Candy Blog

Hot on the tails of the Limited Edition Strawberried Peanut Butter M&Ms will be the release of Limited Edition Coconut M&Ms in August. (More here)

The cream colored packet holds 1.5 ounces of green, white and brown milk chocolate morsels flavored with coconut.

As with most limited editions, the package is a bit slighter than the regular products. This one clocks in at 1.5 ounces instead of the normal 1.69 in a Milk Chocolate M&Ms pack.

The package is cute and playful, featuring Ms. Green reclining in the sand, leaning against a coconut filled with coconut M&Ms. In the background the Yellow Peanut M&M is falling out of a coconut palm laden with more coconuts.

The contents smell much like most M&Ms, sweet and slightly woodsy but only the slightest whiff of coconut.

The individual lentils are a bit puffier than regular M&Ms, though not as big as the Peanut Butter variety.

Inside they’re just milk chocolate but with an added touch of coconut flavoring (but no actual coconut to be found in the ingredients).

The chocolate is fudgy, the flavor is a little salty and tropical but with a strange yogurty tang (kind of like Hershey’s) ... the crunch of the shell is crisp.

On the whole, it’s a nice change-up, very appealing. It’s not something that I think deserves to be made part of the regular repertoire. But see the review on Hershey’s Almond Joy Pieces.

UPDATE 9/29/2009: Mars has announced that M&MS Coconut will become part of their permanent line of candies. You can expect them in stores starting in December 2009.

Related Candies

1. Hershey’s Almond Joy Pieces
2. M&Ms Premiums
3. M&Ms Razzberry - Limited Edition
4. Cherry Almondine M&Ms
5. Kisses Coconut Creme
6. Russell Stover Coconut Wreath
7. M&Ms Line

It’s sad in a way that I’m writing about these now, since they’re not due in stores until December, but I really couldn’t wait. (I know Candy Addict was also too excited for them to hit store shelves.)

The new line of Pieces is the expansion of the Reese’s Pieces line after a mere thirty one years since their introduction. (More here)

The choice of Almond Joy as one of the first lentilized Hershey’s bars in this line is kind of odd, but a welcome one as far as I’m concerned - coconut candies are few and far between.

The samples I got were directly from Hershey’s and came in little “for sales samples only” packets of only .7 ounces each. I’m not certain what the final packaging sizes will be.

The nutrition information is missing but the ingredients are here:

Milk Chocolate (sugar, cocoa butter, chocolate, milk, corn syrup solids, milk fat, nonfat milk, soy lecithin, PGPR), sugar, coconut, almonds (roasted in cocoa butter and.or sunflower oil) contains 2% or less of artificial color (blue 1, red 40, yellow 5, blue 2, yellow 6), resinous glaze, gum acacia, modified cornstarch & carnauba wax.

The pieces are similar in size & proportion to M&Ms, perhaps a little thicker. The sizes and manufacturing are quite consistent. The colors are blue, dark brown and tan.

The candy shells are rather thick & crunchy, the candy center is a milk chocolate base studded with coconut bits and crushed almonds.

They’re quite sweet and taste mostly of coconut, but the texture combinations are fantastic - the light crunch of the candy shell combined with the chew of the coconut bits and the occasional appearance by an almond bit. The flavors are a bit mild but I enjoyed these quite a bit and if I had an opportunity to chose them for a snack at a movie or while at my desk, I certainly would, mostly because they are unique, there are no other candies like this.

There’s no Kosher status listed on the package (though that may be because this is not final packaging), and it also says that it’s not nut, peanut, wheat, egg or soy free. Further, the use of resinous glaze means that this is not a vegetarian product.

Related Candies

1. Limited Edition M&Ms Coconut
2. Sunspire Coconut Bars
3. Atkinson’s Coconut Long Boys
4. Reese’s Pieces
5. Almond Joy Cookies
6. Reese’s Pieces with Peanuts

A couple of years ago Nestle finally expanded the Rasinets line by creating “dark chocolate” covered Raisinets.

Now they’ve delved into mucking with the inside of the Raisinet ... the raisin.

In the new Cranberry Raisinets they’ve swapped out the dried grape for dried cranberries.

While the classic Raisinet is pretty simple & pure (just raisins in the center covered with some mediocre milk chocolate then coated with a sealing confectioners glaze), the new Cranberry version is a bit more complicated with a complicated package to match.

First, they’ve gone to a 100 calorie package which is priced the same as a standard serving package. Regular Raisinets currently come in a package with 1.58 ounces in there. The new 100 Calorie Cranberry Raisinets are .81 ounces. (If a package is 75 cents, that’s over $14 per pound.)

The front of the package says: 100% chocolate covered cranberries. I don’t know if that means that each cranberry is completely covered (which isn’t quite true, since some of mine had little bald spots) or that there are no raisins hiding in there ... but what’s really certain here is that there’s more than cranberries in the center.

The centers are “sweetened cranberries” with their ingredients listed as cranberries, sugar and sunflower oil. The little factoid box on the back of the package says: Good to Know: Dried cranberries are one of nature’s best sources of fruit ANTIOXIDANTS. Yes, that’s a nice thought, but there’s less than a half an ounce of cranberries here (I’m being generous with that estimate based on how much of the product is chocolate), so little that there’s no measurable amount of Vitamin C listed in the dietary specs.

All that prefacing aside, I love dried cranberries. I buy them often and eat them quite a bit (I love them mixed in with raw almonds). I’ve only been able to find the sweetened cranberries, no unsweetened ones seem readily available.

The Cranberry Raisinets are big and plump, usually flat and some of them were conjoined.

The chocolate is sweet, milky and flaky. The flavor is bland with a slight musty & cocoa note to it. The cranberry centers are chewy and tangy but also sweet. The overall effect is, well, sweetness without enough texture variation.

I’ve had quite a few different brands of chocolate covered dried & sweetened cranberries and think they’re just too sweet for the flavor profiles of the chocolate & cranberries to come through strongly.

I don’t see any reason to pay the same amount of money for basically half as much candy, even if it is some sort of portion control. 100 calories of something really tasty might be worth it, but this is simply not worthy of my limited calorie allotments for confections.

Related Candies

1. Candy Tease: April 2009
2. Nestle Milk Chocolate
3. Nestle Crunch (Now Even Richer Milk Chocolate)
4. Trader Joe’s Figments
5. Figamajigs

I’d like to say that I’m reviewing Mike and Ike Berry Blast because they’ve changed their flavors. Honestly, I’m reviewing them because I’ve never actually had them before.

Well, let me make a correction: yes, I’ve had packages before ... but I’ve never actually opened them up and eaten them.

The previous flavors were Blueberry (blue), Strawberry (red), Mixed Berry (purple), Raspberry (pink), Wild Berry (green) while the new flavors are Blueberry, Strawberry, Blue Raspberry, Peach Berry and Wild Berry. So besides a color shift for some of the returning flavors, the new flavor here is Peach Berry.

Strawberry (pink) - a mild strawberry flavor. Sweet for the most part with a little tangy layer around the sugary shell.

Blue Raspberry (light blue) - again, mild. I really couldn’t tell it was raspberry specifically, but at least there was no red food coloring aftertaste. The tart bite was completely missing.

Blueberry (blue) - I’m rarely fond of blueberry flavored candies, as blueberries aren’t that intense to begin with and are best fresh or in pancakes. It’s sweet and has a bit of an iced tea vibe to it ... nice, but rather bland.

Peach Berry (peach)  - I’m not sure who thought peaches & berries go together, but it doesn’t make much of a difference on this one since the flavor is boldly peach and only vaguely raspberry. Well, the bold part is an overstatement, the peach isn’t in my face like Jolly Ranchers, just a sedate sort of background note.

Wild Berry (dark purple) - I got only one of these, so it’s hard to make much of an assessment based on that. It tasted a lot like the raspberry, perhaps a little more intense.

Overall, I think it’s just my personal preference for more intensely flavored candies that are assertive in their flavors. But as far as flavor mixes go, I like that these are all in the same flavor family and if I mixed the colors in the same mouthful, there isn’t a bad combination to be had. Add to that, the jelly bean quality here is very smooth and I enjoyed the color variations. The bag is a decent value since it holds 2.12 ounces, I’ve found that the bags are fresher than the theater boxes.

Related Candies

1. Mike and Ike Italian Ice
2. Mike and Ike Alex’s Lemonade Stand
3. Jelly Belly - All Natural
4. Hot Tamales Ice
5. Mike and Ike Jolly Joes
6. Mike and Ike Tangy Twister
7. Hot Tamales and Hotter Tamales

Surf Sweets has been making fun candies that are also mostly organic and made from non-GMO ingredients for years. What’s fun about them is that other than the ingredients, they don’t look like a compromise to kids. They’re fun shapes and flavors and even the all natural colorings don’t look faded and suspicious.

The Gummi Swirls area also fortified with vitamin C (no big deal there, lots of candies are) and 100% of the RDA of calcium.

Hmm, calcium? That’s stuff tastes pretty nasty sometimes.

The package doesn’t mention it, but these little gum-drop-sized candies come in three flavors: orange, strawberry and cherry.

The little pieces are truly lovely. The white background color and the little swirls are then graced with crunchy granulated sugar.

The bite is firm, they’re not quite gummis (they’re vegetarian, so actually contain no gelatin, think of them more like jellies or gumdrops since they use fruit pectin) but chewy. The flavor is good, not overly tart or sweet but also not terribly intense. They’re simply nice. There’s a bit of a creamsicle vibe to them, a slight creamy background to the flavor. If I let them dissolve a bit on my tongue I was getting that hint of chalky grain that antacids can have. (But pop & chew and it’s not at all detectable.)

My only real complaint is that I can’t tell the cherry from the strawberry. If they’re different colors, I’m not wise to the subtlety. (Maybe one is cream with pink strips and the other is pink with cream stripes.)

I really like this brand, they’re obviously more expensive than the mass-manufactured options, but the ability to buy without artificial colors and the fact that they don’t look “special” to kids must be a huge relief to parents who keep their kids on a more restricted diet. Surf Sweets has also started making smaller packages (.9 ounces) for lunches, party favors and Halloween treats.

Related Candies

1. Sunkist Fruit Gummies
2. Organic Zootons
3. Shigekix Aha! Brain (Citrus)
4. Florida’s Natural Sour Fruit Juice String
5. Adora Calcium Tabs