and Apples, my interaction with Goji Berry is pretty limited. I’ve had dried goji berries quite a few times in the past three or four years. The dried berries are leathery and chewy but not terribly flavorful. Goji berries (also known as wolfberries) have a near-miraculous ability to fill my spam box with offers of all sorts of products. I’m sure goji berries were sad to see the rise in acai.

The berries are related to tomatoes, peppers and eggplants. They have tiny little seeds in them but they’re edible and provide a little bit of texture, though not quite like, say, kiwi or fig seeds do.

The package says nothing about where the flavor for these comes from, just that it’s natural. The whole point, as far as I can tell, of people eating goji is because of its high antioxidant properties, so just flavoring something with goji seems like a miss.

They’re sweet with a little tangy note. Kind of like raisin and orange. Not really that interesting to me.

Note: the Goji variety of the Fruit Jellies uses cochineal color, so they are not vegan.

Red Apple was much more appealing than I expected. It’s quite red, which was refreshing instead of the more common acid green that candies end up being.

The flavor notes are reminiscent of apple cider. There are notes of apple peel, a mellow and honey-like sweetness along with a light tart bite.

My hesitations with these are because of the excessive packaging, but for a natural fruit jelly product they’re priced rather well but still quite a bit steeper than other gummis or jellies. (They’re about twice the price per ounce compared to the Wonka Sploshberries.) The size of the pieces is perfect, I just pop them in my mouth, no messing biting & putting half aside. I do love grapefruit, which is a hard flavor to find, and apple lovers may enjoy a real fruit experience too. Goji can go, hopefully replaced by something really inventive ... maybe we’ll finally find out what a snozzberry is.

Related Candies

1. Au’some Snerdles Super Mario Power Up Box
2. Wonka Fruit Marvels
3. Meiji Poifull
4. Bissinger’s Pink Grapefruit Gummy Pandas
5. Wonka Puckerooms
6. Wonka Sluggles
7. Dr. Doolittle’s Pastilles (Lemon, Grapefruit & Wild Berry)
8. Terra Nostra Pocket Bars

Yesterday I reviewed the new Necco Clark Bar with real milk chocolate and the Necco Clark Dark Bar with real dark chocolate. At the time I also purchased and compared the two other nationally available chocolatey peanut butter crunch bars: Nestle Butterfinger and Hershey’s 5th Avenue.

The bars are all roughly the same size and barring any sales, the same price. All are nationally available, and though Clark used to be hard to find, all of the bars here were purchased at RiteAid, a national drug store chain. Honestly, there are probably two main reasons to chose one over the other: flavor preference and ingredients.

cross sections from left to right: Butterfinger, Clark, Clark Dark, 5th Avenue

The ingredients and concepts are very similar. A crunchy layered peanut butter crunch log is enrobed with chocolate or mockolate.

Necco Clark Bar (introduced by D.L. Clark in 1916-1917)
Real Milk Chocolate |  Real Peanut Butter Crunch

Sugar, corn syrup, ground roasted peanuts, milk chocolate (sugar, cocoa butter, chocolate liquor, whole milk powder, soy lecithin, vanilla extract), molasses, corn flour, invert sugar, coconut oil, salt, natural flavors. Kosher 2.1 ounces

Noticeable molasses flavor, fresh roasted nuts but not overly salty. The texture varies from bar to bar, some are more hard-candy-like and others have a more crumbly layering with stronger peanut butter notes.

Nestle Butterfinger (introduced by Curtiss in 1923)
Crispety, crunchety, peanut-buttery

Corn syrup, sugar, ground roasted peanuts, hydrogenated palm kernel oil, cocoa, molasses and less than 1% of whey, confectioner’s corn flakes, nonfat milk, lactic acid esters, soy lecithin, soybean oil, cornstarch, artificial flavors, TBHQ and citric acid, yellow #5, red #40. Kosher 2.1 ounces

The center, when compared to the others, is obviously artificially colored. The scent of the bar is overtly “buttery” but without any real source. The coating is chalky looking and matte, without any ripples or variations. The crunch of the center is dense, though there are layers it’s a tightly wrapped bar. This gives it a density and satisfying weight. The mockolate coating is dreadful and the worst part of the bar. Salty and butter-flavored center has a good peanut butter flavor that at least covers the watery cocoa flavors of the outside.

Hershey’s 5th Avenue (introduced by Luden’s in 1936)
Crunchy Peanut Butter in Rich Chocolatey Coating

Sugar, peanuts, corn syrup, vegetable oil (cocoa butter, palm kernel oil, palm, shea, sunflower and/or safflower oil), molasses, chocolate, contains2% or less of nonfat milk, cocoa, whey, lactose, milk fat, salt, soy lecithin, milk, PGPR, artificial flavor, TBHQ. Kosher 2.0 ounces

In earlier versions of the bar it was real milk chocolate and there were several almonds on top of the peanut butter center under the chocolate coating. The change over to a high-quality mockolate was about 4 years ago. The center of the 5th Avenue is by far the one I prefer. It’s like a bundle of spiky peanut butter crunch needles. They melt in your mouth with a burst of molasses, peanut butter and salty flavors. The mockolate is actually pretty good, though often very soft and pasty. The chocolate flavor of it is well rounded and the texture, though fudgy, is smooth.

If it were still in its original formulation, the 5th Avenue might still be the #1 bar for me. But given Clark’s new all natural and real ingredients, I have to go with the Clark Bar Dark and then the Clark Bar. Butterfinger comes in a distant #3 (or #4 if we’re using both Clark bars).

Related Candies

1. Butterfinger Buzz (Caffeinated)
2. Reese’s Crispy Crunchy Bar
3. Zagnut
4. Short & Sweet: Butterfinger Jingles and Mint Miniatures
5. Clark Bar
6. Chick-o-Stick
7. Head-to-Head: Butterfinger vs. 5th Avenue

Nestle is going full-tilt to reinvigorate their stagnant Wonka candy brand. Last year it was gummis (Sluggles, Puckerooms & Sploshberries), this year they revised their chocolate bar line under the new Wonka Exceptionals and now they’re introducing some new sugar candy items to the Exceptionals line. The first is called Fruit Marvels which are vaguely described on the packaging as hard candies with soft centers, delicately sugar dusted. They come in three flavors: White Grape, Pomegranate and Clementine Orange.

There are two formats for the packages. The first is the tins, which hold 1.9 ounces (14 pieces) and retail for $1.99. Though that’s a little expensive, there’s a second more cost effective option which is the 5 ounce box which retails for $2.99 (and you can refill the tin).

The box is imaginative and quite different from the holographic mylar/plastic of the chocolates. These stand up boxes come in two parts. There’s a tall tab top box with a dizzying purple/lavender design, over that is a sleeve. The sleeve is taped to the box and features little circular cut outs that reveal the patterned box underneath. Like the Wonka Exceptionals Chocolate Pieces, even the UPC code gets Wonka-fied.

Inside the box is another package, a long mylar pouch with the candy in it. They’re not marked for the individual flavor, as I discovered later on when I ditched the boxes and carried all three pouches around in a ziploc bag while I was tasting.

The front of the package states Made with Natural Ingredients* and then directs folks to read the list of ingredients to explain the asterisk. Flipping over the box the ingredients are really easy to understand. For the White Grape they were: Dextrose*, Sugar*, Corn Syrup*, Pear Juice Concentrate*, and less than 2% of Modified Corn Starch, Tapioca Dextrin, Natural Flavor*, Tumeric Color, Citric Acid*.

I find this a little confusing ... they’re saying it’s made with natural ingredients, but not saying that all of the ingredients are natural. (So just about all food products would qualify under this “Made with Natural Ingredients” thing.) I appreciate that they’re not saying that highly processed ingredients like modified food starch is natural, but I’d prefer if they just said “made with real fruit juice but no artificial flavors or colors” and left it at that. Both Clementine & Pomegranate have Carmine coloring, which is a natural coloring derived from insects but of course not considered vegetarian/vegan, may be an allergen for some sensitive folks and is not kosher/halal.

The Pomegranate Fruit Marvels tin is simple. Inside are tucked over a dozen little candies. The tin is about 3.5 inches in diameter and just shy of an inch thick - a little big to tuck in a pocket. There’s a piece of waxed paper cushion on the bottom and on the top. The tin is easy to open and close, but stays closed so I wouldn’t worry so much about this coming open in the bottom of your bag.

They’re about .75 inches in diameter with a sugar sanded coating and soft coloring. The candies are really a puzzle at first. I didn’t understand what they were by the description, but I guess that’s why they called them Marvels.

The outside is a hard candy shell, it’s made of dextrose like SweeTarts, but it’s not compressed like other powder candies, instead it’s panned (added as a liquid layer that forms a hardened glaze after many coats). Inside is a firm and flavorful jelly. It’s like a super jelly bean in a way but remember that the shell is very thick.

When I first popped it into my mouth I thought it would be like a Gobstopper, many flavored layers and then a jelly ball in the middle, but it is actually faithful to the scale on the package. I tried sucking on them first. The sugar sanding is rough at first but that dissolves away quickly to the shell. The shell is dextrose (glucose) so it has a slightly cooling effect and it has a kind of thinness to the sweet note instead of the round syrup sweetness of sucrose (sugar). Eventually there’s a little hint of the floral berry flavors of pomegranate. There’s a layer just between the jelly center and the shell that has a little burst of sour.

I pulled quite a few of the candies apart. I found I preferred biting them to letting them dissolve. It’s not advisable to just crunch them up at first until you gain some experience at it, I think letting them warm and dissolve a little helps.

You can see the thickness of the shell here and how it’s dense but kind of crumbly.

The jelly center is complex. It’s smooth and thick, it’s also nicely flavored without being too sweet or tangy. Though I don’t think any candies really capture pomegranate flavor well, these are still an excellent flavor no matter what it’s called. It’s more raspberry to me - floral and jammy.

The sanding isn’t messy, no sticky fingers, but there is a bit of sugar dust in the bottom of the tins or the bags which can get everywhere.

The Clementine Orange Fruit Marvels sounded really good. I love citrus and the less-common oranges often have wonderful notes that make things so much more interesting than just eating spoonfuls of Tang drink mix. Clementines are a tasty little citrus, they’re easy to peel and are usually seedless - they have the tangy profile and juicy taste of a tangerine.

The outside sanded shell doesn’t give much indication of the flavor inside, just a soft orange color.

The flavor is truly like a tangerine. There are bold juice and citric acid notes but there’s also a really good zest component that sets it apart from straight-laced orange. There’s no bitter or lingering orange peel aftertaste though.

The White Grape Fruit Marvels are nearly colorless on the outside but a little on the yellow side after cracked open. (They were devilish to photograph, but I think you get the idea with the other two.) White grape was always one of my favorite fruit juices as a kid, so I’m very familiar with the flavor. This is extremely faithful. There’s a concord grape note to it, but also a brighter and lighter feeling to it, a little like champagne.

All three flavors are distinct and faithful to their profiles. The candy itself is unique, I’ve never had anything quite like it before so I give Wonka high marks for not just regurgitating the ordinary with a frivolous name and funny packaging. I like the concept of the boxes and that they’re more cost effective than the tins but still $3 for 5 ounces of sugar candy is on the high side, even for something that doesn’t have artificial flavors/colors. Also, the amount of packaging is silly, the outer sleeve could easily disappear without losing the feeling of upscale decadence.

I’m a little unclear about the target market for these, I’m guessing they’re not for little children like many other Wonka products lately like Kazoozles. Perhaps they’re targeting young adults, especially since the tins are great for sharing. They might also appeal to folks who want an intense flavorful indulgence without too many calories. Since they’re all sugar there’s no fat and each piece is about 12 calories. The tin makes each piece feel rather special. (Honestly, it seems like the target market is for grown ups for never quite grew up, which would be me.)

I like where Wonka is going lately.

These are in limited release right now, they’re available exclusively at WalMart stores until June 2010 when they’ll start appearing at Target. The candies are made in Mexico.

Related Candies

1. Wonka Exceptionals Scrumdiddlyumptious
2. Big Tex Giant Jelly Beans
3. Wonka Kazoozles: Cherry Punch & Pink Lemonade
4. Jelly Belly Sunkist Citrus Mix
5. Wonka Tinglerz & Nestle Buncha Crunch
6. Gimbal’s Lavaballs
7. Wonka Sour Nerds