ZOMG, Candy!

Twix Coconut is the newest limited edition offering from the folks at Mars. It’s comprised of “creamy milk chocolate, crunchy cookie, [and] coconut flavored caramel.”

Mine came as a free sample in a press pack inside a plastic coconut and with a tiny USB that I first thought was a fun-sized regular Twix bar. Hooray for fun candy swag!

The Twix Coconut didn’t look or smell any different from a regular Twix bar. The chocolate and cookie were the usual Twix fare, mildly sweet for the former and pleasantly dry, crunchy, and buttery for the latter.

The caramel was where the difference lay. It had overtones of artificial coconuttiness. The flavor was nicely floral and nutty, but it tasted rather fake – more sunscreen than actual coconut.

I enjoyed the combination of the biscuit and the chewy, sweet, nutty caramel, but it wasn’t quite genuinely nutty enough to push it to the next level. I’m glad that I got to try this, but Twix Java is still my favorite twist on Twix. An O.

Update: Twix has offered to give one lucky reader a Twix Coconut to try for him or herself. Leave a comment about which Limited Edition Twix is your favorite or about what flavor of Twix you’d like to see by 11:59 PM EST, Sunday, April 24th. U.S. readers only please. One commenter will be randomly selected to win.

Please leave a valid email address in the Mail field, NOT in the body of your comment (unless you’re not afraid of spammers) so that I can contact you if you win.

Edit: This contest is now closed. Congratulations to Barbara!

American Heritage Chocolate is a new line from the folks at Mars that “allows us to take a sweet bite out of history.” They claim “historic and modern recipe interpretations” that are made using colonial methods.

Above photo courtesy of Mars

I got sent an old-timey looking wooden crate full of free samples: some chocolate sticks and a giant chocolate block. The chocolate sticks came packaged in a rustic-looking muslin drawstring bag.

The ingredients list is refreshingly basic: chocolate, sugar, cocoa butter, spices, natural flavors, annatto, salt. The label notes that it’s all natural, with no preservatives, and my press pack names the spices as cinnamon, nutmeg, chili pepper, orange, and vanilla.

The bag contained four cocoa powder-covered sticks, each about the size of a stick of classroom chalk (is that even a valid reference point these days?). The press pack suggested eating it as-is or stirring it into a hot drink. I went with the former.

The sticks had a sharp break with a smooth melt that lacked creaminess. They also smelled just like bubblegum. I wasn’t okay with that… Fortunately, they didn’t taste like it!

Instead, they had a nice, deep richness with a slight spice burn and an innocuous astringency. The chocolate tasted sweetly fruity. Then, the flavor of cinnamon spices came through and lingered to the finish.

The chocolate block was a solid 5.13 oz bar that was too daunting to bite into. Since the ingredients list was the same as that of the sticks, I’m going to assume that it’s the same as the sticks and not review the block today. Instead, I’m going to save it for grating into hot cocoa once the weather gets colder.

I appreciate that Mars has been thinking out of the box – taking the retro trend to the extreme, if you will. And I appreciate the unique flavor of the chocolate. An OM.

I got this Twix Java in my Sweets and Snacks Expo press pack. It’s not a new bar; instead, it’s been on and off the market as a limited edition since at least 2007.

I, unfortunately, had never been lucky enough to catch it in the wild in any of its previous incarnations, so this was my first time trying it. My packaging made no mention of limited-edition-ness. Perhaps that means it’s here to stay?

The wrapper describes it as “chocolate cookies bars; coffee caramel; milk chocolate.” The back of the wrapper proudly proclaims it to be made with Mars’s real chocolate.

It’s like a regular Twix bar, only the cookie is chocolate and the caramel is coffee tinged. If you’re not familiar with Twix, they come in “fingers”, with a bottom layer of cookie and a top layer of caramel, with the whole thing covered in milk chocolate.

The caramel was sticky yet smooth with a candied coffee flavor. It had a beautiful pull.

The coffee flavor was dry and roasty, with burnt caramel and cocoa notes. As the flavor progressed, it got darker. I was pleasantly surprised by the depth of the coffee flavor.

The chocolate cookie was soft and dry, and it crumbled rather than crunched. The milk chocolate coating was just so-so, sweet without any distinction.

I give this an OM. I wish the cookie were just a tad crunchier, but otherwise, I thought it was a great mix of flavors and textures. In fact, I like it better than regular Twix, as it’s less sweet and more interesting.

The new Milky Way Simply Caramel bar was included as a free sample in my Sweets and Snacks press pack delivery. They officially launched in June of this year as “a decadent blend of Milky Way Bar’s pure smooth caramel covered completely in Mars’ real milk chocolate.”

It’s far easier to launch a new confection under a familiar brand than it is to build a new brand from the ground up. Thus, while the Milky Way Simply Caramel is a pretty significant departure from the original (I would argue that a Milky Way’s defining characteristic is its chocolatey, malty nougat), it makes sense from a marketing standpoint.

While the Milky Way Simply Caramel looked fairly standard on the outside, the inside was an oozy, decadent looking caramel mess. This was not a treat you’d want to give to small children, unless you want them getting caramel everywhere.

The outer shell was made of a snappy chocolate that turned sweet and sour in my mouth. Hooray American mass-produced chocolate!

The caramel inside was sticky, thick, and chewy. It was sweet and bright with a buttery creaminess. I prefer my caramel with dark, complex, scorched sugar flavors, so it wasn’t really my style. I have to admit, though, that it was luxuriously sticky-sweet.

My beef with this bar was basically what I have with most mass-produced checkout aisle/vending machine bars: too sweet and too one note. I prefer the extra malty hit of regular Milky Ways.

Still, it wasn’t bad, and it’s totally harmless unless you’re susceptible to sugar shock. I think I’d like these best in fun size form. An O.

If you’d like to try one of these for yourself, stay tuned! More to come tomorrow…

Coconut M&M’s have been out for a while, but I only just stumbled across them at a local convenience store. They had started out as a limited edition M&M, but I do believe they’ve now morphed into a permanent addition.

They smelled like a mix of generic quality chocolate and coconut sunscreen. The M&M’s were fatter than plain ones and irregularly shaped.

They only came in three colors – green, dark brown, and white. As you can see, some of them had Ms adorned with additional tropical-themed decorations, like beach umbrellas and flowers.

The insides were solid chocolate. The chocolate was reminiscent of that of plain M&M’s, so there was a tad bit of graininess to it. It was on the sweet side, with just a bit of fruitiness.

The center also had a nicely genuine coconut flavor that was pretty spot on. All in all, the whole M&M was a tad too sweet from the milk chocolate and the sugar shell, but I still enjoyed it.

I liked Almond Joy Pieces better. AJP had more nuttiness in the center thanks to their bits of almond, their shell was crunchier, and their chocolate was darker and nuttier.

I found the Pieces better balanced, but I wouldn’t turn down Coconut M&M’s if they were offered to me. They get an O. I’d say they’d be good enough for an OM, but the Almond Joy Pieces got an OM, and the AJP are definitely better.

These Skittles Fizzl’d Fruits came in my free candy goodie bag from the NCA. They’re a new type of Skittle that “fizzes in your mouth to deliver a tongue-tingling sensation.”

For some reason, Skittles chose to debut these in berry flavors: strawberry, berry punch, melon berry, wild cherry, and raspberry.

Each Fizzl’d Fruits Skittle came with an uneven coating of white fizz that created a bubbly, carbonated sensation on the tongue and in the back of the throat. The severity of the coating varied significantly from Skittle to Skittle, so each Skittle’s fizzy factor varied as well.

Wild cherry (red) had a deep red cherry flavor. Strawberry (pink) started off sour, then mellowed out to sweeter floral fruity flavors.

Raspberry (blue) tasted lightly seedy but was overall rather light on flavor. Berry punch (purple) tasted deeply of dark tanin flavors, and melon berry (green) tasted vaguely of kiwi.

I enjoyed the fun effect of the fizzy coating, but I wasn’t particularly attached to any of the Skittles flavors themselves. I’m not sure why they chose to Fizzl berry flavors rather than their original line-up, but I’d really like to try Fizzl’d citrus Skittles.

An O for this flavor assortment, but the idea definitely holds promise!

Pretzel M&M’s are the newest addition to the M&M’s lineup. Unlike many of the other M&M’s varieties that I’ve reviewed in the past, these look to be a semi-permanent, non-limited edition addition. I got to try them out for free via the NCA and also via some M&M’s PR people.

Please note the cute and clever pretzel X-ray. There are only 150 calories per bag, but my bag only had 16 M&M’s. They are, however, significantly larger than regular M&M’s.

These guys are irregularly sized spheres, each with a little pretzel nugget in the center, which is then surrounded by a thin layer of M&Ms milk chocolate and coated with the M&M’s candy shell.

The bag called them “crunchy, salty, sweet”, and that’s just what they were. Each one packed a substantial crunch, partly from the candy shell but mostly from the pretzel nugget inside.

The pretzel brings a salty hit to the treat which lingers after the M&M is gone. The chocolate is mostly just sweet in the back of the throat. It contrasts well with the starchy saltiness of the pretzel.

At first, I found them a bit too dry, and they made me miss the airiness of the now-defunct crispy M&M’s. But that dryness made me want to pop a second as a chaser, and then a third, and before I knew it, the whole bag was gone.

Pretzel M&M’s are sneakily poppable, thanks to a winning combination of sweet and salty. An OM!

If you’d like to try them for yourself, they’re slowly being released around the country. M&M’s has a Facebook app to help you track where they’ve been spotted (if you’re not scared by all of Facebook’s privacy craziness).

OR you can try to win some free bags via me, via the M&M’s PR people. Just leave a comment here telling me which is your favorite variety of M&M’s by midnight on Friday, May 28th, EST. I’ll randomly select 2 commenters to win 2 free bags each! Good luck!

Edit 05/30: This contest is now closed. Congratulations to Maureen and Stephen, who were randomly selected as the winners!

I had been looking for Strawberried Peanut Butter M&M’s for ages, since they first starting popping up in the candy blogosphere.

They were released as a limited edition promotional tie-in for the Transformers sequel, and I finally found them a week or so ago in a local discount grocery store. Only in a giant bag, but oh well. Now I have roommates who eat chocolate to share with!

Strawberry, peanut butter, and chocolate are an unusual flavor combination to find in candy, though it makes perfect sense. Peanut butter and chocolate are great together, and strawberry jam and peanut butter are a classic, so why not combine the three components?

The M&M’s are colored to look like those three elements: brown, red, and orange with light red specks. I’m not sure if that was the intention – maybe they were going for fall colors? – but I appreciate the color scheme.

Like regular peanut butter M&M’s, they’re irregularly sized and lopsided. Also like peanut butter M&M’s, they’re a peanut butter spheroid (oblate, to be precise) surrounded by chocolate, which is covered by a sugar shell.

These guys smell like artificial berry with an undertone of chocolate. No peanut butter scent comes through. When bitten into, there’s the usual M&M’s crunch, then a burst of sweet strawberry fruitiness that finishes with a cloyingly artificial tinge.

Beneath it all, there’s the underlying flavor of creamy peanut butter. It’s reminiscent of cheap jarred peanut butter, as it’s not that roasty or nutty.

The flavor combination really works well, but it’s a tad too sweet for me, mostly due to the artificial fruit finish. I mostly enjoy them when I eat them, but I can’t handle more than a few at a time (built in portion control – maybe not necessarily a bad thing?). I can’t decide if I’d buy another bag of these or not. Normally, I’d say no, but they are a limited edition…

They get an O from me. My roommates seemed to like them more, as the bag didn’t last long in the living room.

Crazy Core Skittles are the latest flavor addition to the Skittles line up. My package wasn’t marked as a limited edition, so I think they’re around for good.

They come in five flavors:

Mango Peach is pastel orange on the outside and pink on the inside. It tastes of a floral artificial peachiness with a slight seedy mango bite to the finish.

Cherry Lemonade is red on the outside and yellow inside. It starts out tasting like artificial cherry, then mellows into a sweet lemonade flavor. And I do mean lemonade – it tastes of lemons but without any citrus bite.

Strawberry Watermelon is green on the outside and pink on the inside. Melon Berry is the opposite: pink on the outside and green inside. I don’t quite get the distinction between the flavor names. I guess Melon Berry is more generic? Both taste like watermelon Jolly Ranchers, with the Melon Berry having a stronger candy watermelon flavor.

Finally, Blue Raspberry Lemon is blue on the outside and yellow on the inside. It opens with an artificial berry bite that dominates the lemon part, as I couldn’t taste any lemon. It does veer towards sweet and sour, which was the main contribution of the lemon part.

I think the concept was good, but the execution needed work. The different flavors in each individual Skittle didn’t really come through. I tried letting the shells dissolve but didn’t get flavors from them. While these aren’t bad, plain old original fruit Skittles are still my go to, as long as I can find someone to eat all the red and purple ones (I’m a citrus Skittles gal). An O.

Starburst Choozers are “fruit flavoured chews with liquid centre made with real fruit juices.” Did you catch those UK spellings? Yup – these guys are, at least for now, only available abroad.

My pack had 10 Choozers unevenly distributed amongst 3 flavors: 6 pineapple & orange, 3 orange & mango, and 1 raspberry & orange. Though the unbalanced flavor distribution was a tad annoying, the pineapple & orange were my favorite, so that worked out well for me.

Starburst Choozers are basically like Gushers, just with a Starburst chew outside. The chew was slightly stiffer than that of regular Starbursts, while the liquid centers were a cool, non-oozy goo.

Pineapple & orange had a nicely pineapple-astringent chew. It was hard to get a feel or taste for the liquid center in this chew. Still, I enjoyed this one the most, and it made me wish that Starburst fruit chews came in pineapple.

In orange & mango, both flavors were distinguishable. Mango overpowers at first, then gives way to a tart orange. In raspberry & orange, it’s all the taste of seedy raspberry, with a slightly plasticy aftertaste.

I wish I could buy a pack of all pineapple chews (I guess they do make a pineapple Hi-Chew for that). The pineapple & orange get an OM, the orange & mango gets an O, and the raspberry & orange gets a –. Overall, I give the pack an O, as I doubt all packs are as favorably flavor imbalanced as mine was.