ZOMG, Candy!

These soda flavored Morinaga Hi-Chews came as free samples from Tsunami.hk. Look at the lovely effervescence on those wrappers!

They came in three flavors: lemon soda, cola, and white soda. If you’ve never had them before, Hi-Chews are individually wrapped, rectangularly shaped chews that are usually fruit flavored.

Their chew is bouncy and mostly not sticky, except when you get to the end. Then they can get really sticky and worm their way into the nooks and crannies of your teeth.

The three flavors were easy to visually distinguish. Cola was an unappetizing shade of brown with just a tinge of booger-green.

Fortunately, its flavor was spot on. It tasted genuinely of cola, with notes of lemon and caramel.

Lemon soda was the pale but vaguely psychedelic color of lemon meringue. It had a supremely zesty bite with a hint of pithiness.

That light bitterness was nicely ameliorated by the taste of brightly sour lemonade. I really appreciated its complexity and the fact that it didn’t coddle your tastebuds.

White soda was the one that was most foreign to my tastebuds. When I tasted it (not consulting my helpful translation notes from Tsunami.hk), I was expecting ramune flavor, which is citrusy.

Instead, it initially tasted neutrally sweet with a faint strawberry fruitiness. Then, it transitioned to carrying a hint of liquid sour yogurt, which is a yogurt-flavored drink that you can buy in Asian grocery stores (the name’s literal translation from Chinese is “sour milk”). It was nothing like ramune!

Turns out white soda is yogurt flavored. Who woulda thunk it?

Cola and lemon soda get OMs for their tasty flavor complexity. White soda gets an O for being sort of weird but at least interesting!

These guys made me wish that American mass produced candy could be as adventurous as Japan’s sweets.

These Goetze Double Chocolate Caramel Creams arrived in my Sweets and Snacks Expo press pack/goodie bag full of samples. The DCCC is a fairly recent addition to their line-up (along with a refresh of the licorice caramel cream), which also includes caramel creams, chocolate creams, and cow tales.

Like the other caramel creams, the DCCC is comprised of a wheaty chew around a circle of cream – hence the Bullseye nickname. In the DCCC, both the chew and the cream are chocolate.

The outer ring was somewhat reminiscent of a Tootsie Roll, but with a slightly different texture and flavor. The DCCC’s texture while chewy, was less sticky, with a thicker flour paste feel.

It had deeper cocoa flavor and less sweetness than a Tootsie Roll. I didn’t notice any prominent caramel flavors. I’m guessing that the caramel component of the name is more for texture than taste.

The bullseye center was a chocolate cream that tasted exactly like store-bought chocolate frosting. It was grainy yet airy and instantly melted on the tongue.

I appreciated the solid, not too sweet flavors of the DCCC. I don’t think I would go out of my way to buy them, (well, maybe I’d throw a couple in my bag if I were bulk bin shopping) but I’d eat them if they were laying around in an office candy bowl or something. A commendable O.

These tangerine-lemonade flavored Sour Punch Bits came in my free goodie bag from the National Confectioners’ Association. Looks like the American Licorice Company is expanding from just making Sour Punch Straws.

They turned out to be little sour sugar covered cylinders divided into yellow and orange quadrants. Mine got a little sadly damp in this wonderfully hot and humid summer that Rochester’s been having.

Their texture was similar to that of regular Sour Punch Straws, if Sour Punch Straws were solid. That is, they had the texture of a stiff licorice wheat chew.

Citrus fruits are my favorite candy flavors, and these Bits satisfied my love of bright, sweet and tart. They tasted very orange-y with a decently powerful sour finish.

I loved the Bits’ flavor, but I didn’t like that they got all stuck in the nooks and crannies of my teeth. If the slightly softer Straws came in this Tangerine Lemonade flavor, I’d be a happy candy blogger. An O.

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!

I got really excited when I saw this bag of Haribo Pico-Balla at the dollar store. They looked like my beloved European licorice pencils that have yet to catch on in the U.S. Could it be that they were hiding in the dollar store of the mall all along?

They certainly looked the part – colored fruit licorice wrapped around fondant fillings. The fillings were even extra fancy, with two colors!

Alas, while they were similar to my licorice pencils, they weren’t quite right.

For starters, the texture of the Pico-Balla was a bit too stiff and plasticy. Licorice pencils should have some bite to them, but these guys involved too much gnawing.

As for the flavors, they were weird and just didn’t mesh for me. Turquoise stuck out because its fondant filling was yellow and purple, while the other three had blue and orange.

The turquoise fruit licorice portion tasted like fruit punch, while the sweet fondant had a light anise and minty finish. It was simultaneously sweet and creamy and herbal.

The yellow coating tasted sweet with a light citrus tinge. Green tasted like the yellow, sans the citrus tinge, and maybe had a light apple finish, but maybe I was imagining it? And red just tasted like generic artificial red candy.

The orange and blue fondant fillings tasted of sherbet. I couldn’t pick out a particular flavor; they were just sweet and creamy and fruity.

I’m not sure why, but to me, the fruit licorice texture and flavors were just completely incompatible with the sherbet-y fondant fillings.

In the end, I found the Pico-Balla flavors and textures to be off-putting. They’re not awful, but they are rather blech, so a –.

I love bulk bins because they let you buy exactly how much you want. I especially love them for candy because they let me buy just enough to taste for a review. The last time I was at a Wegman’s with bulk bins (my neighborhood one is too small to have a bulk bin section, but that’s a good thing, as it prevents me from gorging on malted milk balls and Albanese 12-flavor gummi bears on a too-regular basis), I picked out four Jelly Nougats by Brach’s.

Thank goodness I only spent about 50 cents on them.

I was naive enough to think that, because they had nougat in the name and because they were white in color, they would taste like actual nougat. And they were so colorful and artsy looking to boot!

Alas, they just tasted like blech. The jelly bits look like they should be fruity, and they kind of are, but not really. They mostly tasted of sproingy sweetness.

The nougat had a persistent chew that was soft and not at all sticky. It tasted a bit floral and fruity, but mostly it was just sugar overload like whoa. I don’t think it was the sweetness factor alone that made this a spit-out candy for me – rather, I think it was that the sugar lacked any other substantial flavor to back it. Sweet and fruity is okay. Sweet and more sweet is not. One of my roommates called it old people candy.

My roommates enjoyed it, though they agreed with me that it was cloying. I could smell the candies as they were eating them from several feet away, and the smell was lovely, bright, and fruity. Why couldn’t they taste like that too?

For me, it’s a –. Save your pennies for something else!

Back when I reviewed the Qra Qra Lemon, I pointed out the weirdness of the name. The Qra Qra Milk sees the Lemon’s unpronounceable Qras and raises it an inexplicable flavor. What exactly is a milk flavor, any way?

Milk flavored candy is actually a common find in Asian markets (I’ve reviewed a hard milk candy in the past), and I usually find them quite enjoyable. But chewing on milk? I dunno…

The Qra Qra did not taste like vanilla. Instead, it tasted of cooked milk, like the skin that forms when you heat up milk, with maybe a bit of coconut milk to it as well. It was almost savory and had a hint of salt in the finish.

The flavor reminded me of a buttered popcorn Jelly Belly but less buttery. The scent of it as it’s being chewed (and the lingering Qra Qra breath that one is left with) is spot-on buttered popcorn Jelly Belly.

While the Qra Qra milk was still quite chewy (chewchew chewchew), it wasn’t as long lasting as the lemon. Despite its chew-time advantage, the Qra Qra Milk did not disappear nearly as quick as its lemon counterpart did. I was torn between giving them an O or a — and ultimately settled on an O. While they’re not bad, they’re also not really good, but they are intriguing, so a bonus letter point there.

As promised, here’s a timely review of Haribo Maoam Stripes. If you missed it, they’re currently under scrutiny having inappropriate wrappers.

I first came across the Maoam Stripes last summer in Cambridge, England, and I was fortunately enough to get a second dose from my residential college’s associate master. She got them via a Swedish friend and was kind enough to think of me and share.

Maoam Stripes are a soft, chewy taffy. They come in five flavors: orange, lemon, cherry, strawberry, and raspberry. The Maoam from England were thin, rectangular sticks, while the Swedish Maoam were blockier rectangles.

All the Maoam were a creamy, pale off-white. They may have vaguely been tinged the color of their fruit flavors, but it’s also highly likely that that was purely the power of suggestion.

They have a smooth chew that’s round and clean, with a pleasantly glossy mouthfeel.

Orange was sweet, with just a bit of citrus flavor. It was bright and fruity without being tart.

Lemon was similar to orange, but it tasted a bit brighter and just a bit more tart. It also carried a slightly bitter zesty note that made the fruit flavor feel more genuine (though its strident sweetness definitely made it clear that it was candy).

Cherry had a deep, dark cherry flavor. It carried a tinge of bitter cherry tannins, in a good way. Again, this helped make it feel more true to the fruit that it was emulating.

Strawberry was bright and florally sweet. I usually find strawberry candy uninspiring, but this was actually enjoyable – if still not quite inspiring.

Finally, raspberry. I was afraid of this one, as I dislike most raspberry candies (and don’t really like fresh raspberries all that much, though they’re great in berry sangria). I needn’t have worried. The raspberry Maoam was surprisingly pleasant. There was no seedy bitter bite to it, so I didn’t really identify it as raspberry flavored. Instead, it occupied a portion of the flavor spectrum between cherry and strawberry.

I really enjoyed the Maoam taffy. The texture is great, the flavors are bright and cheerful, and they’re incredibly addictive. They’re like the European version of Starburst, only oodles better. An OMG.

You can probably guess that today’s review is not of an American candy. American companies may give their products weird names to make them memorable, but they’d never go for something as unpronounceable as Qra Qra. Asian companies selling in the U.S., however, totally would.

I love the packaging on this product because a) it says chewchew chewchew, and b) because the kangaroo is weird and inexplicable but kind of cute, and its ears are the wrong shape. Hooray Asia!

Hard to read print on the bag (white on yellow? really?) notes that Qra Qra are “chewy like gum, but melts like candy”. Never mind the messed up parallel with mismatched parts of speech – it’s a good description of what the candy is.

Each Qra Qra is about the size of a small grape or a large blueberry. They have a hard candy shell, but they’re also texturally homogenous. Each Qra Qra has a stiff, long lasting chew that’s quite sproingy. It’s a bit like Hi-Chew, but it gets stuck in your teeth less, and it’s a bit like Starburst but not as slick – the Qra Qra are almost grainy or fuzzy on the tongue.

The flavor on these is tremendous! Each has a bright, sweet, and bitter lemon bite that’s so acidic that it stings the tongue and so sweet that it burns the throat. I know that sounds awful, but it’s wonderful and addictive. Once I finished a Qra Qra, I was ready for another, even as my tongue tingled and my throat burned.

The candy does eventually melt away after about 40 seconds or so of chewing, and admirably enough, the flavor never dissipates throughout the long chew. It’s a good thing the chew lasts for a long time, as there are only about a dozen Qra Qra per pack, and they disappeared all too soon.

An OMG that warrants a special trip back to the tiny Asian grocery store where I found them. I know they come in at least one more flavor! If the price ever goes down ($1.00 for 12 Qra Qras is pretty steep), I’m upgrading them to ZOMG! status.

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.