ZOMG, Candy!

The folks at Temptation Candy, an online candy store, would like to give one of my readers free holiday candy. How awesome is that?

The holiday giveaway candy includes Ghirardelli chocolate squares, Starburst and Jolly Rancher candy canes, Jelly Belly Christmas chocolate malt balls, and more! A full list can be found on their blog.

To enter this contest, leave a comment on this post about what candy is most tempting for you by 11:59 PM EST on Friday December 14th. I’ll randomly select one winner from the commenters.

U.S. readers from the 48 contiguous states only, please, and make sure you leave a valid email address in the mail field. I will only use that to contact the winner to ship his/her prize, hopefully in time for Christmas!

Also, don’t forget the Merci Chocolate giveaway closes this weekend!

Edited 12/15/2012: This contest is now closed. Congratulations to Sam!

I reviewed Merci Chocolates about four years ago, back in 2008 (also, whoa, I’ve been writing this blog for that long?). This year, they contacted me about running a giveaway for a free box of their chocolates for their “Share the Joy of Thank You” holiday promotion.

Merci wants people to think about what they’re thankful for this holiday season, so to enter this giveway, leave a post sharing who you’d like to give a meaningful “thank you” to this holiday season, and why.

I will randomly select one winner to receive a free box of Merci chocolates, so you’ll also get to be thankful for that! Contest closes at 11:59 PM EST on December 15th. U.S. readers only, please, and make sure to leave a valid email address in the mail field (I’ll only use them to contact the winner).

Today’s giveaway is a little different. It smells like candy, sort of looks like candy, is inspired by candy, and is even edible! But it’s not candy…

Though it may look like chocolate mousse, it’s actually a chocolate-raspberry flavored edible body butter/massage oil/lip treatment from the folks at Yume Blush. I got a free sample to do a news post and giveaway on.

It smells just like a fruity chocolate truffle and has the texture of a fluffy chocolate mousse, so I’d be careful leaving these out around kids, as they may mistake them for dessert. Apparently they are edible, but I don’t think that means you should be eating them…

Yume Blush is letting me give away one free sample of their product to a lucky reader. You can pick one of their pre-existing flavors or combine two to make your own scented treat.

To enter, leave a comment about the weirdest non-food (or food) item that you or your child has accidentally (or not so accidentally) ingested. I’ll randomly select one commenter to win. Make sure you leave a valid email in the address field (seen only by me) so that I can contact you if you are my lucky winner. US readers only, please, and contest closes at 11:59 PM EST, Wednesday, August 15th. Good luck!

Sour Patch Kids is currently running a Facebook campaign that extends their promotion of Sour Patch Kids as little trouble makers that do “sour” things and then try to make up for it with a small, “sweet” gesture. It’s the case of The People vs Sour Patch Kids, and the trial’s playing out over Facebook.

If you visit their website, you can upload photos or videos of how you’ve been wronged by Sour Patch Kids and hope for a personalized video rebuttal from their lawyer.

To further promote the trial, they’re helping me give y’all the chance to win some Sour Patch Kids candies and t-shirts. To enter, leave a comment naming something sour or sweet that you’ve done recently. I’ll select my favorite sour comment and my favorite sweet comment to win, and an additional 3rd winner will be randomly selected from the remaining entries.

U.S. readers only, please, and make sure you leave a valid email address in the mail field (it will only be used to contact the winners). Contest closes at 11:59 PM EST on July 31st, 2012. Good luck!

I received this box of Uncle Zeke’s Old Fashioned Cracked Butterscotch, or Zeke’s Butterscotch, for short, as a free sample from the manufacturer. My only experience with butterscotch has been with the little gold Brach’s discs, and I didn’t know what to expect from the Old Fashioned moniker.

The butterscotch came in shards of various sizes dusted in powdered sugar to keep it from sticking to itself. It smelled liked buttery caramel with scorchy notes that were almost sour in their intensity.

The texture was really interesting – there was both a button and a sticker on the packaging with the instructions, “Suck, don’t chew!” I’m still deciding what I can do with my button for maximum humor impact.

The pieces were hard and, if broken sharply, would cleave with a smooth break. Once it warmed up in my mouth, however, it took on a stiffly pliable texture that increasingly softened as it warmed and melted.

It was just like a Now and Later in texture. If I had tried to chew it, it definitely would’ve gotten cemented in my teeth.

It had a round, buttery sweetness to it, with scorchy undertones in the finish. The flavor is reminiscent of Werther’s Originals but with a bit more complexity thanks to the high quality of the ingredients (real butter, pure cane sugar, and molasses) that went in it. It was definitely a far cry above the disc version.

This was an unusual and tasty treat to be slowly enjoyed in small doses. I sprinkled some in a recent batch of brownies that I made – SO GOOD! An OM.

If you’d like to try these for yourself, Zeke’s is letting me give away a box to one lucky reader. Leave a comment on this post about what I should do with my “Suck, don’t chew” button by June 13, 11:59 PM EST (let’s keep it PG-13, please). Make sure you put a working email address in the email field. Only I’ll be able to see it, and I’ll only use it to contact the randomly select a winner. U.S. readers only please.

And if you don’t win this giveaway, keep an eye on their Facebook page. It looks like they do giveaways through different blogs on a fairly regular basis.

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s Fudgie Wudgie review comes today’s free fudge giveaway, courtesy of SendFudge.com. They offered me a free sample of their fudge for review, but, as noted yesterday, I don’t properly appreciate fudge.

Instead, I’m going to let one of you appreciate some of Send Fudge’s fudge! They agreed to let me do a giveaway in lieu of a review. Here come the rules:

1) You can enter once by leaving a comment on this post about which flavor of Send Fudge fudge you most want to try. Make sure you put a valid email address in the email field, NOT in the comment itself, so that only I can see it. The winner’s email address will be used to contact the winner; the rest won’t be kept.

2) You can enter a second time by tweeting @zomgcandy with a link to your comment on this post. Click on the timestamp to your comment for that direct link.

3) Continental 48 U.S. readers only, please, due to Send Fudge’s shipping restrictions.

4) Contest closes at 11:59 PM EST this Sunday, May 27th.

5) I will randomly select one entry as the winner of a box of SendFudge fudge.

Good luck!

Edit: This contest is now closed. Congratulations to Jack, my randomly selected winner!

I haven’t been a gum chewer since high school (hence the sparseness of gum reviews here), but mayhaps some of you chew and would care about this news?

Trident and Stride are currently running a “Chew for the Loot” promo. Specially marked packs of those gums come with a chance to win $50. The promo also includes a Facebook game that lets you bling out your chewer in your Facebook photo.

For some reason or another, they want to promote their giving away money contest by giving away money here. One randomly selected reader will receive a Trident/Stride gift pack and a $25 gift card to spend on anything.

To enter, leave a comment with what you’d spend a $50 windfall on by 11:59 PM EST on Friday, March 16th. Make sure a valid email address is in the email field, NOT in the actual comment itself. That way only I can see them, and I will only use the winner’s email address for contact info.

Good luck!

I reviewed Coconut M&M’s nearly a year ago. Apparently they’ve been popular enough to now be sold in larger-than-single-serve bags, an 11.8 oz medium bag and an 18.6 oz large bag.

Mars’s kind PR people are giving me the chance to give a couple of lucky readers some Coconut M&M’s of their own. To enter this giveaway, leave a comment about your favorite kind of M&M or what kind of M&M flavor you’d like to see Mars make by 11:59 EST on Monday, June 20th.

I’ll randomly select 2 readers who will each get 1 large bag and 2 single-serve bags of Coconut M&M’s. U.S. readers only, please, and be sure to leave a valid email address in the Mail field so that I have a way to contact you if you win. Good luck!

Tic Tac Canada sent me a bunch of Tic Tacs to help promote their Fun Fresh Talent Search, a contest that asks Canadians to upload videos of themselves showing off their talents for a chance to star in a Tic Tac commercial and win $5k.

I used to love Tic Tacs when I was a kid. They were marketed as mints, so they made me feel grown-up, but they tasted like candy, so they pleased my kiddie palate. When I hit middle school, Altoids were the “in” mint, and I left Tic Tacs behind… until now!

Orange Tic Tacs were my favorite when I was a kid. Either they’ve changed since then, or Orange Tic Tacs are different in Canada – they were white, not orange! But they did taste like I remembered.

All of the Tic Tacs that I received were shaped like tiny pellets. The orange ones had a smooth, glossy shell that tasted mildly sweet.

Once the shell was gone, the Tic Tac took on a more granular texture, and the orange flavor came through – sweet with a slightly sour tinge and a round, mellow orange ctirus flavor. While the shell was hard, the center was slightly softer and chewable.

Green Apple was a fruity flavor that didn’t exist when I was a kid. The shell of these had a bit of candied green apple flavor, which I enjoyed, but the flavor of the center was way over the top – sweet and sour but with way too much artificial sweetener aftertaste.

The Tic Tacs were as I remembered – fun little pellets that are really more candy than mint (neither of these fruity flavors made much lasting impact on my breath). I preferred the orange to the green apple, but I’ll give both O‘s because they’re both pretty innocuous.

If you’d like a chance to try an assortment of Tic Tacs for yourself, and you live in Canada, you’re in luck! Thanks to Tic Tac Canada’s PR people, I get to give away one set of Tic Tac swag to a randomly selected commenter. To enter, leave a comment about what your talent is by 11:59 PM, EST on Friday, May 13th. Be sure to leave a valid email address in the email field. Canadian readers only. Good luck!

I got to try this Green and Black’s Peanut bar as a free sample from the company. They also sent along a Toffee and 70% Dark bar, but I’ve already reviewed those, so just the Peanut today.

The wrapper calls it “milk chocolate with caramelized peanuts and a hint of sea salt” and bills the cocoa content at 37%.

The milk chocolate base is thick and lightly nutty with caramel notes. The peanuts are slightly salty. The caramelization is quite nice and adds a sweet burnt sugar note to the peanuts’ flavor.

I wasn’t a big fan of the texture of the peanuts. They’re soft nuts with a relatively mushy texture, and here they blend right into the texture of the chocolate and makes it slightly drier.

All in all, a fine bar but not exactly my thing (I’m not a huge fan of peanuts). An O.

If you’d like to try them yourself, Green and Black’s is letting me give some bars away to one lucky reader in honor of Mother’s Day. That’s this Sunday for you U.S. readers! Leave a comment about how you celebrate Mother’s Day by 11:59 PM EST on Saturday, May 7th, and I’ll choose one random commenter to win. U.S. readers only please, and make sure to leave a valid email address in the e-mail field.