Candy Blog

While I usually think of September as the time to introduce new holiday themed candies, there’s a lot new everyday candy coming out. Most of the big news is in advance of NACS which is the National Association for Convenience Stores and Petroleum Retailing trade show. (Yes, they show a lot of candy and snack food at that convention.) The biggest news is that Mars has settled on some new products as a result of their years of limited editions. Some people are going to be very happy.

Name: M&M’S(r) Coconut Chocolate Candies
Brand: Mars
Description: Last summer, the country indulged in limited edition M&M’S(r) Coconut Chocolate Candies. Now consumers’ taste buds can escape to a tropical paradise any time of the year. In December 2009, M&M’S(r) Coconut Chocolate Candies will join the permanent line-up for the M&M’S(r) Brand. Consumers can’t resist the coconut-flavored M&M’S(r) Brand milk chocolate coated in a white or brown candy shell.
Notes: It’s odd to see these rolled into the regular product line so quickly, they must have flown off store shelves. (I think the fact that it was the suggested item at Walgreen’s for a month might have had something to do with the wide sampling.)

Name: M&M’S(r) Wildly Cherry Chocolate Candies
Brand: Mars
Description: In February 2008, consumers went wild for M&M’S(r) Wildly Cherry Chocolate Candies. Now fans won’t have to fret their favorite treat will go out of season - it will be a permanent addition to the offerings from Mars Snackfood in December 2009. M&M’S(r) Wildly Cherry Chocolate Candies feature smooth milk chocolate surrounded by a crisp candy shell with rich, delicious cherry flavor.
Notes: I tried these and thought they were okay. Honestly I think they’d be better as part of the M&Ms Premiums line because I wasn’t fond of the raspberry version there.

Name: Jots (Halloween)
Brand: Brach’s (Farley’s & Sathers)
Description: Jots from Brach’s are colorful candy coated morsels of milk chocolate.
Notes: Jots come and go from Brach’s. I really don’t have any info, except for this photo which was featured in a holiday candy announcement around All Candy Expo. I wish I could find them in stores but other than the Candy Corn and Mellocremes, I’m not seeing much Brach’s in the stores in my area.

Name: Color Me Candies
Brand: Russell Stover
Description: Delicious Russell Stover chocolate covered in a sweet candy coating. Available in eleven colors & color mixes. These large candy pieces are perfect snacks for parties, team outings or just snacks to keep around the house.
Notes: Another entrant into the single color candy covered lentil, Russell Stover has 11 colors competitively priced at $2.99 per 8 ounce bag, a fraction of the price of M&Ms Colors (which are $6.99 for 7 ounces). Right now they’re available on the Russell Stover website and probably their owned & operated stores. I’m waiting for Los Angeles to cool off before placing an order.

Name: MILKY WAY(r) Simply Caramel
Brand: Mars
Description: With delicious caramel surrounded by real milk chocolate, the new MILKY WAY(r) Simply Caramel Bar gives consumers more of what they crave about the Milky Way(r) Brand—rich, creamy caramel.
Notes: I believe that these were tested in a seasonal mix of regular Milky Way, Milky Way Dark and then this Simply Caramel in miniatures. I never found them on shelves to try them myself, but I can only imagine what this bar would be like ... very, very sweet. Hopefully it will be chewier to set it apart from the current chocolate/caramel offerings like Caramello.

Name: 3 MUSKETEERS(r) Truffle Crisp Bars
Brand: Mars
Description: The new 3 MUSKETEERS(r) Truffle Crisp Bars offer a unique twist on the brand consumers love—a lighter, crispier way to enjoy chocolate. At only 170 calories, this delicate treat features a whipped up chocolate truffle on a crisp layer.
Notes: This looks an awful lot like the Fling bar that was a product in Australia and was recently test marketed in California. (Reviews here.) If it is, I certainly appreciate the toned-down packaging & gender-neutral sales approach.  There’s no indication whether it will come in a dark chocolate version.

Name: ICEE Gummy Candy
Brand: Koko’s Confectionery
Description: ICEE Gummy Candy is a new treat from Koko’s and is based on America’s favorite frozen carbonated beverage, ICEE. These sweet and chewy candies are shaped like iconic ICEE images such as the cup and bear. Flavors include cherry, blue raspberry, green apple, and lemon.
Notes: The flavor array is a little odd, in my mind it should have a cola flavor in there. Possibly even a cherry cola. I’m wondering if there’s anything that will give them that Icee note, like a burst of menthol like Sour Patch did with their Chillerz.

Name: MEGA Candy Buttons
Brand: Stichler Products, Inc
Description: A gigantic twist on the classic candy. Paper strips are a full 5 inches wide and 14 inches long. Colorful candy dots are flavored orange, lemon, cherry and raspberry. (Kosher)
Notes: They’re supposed to come off the paper easier than the Necco dots, so that’s a plus. And some flavor might be nice, though I’m thinking the appeal of these is still that they’re pretty. I do appreciate candies that play with scale.

Name: ICEE Popping Candy
Brand: Koko’s Confectionery
Description: ICEE Popping Candy is a new treat from Koko’s and is based on America’s favorite frozen carbonated beverage, ICEE. Dip the ICEE cup shaped lollipop into the Popping candy to experience an explosion on crackle in your mouth! Flavors include cherry, blue raspberry, green apple, and lemon.
Notes: I’m quite sure how this came about, but I’m glad they didn’t stick a straw in it and have kids inhale popping candies.

Name: TWIX(r) Java
Brand: Mars
Description: Coffee lovers can enhance their coffee breaks with a great TWIX(r) Brand twist featuring coffee-flavored caramel paired with irresistible chocolate cookie and covered in delicious TWIX(r) Brand chocolate. Back by popular demand to “bring the flavor back,” TWIX(r) Java Chocolate Cookie Bars are moving from a 2008 limited edition to a permanent offering.
Notes: I loved this when it first came out and have found that it’s really the only Twix bar I do like. I’m actually looking forward to the minis, as I find that’s usually the best balance of chocolate & crunch for my preferences.

All photos courtesy of their respective manufacturers.

Related Candies

1. Brach’s Indulge Almonds: Coconut & Caramel
2. Limited Edition M&Ms Coconut
3. M&Ms Premiums
4. Java Twix
5. Head to Head: M&Ms vs Koppers Milkies
6. Head to Head: Milky Way & Mars (Canada & UK)

Trolli Little Green Men are one of the newer novelty gummis from Trolli, which is owned by Farley’s and Sathers. They’re just as inventive as other gummi makers like Haribo, with a variety of shapes & flavor assortments.

The package looks like it’s geared towards kids. There’s a flying saucer behind the logo with a little bulgy-eyed alien at the steering wheel.

The bag comes with just one shape & flavor. In this case it’s a little green alien with a bulbous head and Cosmic Star Fruit flavored.

For the unfruity, Star Fruit is also known as Carmbola. It’s a strange looking creased/segmented fruit that looks like a five pointed star when sliced. The texture and flavor is something like a cross between a crunchy apple and the flavor of cataloupe and pears.

The gummis are rather startling looking. They have huge green heads and teensy little potbellied bodies. The heads are about 3/4” around and the whole fella stands only 1.5” high.

They smell fresh, a bit like melon and citrus. They’re soft and pliable, but not sticky or very greasy to the touch. The flavor is immediately lightly tangy but an overall mild berry or pear flavor.

They’re nice in that they’re a big bite of gummi. The flavor is different enough to seem distinct, but not too exotic to seem weird.

Related Candies

1. Puffy Candy Corn
2. Trolli Sour Brite Eggs
3. Trolli Sour Brite Crawlers
4. Wonka Sluggles
5. Brach’s Gummi+Plus & Tropical Gummis
6. Starburst GummiBursts
7. The Simpsons Fruit Snacks
8. Haribo Gummi Bears vs Trolli Gummi Bears

I’ve been on a HiCHEW spree lately. Partly because Morinaga went on a binge and released about a dozen flavors. Besides their traditional array of 6 or 7 standard flavors they have another half a dozen single flavor packs out.

HiCHEW is one of those rare Japanese candies that’s being distributed around the world. Here in Los Angeles, I can get Lemon, Mango, Strawberry or Green Apple HiCHEWs at just about any 7-11 or Cost Plus World Market. But the limited edition flavors, the seasonal and the specialty assortments are a little harder to come by and require either an order directly from Japan (I’ve been using JBox and Asian Food Grocer) or a visit to Little Tokyo to Marukai Market, Mitsuwa Marketplace or Nijiya Market.

Today I have the two from the Summer Festival (Matsuri) line: Candied Apple & Cotton Candy. (I don’t know if there were more than these two ... maybe a Kettle Corn or Deep Fried Butter version escaped my view.)

The packages are compact, they have only 7 pieces in them instead of the longer packs that have 10. Even without knowing Japanese the packages are bold and easy to understand. There’s a little picture of a man selling candied apples with some stylized fireworks above him. Then of course the big candied apple (which seems to be dipped upside down to the way I’ve always had them, the stem is a the top, not where the stick enters the apple).

On the side of the package is the little diagram of what the candy looks like. A pink outside and white core with little flecks of what I’m guessing are the candied coating bits.

It smells softly sweet, a little like milk tea. Biting into it there’s an immediate apple juice flavor then a background of sweet sugar.

The little flecks are sparkly crunches of sugar. I couldn’t quite get an actual flavor from them. It becomes quite juicy. The texture is quite smooth except for the crunches.

I don’t think I’ve had a candied apple in over 15 years, so I can’t say for sure that this is an authentic representation contained within a 1 inch by 1/2 inch block. But it was still fun.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Cotton Candy HiCHEW smells simply like sweet. Pretty much the same as the Candied Apple.

It’s sweet, but not sticky sweet or cloying. It’s simply fresh. Not quite vanilla, which can be a little boozy and not quite a toasted sugar flavor either. It’s creamy without being milky. It’s clean without being flavorless. It’s a mystery wrapped in foil and stuffed with little crunchy bits.

The combination of the texture of the HiCHEW which is a taffy/gummi product that’s at once bouncy and smooth and the little cotton candy grainy bits is odd. Really nicely done cotton candy always has these little bits of grain where either the sugar didn’t melt & reform properly or moisture has caused it to recombine into a hard candy bit. Yes, it’s grainy, but the grains give way to soft sugar flavors.

It’s like cotton candy in all the right ways. And it leaves out the sticky paper cone.

It’s just so hard to describe that all I can say is that after I took the photos of the first pack I got from JBox, I made sure to pick up two more packs when I saw them in Little Tokyo.

It’s difficult to say but this is the best colorless and flavorless candy I’ve ever had. How do the Japanese do it? (I’m also still obsessed with the Juntsuyu I wrote about several years ago and add it to my order at JBoxevery time.)

Rating: 10 out of 10

Related Candies

1. HiCHEW Aloe Yogurt
2. HiCHEW Yuzu & Valencia
3. Skittles Carnival Flavors
4. HiCHEW Assortment
5. Hard Candy: Juntsuyu

Last week I told you that pandas have berry flavored noses. This week I’m telling you that all natural pandas are pink grapefruit flavored.

Bissinger’s Naturals line has an excellent array of exotic flavored & nutritionally enhanced gummy pandas. I was frustrated for many years because the only place I could get them was on their website and you had to order 4 packages of each flavor ... I’m more of a grazer than a consumer. So I would visit their booth at trade shows. I’d always arrive and they’d say “oh, we’re not tasting the gummys today.” Or if they were, I’d be directed to go visit a counter where the staff is dressed in white lab coats like they work for Clinique and I would be given one single gummy to try and no access to the packages & labels.

Finally at the Whole Foods by the coffee counter I found a whole display of Bissinger’s Naturals Gummy Pandas. They come in two package sizes, the little 4 ounce stand up pack shown here and some flavors were available in 100 calorie packages for a smaller taste. They come in Goji Guava, Blueberry Acai, Green Tea, Pomegranate White Tea and Pink Grapefruit with Grapeseed.

I was a little aghast at the price - $3.99 for four ounces, but it’s not like I don’t splurge on candy from time to time. (Yes, $16 a pound for gummi bears.)

These gummies are quite soft and a little greasy (coconut oil & beeswax keeps them from sticking together). They’re darker than I would have expected for a grapefruit flavored candy, but the coloring is all natural, from black carrot juice.

When I opened the package I found they smelled very nice - sweet and with a strong note of grapefruit oils and a little like the powder for Country Time Lemonade. It certainly made my mouth water.

They’re quite gummy & bouncy bears. The chew is stiff but squishy (I think gummi fans know what I mean). The flavor is tart, a slight bitter note of the grapefruit and a not too sweet base. The texture is ultra smooth.

The ingredients are interesting. The product is all natural, gluten/wheat free as well as containing no artificial colors or sweeteners. The main sweetener is tapioca syrup (organic) instead of corn syrup ... so if you shun corn this might be the perfect gummi for you. Later on the list is grapeseed extract. That’s supposed to add some antioxidants, but I don’t much care one way or the other if my candy gives me that sort of stuff.

The flavor is well rounded and doesn’t have any of that weird aftertaste that some all natural candies that are fortified can have. They’re a cute shape and the ability to buy just one flavor instead of a mix is often a bonus.

The bottom of the label does say that they’re produced in a facility that processes milk, soy, peanuts, tree nuts, wheat and eggs. So I don’t know what to say about that Gluten Free statement. Then there was a strange little K over at the edge of the back of the package. Last year Bissinger’s announced that they were going Kosher ... could this be their Kosher symbol? I couldn’t be sure and their website was no help. So I emailed them. A helpful woman named Jenney replied quite promptly to my question with this: The gummies are definitely certified kosher, and the gelatin is kosher and does come from pork. You are free to make of that what you will, I find those statements in conflict. Unless there’s something new in pigs that I’m not aware of.

Besides the price and the incongruity of their claim of gluten free with their allergen statement and this newfangled pork-is-Kosher I like ‘em a lot.

FOLLOW UP 10/10/2009: I continued my correspondence with Jenney at Bissinger’s. She insisted again that the product was both Kosher and porcine. She presented me with a certificate from the ingredient company, Gelita, that shows its status. With that I contacted Gelita who refused to tell me what’s in their Kosher gelatin, as they were bound by their confidentiality agreements with their clients.

I emailed again, telling Gelita that I was referred to them by Bissinger’s for more information but have heard no reply after a week of waiting. So folks who avoid pig products can take this to mean what they wish. I do not feel confident calling this a pork-free product and am extremely uncomfortable with a company that says their products are Kosher yet insists they contain porcine gelatin with no twinkling of acknowledgment of that incongruity.

Related Candies

1. Wonka Puckerooms
2. Gourmet Gumdrops
3. Jelly Belly Sunkist Citrus Mix
4. Dr. Doolittle’s Pastilles (Lemon, Grapefruit & Wild Berry)
5. Kasugai Pineapple Gummy
6. Pink Grapefruit Mentos

Last year I spotted Brach’s Gummi Candy Corn but it came in an insanely huge nearly two pound bag and I had to admit that I just wasn’t curious enough to bring home 30 ounces. I was hoping they’d come out in a smaller mixed bag, but I still haven’t seen them sold that way.

What’s cool though is that this 54 treat pack bag has each little portion already sealed up. (This is a general problem with most candy corn sold in stores - it’s not good for handing out for Trick or Treat.)

Brach’s makes pretty good gummis, more in the American tradition of the super-soft but also very juicy. I flipped over the package to find out about the ingredients on this one as was pleased to see fruit juice on there ... but curiously I didn’t see gelatin. These aren’t gummis at all ... they’re a jelly candy. Which is disappointing on one hand for someone hoping for some fun little rubbery candy corns ... but good news for folks who eschew those sorts of animal products.

Each little mixed package holds a random assortment of the four flavors and holds about 15 grams though I found that some had as few as 5 candies and other had more than 10.

Phantom Pineapple Orange

They’re the standard shape and size of candy corn, maybe a little slimmer and the jelly seems to hold a point. They’re a bit matte but also translucent, so it’s an odd effect, like they’re made of beach glass.

The texture is a chewy jelly, not too sticky but it doesn’t have that bite that gummis have.

Each layer is actually different flavors. The top is orange - a general light & tangy citrus without much zest. The base is pineapple. Again, a nice punch flavor but not too deep or complex. Eaten together it’s much more like a tropical punch, and not really a great effect for me.

Ghostly Grape Punch

The color of these was definitely like frosted glass. The grape flavor had a bit of a cherry note to it, but that could just be proximity.

I got a burning feeling in the back of my throat, a little effervescent note after I was done. Not my favorite of the bunch.

Like most jelly candies there were little bits left in the corners of my teeth when I was done.

Scary Cherry

This cherry seemed to dominate every package I found.

It’s like cough drops. Each layer is the same, but the top pink part is less about the food coloring and more about the medicinal woodsy cherry punch.

Honestly, I liked them more than the grape. I didn’t feel the need to pick around them.

Bizarre Berry Kiwi

I don’t know why berries and kiwi get lumped together as flavor combinations so often. This color combo is rather odd - not that I haven’t combined these colors in outfits in the past.

As a flavor kiwi is a little bit melon and a little bit citrus ... and mostly bland. The berry side is similarly like punch but has some strawberry notes.

It was the mellowest of the flavors and actually went well combined with the others.

On the whole the mixture is fun. It’s vegan (unlike actual candy corn which usually has eggs in it) so for kids who avoid gelatin/egg products, this is a fun & colorful mainstream looking product. However, the package says that it’s processed on equipment that also handles the top allergens: eggs, wheat, milk, peanuts, tree nuts & soy.

Related Candies

1. Puffy Candy Corn
2. Toffee Flavored Chocolate Covered Candy Corn
3. Halloween Dots: Bat, Candy Corn & Ghost
4. Milk Maid Caramel Apple Candy Corn
5. Candy Corn Kisses
6. Gourmet Goodies Candy Corn