ZOMG, Candy!

They’re not sour! If you’re going to call your product Mentos Sours (BUY!), they should actually be, you know, sour. That being said, they were still pretty tasty, and I’m ashamed to admit that I polished off the entire roll in one sitting. For some reason, that always happens when I buy Mentos. Maybe because the roll packaging makes saving some for later harder? Or because when candy comes in rolls, the next candy is always right there, just begging to be eaten? Or it is because the Mentos texture of hard shell, chewy innards, and unique finish is addictively yummy? Hmm…

I was kind of annoyed at how wasteful the packaging was, especially since I ate these while I wrote the Blog Action Day post about environmentally friendly candy. The outer, completely unnecessary wrapper is printed entirely in English, while the inner wrapper has English and French on it. I guess Mentos made all the inner rolls in one place and changed the outer roll wrappings based on where they’d be sold.

The three Mentos Sours flavors are watermelon, green apple, and lemon. Or melon d’eau, pomme verte, et citron. The lemon (yellow) is nice and tangy, though I wish it were more tart and sour. The light green ones are green apple, which has a nice, slightly tart Granny Smith apple finish. The watermelon (dark green) has a sort of tart initial bite that quickly mellows out. I personally don’t think watermelon is a very good flavor to make sour and include in a sour mix that only has three flavors. I would have preferred another citrus fruit in this mix instead.

Overall, I’ll give the Mentos Sours an OM, mostly because I find Mentos to be frighteningly addictive. If they were actually bitingly sour, they may have been able to earn that extra G.

I’ve enjoyed Tootsie Fruit Roll midges (BUY!) for as long as I can remember. Now that Halloween is just around the corner, they’ll be popping up everywhere in candy grab bag mixes for Trick-or-Treaters.

Tootsie Fruit Rolls come in vanilla, lemon, lime, orange, and cherry. The citrus ones, predictably enough, are my favorite, though they’re all quite yummy for a casual candy snack. They all have a softer, chewier texture than the regular chocolate Tootsie Rolls and lack that characteristic Tootsie Roll grain to the chew. They’re similar to Starbursts, but they don’t start out hard like Starbursts do. I also think the Tootsie Fruit Rolls are stickier and thus have a greater tendency to get stuck in the nooks and crannies of my teeth

.

Vanilla (blue wrapper) - First of all, I’d like to point out the blatantly obvious: vanilla is not a fruit. I guess because these aren’t tasty enough to sell on their own, Tootsie Roll decided to sneak them into the fruit mix and just hoped that no one would notice or care enough to mount a serious protest. I remember eating one of these as a kid, hating it, and never daring to eat the vanilla ones again. I ate a vanilla Tootsie Roll for the first time in years for the sake of this review…

And I didn’t think it was that bad. The fruit ones are tastier, but this had a rather pleasantly creamy vanilla-nougaty taste. I doubt Tootsie has messed with the flavor formula, so my palate must have evolved since I was five. I’d sure hope that’s the case.

Cherry - pleasantly sweet and brightly flavored with the expected candy interpretation of what cherry tastes like.

Lemon - lightly sour and almost imperceptibly tingly on the tongue. The lemon taste is good and manages to avoid the overly strong cleaning product version of lemon flavoring that some lemon candies have.

Orange - lightly sour and faithfully orange-candy flavored.

Lime - a very strong lime taste that’s sharp and sweet rather than sour. My personal favorite of the bunch.

As you can see in the above photo, these guys did not weather the New Haven humidity very well, and they got extremely sticky and hard to peel off the wrapper. See New Haven? That’s why we have air conditioning in Texas - to keep our candy from melting.

Tootsie Fruit Rolls are a classic, and I hope that means that they’ll be around forever. I don’t know if I find these guys any better or worse than Starbursts, the most successful line of fruit chews, but they are at least easier to unwrap than their square counterparts.

I bought some Tootsie Roll Frooties in lime, smooth cherry, grape, and watermelon that I saw in Economy Candy. I’ve yet to try them, and I wonder how they compare.

Remember to enter my 5 gum giveaway! 

I’ve had the regular Goetze’s caramel creams (BUY) before, and I liked them, but I found the weird texture of the caramel to be somewhat off-putting. The Chocolate and Strawberry Cow Tales also suffered, and in the Cow Tales, the weird texture became an insurmountable hurdle, possibly because the caramel to cream ratio is different.

The Chocolate Cow Tale isn’t very chocolatey in taste or smell. It reminded me of a bland Tootsie Roll. The bland chewiness of the Cow Tale descended into near waxiness after a while. Not exactly a pleasant experience. The cream in the center is the same as that of the caramel creams - a sweet cream taste with an oddly pasty, almost grainy texture. My description didn’t make the cream sound very appetizing, but it’s actually addictively tasty, especially when it comes in a good sized portion in the caramel creams.

I had high hopes for the Strawberry Cow Tale. Upon unwrapping it, I immediately noticed the strong, sweet smell of artificial strawberry. Unfortunately, it did not taste nearly as fruity as it smelled and suffered from the same issues that plagued its chocolate counterpart.

I wonder if these guys taste better in their caramel cream form, where the caramel and the cream parts are much more substantial. Sadly, the dimensions and proportions of the Cow Tales just didn’t work for me.

I’ve seen Charleston Chews (BUY) around grocery stores before, but only in big bags. I couldn’t figure out exactly what they were from the packaging, so I wasn’t ready to commit to buying a whole bag. Fortunately, I found this lone… bar? rod? roll?… version to try.

The Charleston Chew is a roll of vanilla nougat (the Tootsie Roll website says that they also come in chocolate and strawberry) covered in a thin layer of chocolate. The chocolate coating smelled of cheap, mass produced chocolate and tasted like it too. Then again, there’s something to be said for cheap, mass produced chocolate. Sometimes it can be transporting, like Proust’s madeleine. And from the retro look of the packaging, it seems that the Charleston Chew is dependent upon its ability to bring people back to their childhoods.

All in all, it’s not a bad bar. The vanilla nougat is soft and yielding, with a manageable amount of sticks-to-your-teeth-ness. Alas, I left the rest of this at home, so I will not be able to try the frozen version. If I could find the single rolls in chocolate and strawberry, I’d buy them to try them, but I wouldn’t bother buying an entire box or bag of them.

I found these in a display case along with the Limited Edition Carnival Skittles (BUY) at the Dollar Tree. They were tucked away in a corner, so I nearly walked out without seeing them. The cashier probably wondered why I got went through the line twice, both times to buy just candy.

The packaging on the Retro Starbursts (BUY) is a nice tie-dye motif, and the individual wrappers are white with colored print instead of the other way around. The flavor names are cute and clever, if rather corny:

Hey Mango-rena! - The exclamation mark is key, of course. These didn’t taste like mango at all. I got more of a sweet cantaloupe/punch taste or something.

Optimus Lime - This was my favorite flavor. Unsurprising, since I love citrus flavored candies, and the Green Slushy was my favorite Carnival Skittle flavor. Not quite as complex as the Green Slushy Carnival Skittle, but still quite enjoyable. With a bright and tart lime taste, it reminded me of a lime Skittle, but better, maybe because it’s a bigger candy. And while we’re on the subject, check out this cool Optimus Prime cake.

Psychideli-melon - Quite faithful artificial watermelon candy flavor, like a watermelon Jolly Rancher.

Disco Berry : I guess they ran out of clever names when it came to this one. It tastes like a super intense version of a red berry candy, which makes sense, as this chew is a deep red that’s nearly maroon. I think the berry is cherry, since I think that’s what’s pictured on the wrapper.

Overall, I enjoyed these flavors, though I felt cheated by the Hey Mango-rena! Hey Mars, just making it mango-colored isn’t enough. You’re supposed to make it taste like mango too.

I spotted this bag on a candy display in Michael’s. I’d never seen them before, so I thought Original Snaps (BUY) would be a great review candidate, even though I couldn’t tell exactly what they were. Since the store was closing and the cashiers were shutting down their stations, I was in a hurry to get out, and I didn’t look closely at the package. When I got to the car, I turned the bag over and saw this:

Read the rest of this entry »

Limited edition candies may be a marketing ploy to snare the impulsive shopper, but they’re also a great way for candy makers and consumers to try out a new spin on familiar favorites. Also, candy consumers are more willing to buy unfamiliar candies if they’re associated with a familiar brand. Limited Edition Carnival Skittles are an interesting departure from regular Skittles, but I won’t be sad to see them go.

The Carnival flavors are:

Bubble Gum (pink) - Tastes just like sweet, sugary bubble gum. For lack of a better word, this Skittle tastes like pink.

Cotton Candy (turquoise) - This tastes initially like sugar, followed by a hint of artificial blue raspberry (not to be confused with fresh raspberry).

Candy Apple (pale yellow) - This one also tastes initially like sugar but, quite logically, followed by a hint of apple flavor rather than blue raspberry. The apple flavor is actually quite nice and reminds me of apple flavored Fanta.

Red Licorice (red) - I am not a fan of red licorice candy because I think it tastes like wax. Somehow, Skittles managed to encapsulate that waxy essence. I’m impressed, assuming that the waxy taste is not just my imagination.

Green Slushy (light green) - I saved the best for last! On first bite, there’s a sharp lime taste. The lime flavor then mellows out into a sweet lemon-lime. It’s more complex than a regular lime Skittle, and more enjoyable. My favorite normal Skittles are the citrus ones, so it’s no surprise that I liked Green Slushy the best. Candy Apple is okay, but I found the initial sugar taste off-putting and too sweet.

That was my issue with this bunch of Skittles overall - three of the five flavors tasted of mostly sugar, which got bland and cloying. I polished off the Green Slushy ones and left the rest for my family to finish.