Though they’ve been out for at least six months, my package still called them “New!” It also touted the candy’s “flavor changing beads!”, which made them sound all fancy and technologically advanced.

Those flavor changing beads were actually visible in the Starburst square. I could also sometimes feel them in the sticky chew of the Starburst as little hard pellets between my molars.

There were only two flavors in the pack. One was orange that morphed to orange strawberry, and the other was cherry that morphed to cherry lime. It seems like they don’t so much morph as gain a second flavor.

Orange to orange strawberry started off as a much more mild form of the usual orange Starburst flavor. It was not nearly as sour or bright or citrusy.

The strawberry flavor came in quickly and further mellowed the flavor, giving it a slightly plasticky floral edge that finished like strawberry Starburst (the pink ones).

Orange strawberry was a weird combination for me. I think I prefer those flavors separately to them together. An O.

Cherry to cherry lime was much better. It started off like a regular cherry Starburst, with a slight tartness to the start. The lime then came through in a few chews with a strong, limey bite of zestiness.

It was like a chewable form of a Sonic cherry limeade. Sort of Shirley Temple-esque, but tangier from the lime. The mix of sweet berry fruitiness and the zesty lime flavor was a winner for me. An OM.

I really enjoyed these Pink Lemonade straws. They didn’t have any of the stiff plastic taste or over-wheaty flavor that put me off the Sortz and that you get in Sour Punch Straws.

Instead, they were soft and pliable tubes, about 6-7 inches long, with an easy chew. They were much softer, and thus much more texturally pleasant, than Twizzlers. Also unlike Twizzlers, they didn’t get stuck in the cracks of my teeth.

The sour sugar sand on the surface of the straws was mostly sweet with a little tartness. The pink lemonade flavor of the actual straws was sweet with a light, mild citrus note.

There was no lemon zestiness, but a definite lemonade/lemon drop flavor persisted throughout the chew. The sour came through in the middle when the sour sand started melting on my tongue, and the final finish was just the sweet fruitiness of the straw.

I thought these were quite well done for a relatively simple treat. The texture was spot on, while the taste was sweet and sour – but not too sour – without any off notes. An OM.

Dorval will be at the Sweets and Snacks Expo. I plan to revisit the Sortz to see if my original batch was past its prime (though I did taste it before its best-by date).

The packaged described them as “candy coated chocolate flavor eggs.” ”Chocolate flavor” is a marketing/packaging red flag. It means that there’s no actual cocoa butter inside.

These looked nice, like prettily speckled eggs. But ooh they smelled gnarly, like anise (I’m an avid licorice detester).

The candies had brown spotted sugar shells that I could easily smoosh between my fingers. The “chocolate flavor” centers were soft, grainy, and chewy.

Those centers tasted worse than they smelled – it was both sour and sweet with chemical flavors and an anise edge. I couldn’t even finish one.

It’s a shame that they were so pretty to behold, yet so gross to eat. Run away! A –.

Recently, they mailed me a bunch of Japanese candies, including this pack of Lime Shikwasa Hi-Chew. I originally thought these were lime, but Debby and Nana cleared that up in the comments. A Shikwasa is a tart Japanese citrus fruit with a green rind and golden flesh.

Also, there’s all kinds of fun stuff going on on that wrapper in addition to the Shikwasas. Nana has a great explanation in the comments.

I’ve reviewed a bunch of Hi-Chew in the past. Like all Hi-Chew, it comes in a pack of individually wrapped rectangles. The chew started off sproingy and then softened and became stickier.

These were a pale pistachio green with a white center. The flavor was amazingly juicy and spot on.

It was incredibly sweetly limey and zesty with the perfect edge of pithy bitterness. As the chew went on, the zestiness intensified and took on just a hint of herbal grassiness.

There was no sourness to it, and the sweetness level was perfect – tasty without being cloying – with just the right tidbit of bitterness to set it off.

I couldn’t stop popping these and would change nothing about them. Well, I would change one thing: bring them to the U.S. please! A ZOMG!

I found larger bags of strawberry and apple Bon Bons at Cost Plus World Market and had to immediately snatch them up for reviewing (and eating).

For the record, it was my first foray into the wondrous global grocery that is CPWM, and holy cow did I come home with loads of candy! Those will be making appearances in the coming weeks.

The Bon Bons were little nuggets, slightly larger than thumbnail-sized. Strawberry was pink and apple was a pale lime green. Both had white centers.

They were all coated with a light dusting of fine powdered sugar. They could be held in the mouth and dissolved, but I never had – and still don’t have – the patience for that.

Instead, I like to chew mine up. The chew starts off almost stiff and works the jaw for a chomp or two, but it softens quickly. The texture then becomes almost Starburst-like, but with a coarser grain.

Strawberry was sweet with a bright, floral fruitiness. It tasted like strawberry candy concentrate: a strawberry gummi bear with the flavor turned up to 11.

Apple had the flavor of a Granny Smith apple, only it slightly sweeter and not as sharp. There was still a mild sourness, but it never approached levels of puckeriness.

Like the strawberry, the apple flavor was intense and super concentrated. And somehow, the flavor never dissipated as my chewing continued.

The best part of these is the chew. The texture slowly morphs as the bright, intense flavors explode and fill the mouth.

They’re just as addictive as I remember them being, though I have less tolerance for the compounding effect of their sweetness these days. Still, an OMG.

I’m not one who would buy sugar free candy for myself, but I was happy to give them a try. I’d had Crystal Light’s Sugar Free hard candies before, which I had found quite nice.

The candies were super sticky, so sticky that I couldn’t get the orange one cleanly out of its wrapper. That was likely due to the summer heat.

They came in four flavors: strawberry, lemon, orange, and raspberry. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get a good handle on any of them.

I tried biting into a couple and immediately had to spit them back out. They tested overwhelmingly of musty paper. Sweet musty paper, sure, but still like paper!

That mustiness was so off-putting that I just had to get them out of my mouth. I threw the bag away, but not before noting that their best by date was given as 02/10/12.

I’ll concede that it’s possible that they wouldn’t have tasted so gnarly if they weren’t melting into the paper. But the Hi-Chews that I’ve been keeping in the same weather all tasted fine, so I’m still blaming Crystal Light for making an inferior product. A –.

The Hi-Chews had an orange-yellow center surrounded by an off-white shell that didn’t photograph well. Just imagine this, but slightly more orangey. The flavor, however, was flawless!

It tasted just like a fresh, juicy, perfectly ripe mango. I have no words to describe it other than as a perfect distillation of real mango into a candy chew.

As the sticky chewiness developed, the unique mango seediness became stronger and lingered a bit in the finish. I found it intoxicatingly delightful and almost better than the real thing. An OMG.

Artificial banana is not my thing. Banana Runts? Run away!

Fortunately, the Hi-Chew banana didn’t taste artificial at all! Instead, its banana flavor was surprisingly genuine, like the actual fruit instead of some chemical approximation.

The chew started off with a mild sweetness and just a hint of banana scent. As I chomped away, the overtones of real banana flavors became stronger before ceding ground back to a pleasantly fruity sweetness not unlike the base flavor of the Peach.

This isn’t my favorite Hi-Chew flavor, but I enjoyed it much more than I expected to. Kudos to Hi-Chew for making banana not just palatable but even enjoyable. An O.

The company that makes Hi-Chew, Morinaga, has a U.S. subsidiary that sells Hi-Chew in strawberry, green apple, mango, melon, banana, and grape flavors. And as of last month’s Sweets and Snacks Expo, a peach Hi-Chew flavor is now available in the U.S. I got a free sample pack to review from Morinaga.

The Peach Hi-Chew had a light pink center and a lightly floral scent. It started off with a very mild, not very sweet flavor. As its bouncy chew developed, however, the sweetness grew.

Honestly, it didn’t taste much like peach to me. It just tasted mild and floral and sweet, maybe more like a muted strawberry. I was surprised, as Hi-Chew is usually really spot-on with their fruit flavors.

Though it wasn’t as peachy as I would have liked, it was still quite enjoyable with its pleasantly light flavor. An OM.

Tiny English print on the side called it, “Chewy Candy with Fruit Juice – Blackberry Flavor.” The square candies were individually wrapped in delightfully retro-looking paper.

Their chew was soft and not sticky. Their texture was that of a non-sticky Starburst.

The flavor was sweet with a light seedy bite that conjured up the essence of blackberries and blackcurrants. I loved the complexity of this treat and wish it was a flavor that was used more in the U.S. candy market. An OM.