Friday, September 19, 2014
Smarties Double Lollies and Mega LolliesSmarties are little tart wafer candies that have been made for 65 years. They’re a little bland but pretty much irresistible and ubiquitous starting around Halloween each year. To backtrack a little bit, this category of candy is called Compressed Dextrose. Dextrose is just a fancy way of saying sugar, but not the regular table sugar we’re used to, which is sucrose. Dextrose is the dry form of glucose, the same stuff in corn syrup. Dextrose is the basis of a lot of compressed tablet candies, like SweeTarts, Spree and Runts as well as Smarties. Glucose so bio-available that you can absorb it into your bloodstream sublingually. Many parents use Smarties as emergency glucose tablets because they’re readily available, easy to portion, inexpensive and not hard to get a child to eat. I’m quite fond of Smarties, but that straight glucose often goes straight to my bloodstream and the subsequent crash means I rarely buy a whole bag. The Double Lollies are preferable conceptually, then, because they’re only 8 grams each. Since they’re usually sold by the piece and more expensive than the rolls, this naturally limits my indulgence. The regular sized lolly has been around for years, though I can’t say for sure that I was always eating the Smarties brand. The Smarties Double Lolly is two flavors. Though they’re probably in several flavors, I could only find orange and yellow. They’re chalky and dry, but have a pleasant citrus flavor overall. They’re tangy and grainy, dissolve quickly but leave a powdery mess if biting the small pop doesn’t go well. I don’t find sucking on it goes very well. The chalk is absorbent, and while that’s fine for hard candies, I don’t like seeing my lollipop now darkened and cooled by my spit. (Hence my biting usually.) Interestingly the website for Smarties says that the Double Lolly is free of gluten (from wheat, barley, oats and rye), milk, egg, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, wheat, peanuts or soybeans. However, it does not say that for the Mega Lolly. I bought two of the Mega Lollies, one was lemon and orange and the other was orange and grape. The grape smelled floral and soapy. The pop itself is too big to comfortably fit in the mouth, so even if I were the type who liked to suck my regular Smarties lollies, the Mega just wasn’t going to work. It’s too dry, too awkward. Biting produced a mess of powder.
The odd part about the ingredients is the Calcium Stearate. It’s a flow agent and keeps the powder from caking. But the side benefit to this ingredient is that it contains large amounts calcium - a single Mega Lolly has 6% of your RDA. Too big, too dry, not a good value and not enough control. The classic size doesn’t have most of those challenges, but I’ll stick to the rolls of Smarties tablets. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 2:11 pm Candy • Review • Ce De Candies • Compressed Dextrose • Hard Candy & Lollipops • 5-Pleasant • United States • |
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Meticulously photographed and documented reviews of candy from around the world. And the occasional other sweet adventures. Open your mouth, expand your mind.
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I also do not usually buy the smarties (portion control). I love them and would not be able to stop eating them if I had a ready supply.
We don’t have them in Russia :( Probably will have to order them to try :D
I used to buy the regular-sized Smarties lollies as a kid. We used to have a “candy cart” that rolled around to each class at school on Friday. The hip thing was to buy an Airhead and wrap it around a Smarties pop. I’d like to do it again as a blast from the past!
I’m from Canada and these are known as Rockets here. I’ve never been fond of them personally, but I definitely associate them with Halloween!
As a note, I assume the reason they are called Rockets and not Smarties here is because Smarties are Nestle’s version of an M&M’s type candy. They are cheap chocolate discs covered in a flaky candy shell. They don’t seem to have many variations like M&M’s do though!
What are the actual deminisions of the SMALL Smarties (candy end AND the stick). I am trying to use these in an arrangement for Wedding Parting Gifts.
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