ZOMG, Candy!

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.

In addition to Monday’s Junior Mints Deluxe, Tootsie Roll also sent me a case of their Tootsie Pop Drops. I have a special fondness for Tootsie Pops – I once got a bad case of the flu when I was a kid, and my mom bought me a whole bag of Tootsie Pops to entice me to get better. These days, I’m less into Tootsie Pops, but I still enjoy them.

Tootsie Pop Drops are billed as Tootsie Pops without the stick, and that’s pretty much what they are, only they’re smaller than Tootsie Pops without sticks would actually be. They’re little hard candies, about cough drop sized, with a “chewy Tootsie Roll center.” The come in standard Tootsie Pop flavors: chocolate, cherry, blue raspberry, orange, and grape. The first bag I opened had no cherry ones, which is why there are no red drops in the photo below. Incidentally, I’m a big fan of the semi-recent addition of lemon-lime Tootsie Pops and a bit sad that lemon-lime didn’t make it into the Tootsie Pop Drops.

I feel like I’m too inured to Tootsie Pops to really discuss their flavors. Chocolate is a weird pseudo-chocolate, kind of like Tootsie Rolls taste like a weird-pseudo chocolate, but I’m so used to it that I’ll eat it anyway. Orange is sweet and citrusy and my favorite of the bunch, and grape and blue raspberry are just there. I’ll eat them in the Pop Drop form, mostly because they’re in the bag, but I skip them when I pick out Tootsie Pops.

The drops are so small that they’re easy to crunch up, mixing the hard candy shell with the chewy Tootsie Roll innards. I’m an impatient hard candy cruncher, so I liked the Tootsie Pops specifically because they forced you to let the candy melt. While the Pop Drops lose that feature, they are nicely portable and portioned.

These get an O from me, but a nice one. I’m the type who won’t turn down a Tootsie Pop if I come across one in a Kiddie Mix or something, but I won’t seek them out to buy (though that’s mostly because I have so much candy that I only buy candy I’ve never before had).

Did you know that Skittles are different in the U.K. and the U.S.? When I say Skittles, I mean standard Skittles, not random limited edition/non-standard Skittles that are so varied that I have trouble keeping track of them. In the U.S., standard Skittle flavors are red – strawberry (I think), purple – grape, yellow – lemon, green – lime, and orange – orange. Friends of mine already know that I only eat the three citrus flavors (I usually don’t particularly care for red and purple candies in general) and pawn the red and purple ones off on them.

In the U.K., the purple ones are blackcurrant instead of grape. The other color/flavors remain the same, but they taste and look different. As you can see in the above photo (I apologize for the poor quality; I blame lack of natural sunlight in rainy England), U.K. Skittles are more muted in color. It’s especially noticeable in the green ones.

I bought two tiny 10 pence bags of Skittles. The first bag contained no red ones, and the second contained only two. Maybe it was just coincidence, or maybe they make fewer red Skittles in England. The red ones tasted, well, red, and as best I can remember, they seemed pretty much the same as their U.S. counterparts. Lime was also similar, but I swear the orange was zestier and the lemon sweeter and less sour across the pond.

And the one you’ve all been waiting for (I’m guessing, as it’s the one we don’t get here): blackcurrant. Blackcurrant is a pretty popular fruit flavor in the U.K., and for good reason, I think, as I enjoy it. It tastes similar to grape but has these darker raspberry undertones that make it more interesting. Overall, I give U.K. Skittles an OM. I’d buy them again if I could conveniently do so. Then again, U.S. Skittles are pretty good too, as long as you have friends on hand who’ll eat the flavors you don’t like. 

Here’s a round-up of several retro candies that don’t merit very long reviews on their own. But when you string them all together, I get a full review’s worth. Yay!

Ice Cube

According to Cybele, these guys used to be tasty. Now they’re not longer made with real chocolate, and I am not a fan of their current iteration. I found the Ice Cube to be soft, grainy, and super artificially sweet with a strange fruity tinge. Definitely not something I’d ever want to eat again. An O.

Squirrel Nut Zipper

Squirrel Nut Zippers remind me a little of Mary Janes in their size and wrapper coloring. They’re chews with a nutty (hence the squirrel reference I suppose), dusky, almost butterscotch flavor that’s lightly sweet. The chew is almost grainy and not at all sticky, so it was quite manageable. An OM.

Slo Poke

The Slo Poke was billed on its wrapper as a “delicious caramel,” even though it’s presented like a lollipop. I wouldn’t quite call it a caramel, as it was not at all sticky, and its chew was much softer and long lasting than that of caramel. My Slo Poke tasted like it was made a decade ago -  the finish had a strange staleness that was off-putting, though I may have just gotten an old Slo Poke. An O for Slo Poke the candy (while Slopoke the Pokemon gets an OMG).

More reviews from the ginormous box of Russian candy sent by my friend Leslie nearly a year ago. Don’t worry; the tasting was done back when they were more fresh out of the box (though I still have a few remnants of her box left).

Candy “Korovka”(Little Cow)

What I called “Cow Caramel,” this was caramel-flavored candy that tastes of mildly sweet caramel but has the texture of something completely different. It was grainy and broke up in my mouth, almost like a fudge, but not as creamy. The taste/texture disparity threw me a bit, and I found it overly sweet. An O.

“Ptich’ya slast” (Bird’s Enjoyment) and “Raiskaya Penka” (Heavenly Song)

This candy was WEIRD! It had a spongy marshmallow center surrounded by chocolate shell. The texture of marshmallow is terrible! The red version (left) had a weird aftertaste – definitely not of vanilla – that made me feel ill. Like nauseated ill. There were these weird sugar granules between chocolate and marshmallow that didn’t help matters. I don’t know if those were supposed to be there or if they were a product of the various temperature changes this candy went through.

The brown-checked version (right) was slightly better. The texture of the marshmallow was less spongy, but it still fell short of being pillowy. Thankfully, this had no weird aftertaste and no sugar grains, but I still didn’t enjoy it. Another O.

Mocha Hard Candies

These individually wrapped lovely hard candies had gorgeous light and dark brown swirls, like a Cream Saver. The coffee taste was strong and definitely present, but it wasn’t at all bitter. Also like a Cream Saver, the candy had a light, creamy finish. It cleaved cleanly, which of course meant I was chomping it to death. I’m not a big fan of coffee flavored candy, but my mother is, and she’d love this. An OM.

In addition to a bag of Crunch Ball Crispy Candy, Nana and Justin also mailed me a nice assortment of Hi-Chew candies in strawberry, grape, and green apple. They were so good that when Asian Food Grocer, an online retailer of Asian food, snacks, and candies contacted me with an offer to send me my choice of their products to review, I asked for a pack of pineapple flavored Hi-Chew. In hindsight, I should’ve asked for Hi-Chew in every flavor they sold; they’re good, and Asian Food Grocer sells Hi-Chew in flavors that I haven’t seen at my local Asian grocery store. Missed opportunity, I guess. But I’m not too sad, as I got other Asian candy goodies, the reviews for which will post later.

Let’s start with the three Hi-Chew from Nana and Justin.  If you’ve never had them before, Hi-Chew are small rectangular chewy candies with wonderfully bright fruit flavors. They come in a stick of individually wrapped candies, and their chew is fairy non-sticky and almost bouncy. I think they’re like the Starburst of Asia, but better because their fruit flavors actually taste like fruit. For example, I usually don’t especially like strawberry flavored candy, but I enjoyed the strawberry Hi-Chew because it tasted so genuine – you could almost taste a tinge of strawberry seeds.

Similarly, grape Hi-Chews actually taste like grapes, without any whiff of cough syrup artificial grape flavor. They taste like sweet black grapes. The apple didn’t taste at all like an apple Jolly Rancher. Its flavor was more subtle, more Fuji/Braeburn sweet than Granny Smith tart.

My favorite of the Hi-Chews I had was the pineapple. I can’t express often enough how Hi-Chew taste so vibrantly of actual fruit. The pineapple Hi-Chews were bright, sweet, slighty tart, and carried just a hint of the slight bitter astringency of a real pineapple’s core. Pineapple flavored candies aren’t too common in the U.S. I wish they were more ubiquitous, and I wish they all tasted like a pineapple Hi-Chew.

The pineapple Hi-Chew gets an OMG; the other flavors get an OM. Hi-Chew in general are pretty easy to find near the checkout counters of Asian grocery stores, though flavor selection does vary.

What’s your favorite ice cream flavor? I’m hard pressed to choose just one (I’m a horribly indecisive person), but for me, mint chocolate chip is definitely up there. I used to hate it when the dining halls would put out pistachio ice cream because it was always a dead ringer for Andes mint chocolate chip. I would happily start to scoop myself a dish, only to discover that, blech, it was pistachio. Thus, when Baskin Robbins offered to send me samples of some of their latest candies, I was happy to see that they included a package mint chocolate chip soft candy.

The mint chocolate chip soft candy came individually wrapped in a pink foil bag in a cardboard, movie candy-like box. I could smell the mintiness through the silver wrapper. The candies were shaped in little rectangular blocks, slightly smaller than Hi-Chew blocks. Volume-wise, I’d guesstimate them to be about the same as Starbursts. The wrappers were slick with grease when I picked them up, and unwrapping them revealed the shiny, greasy, unnaturally green Baskin Robbins candy within. The greasiness was off-putting, and the color was slightly alarming, but in retrospect, mint chocolate chip ice cream is also pretty unnaturally colored.

The candy had a soft, non-sticky, vaguely grainy chew. I think the greasiness strongly contributed to the non-sticky factor. Taste-wise, the candy was quite minty and fake chocolatey. I thought it did a great job of capturing mint chocolate chip ice cream, since the chocolate chips in the ice cream are chilled and in such small pieces that they don’t quite taste like normal chocolate does. Despite the greasiness, I rather liked these guys. I’ll never stick them in my pocket or purse for fear of leaving a grease stain, and I’m not compulsively polishing them off, but I think I’ll keep the rest of the box for myself. If they weren’t so greasy, I’d give them an OM, but because they are, they get an O.

In addition to mint chocolate chip, I also got a box of very berry strawberry soft candy. Though the boxes were the same size on the outside, the strawberry one was heavier and had more candies inside(my mint chocolate chip box was only 2 oz, unlike the 3.1 oz box in the professional PR photos from Baskin Robbins). I guess the strawberry ones are cheaper to make, somehow.

The strawberry candies were the same size, had the same texture, and were just as slick with grease as the mint chocolate chip ones. They also had a much stronger smell (of artificial strawberry rather than of mint, of course) that was immediately perceptible upon opening the bag. And they tasted like they smelled – of super sweet, super artificially fruity strawberry ice cream. I don’t really like strawberry ice cream, so I was pretty ambivalent about the Baskin Robbins candy version, and they get an O.

Elsewhere in the candyblogosphere, Monica tried these and their sugar-free counterparts at CandyAddict, and Cybele tasted the mint chocolate chip.

There’s a wonderful restaurant in Cambridge (England) called Le Gros Franck near the city’s train station. Apparently, at night it’s a fine dining establishment. I only went there during the day, when it’s a French cafe that serves a deliciously decadent salmon crepe. Nom nom. They also had a wide selection of Carambars, which are these French taffy/chew type candies. They definitely cost more than 5 cents (what Wikipedia gives as their suggested retail price) at Le Gros Franck, but I forgive them for upselling a bit. With import costs and the weak dollar, some things can’t be helped.

Carambars are long, thin rectangular prisms of a soft and chewy taffy that’s not at all sticky. See above photo for size reference. If you check the Wikipedia page, you can see that Carambars come in a bazillion flavors. And if you can read French, you can check out the Carambar website for another list under la marque Carambar, des gouts pour tout (tastes for all, I think). I bought one of every flavor Le Gros Franck carried, so here’s the quickshot list and mini-reviews:

• strawberry – surprisingly bright and unartificial
• raspberry – strong seediness
• lemon – bright and fake
• pomme d’amour – caramel apple? like a chewy taffy version of those caramel apple lollipops. Yum!
• big oouu pomme cassis – blech. seedy raspberryness. I looked it up – it’s blackcurrant and apple

• pineapple – WHOA! So pineappley; fresh with a tinge of acid. A clear ZOMG!
• mango – also whoa for it’s genuine flavor, carried through by a slightly bitter bite. It almost tastes stringy, if there’s a way to taste like a texture.
• diabolo cassis – more blackcurrant? Good, but not really blackcurranty. I get more citrus and fizz
• peach tea – like peaches with a tea finish rather than like tea with a peach finish.

Overall, Carambars earn an OM from me, with a hearty ZOMG! for the pineapple. I think there are a few more flavors that I bought that I have yet to taste too. If I ever get around to those, you’ll get a Carambar, Part II review.

In addition to the malted milk balls I reviewed last week, I also got free samples of Swiss Petite Fruits from Oh Nuts!, per my request. The tiny fruit candies looked so cute and tasty on the website that I just had to see them in person.

Honestly, I found myself disappointed at how they looked at first glance. I had imagine adorable little Runts-sized fruit candies. Instead, the Swiss Petite Fruits were more grape to gumball-sized, making them less cute and more normal. And while I was impressed at how the lemon, orange, and pear were pretty true to the form and texture of their larger, real fruit counterparts, I found that the bananas (neglected in my photo, the long yellow tube in the Amazon photo) and apples (light yellow-green spheres) to be insufficiently cute.

As best as I could tell from taste and shape, the fruits were banana, orange, lemon, cherry, raspberry, grape, apple, and blueberry. They all consisted of the same white innards covered by a varying colored shell. That meant they all tasted of a sweet, vaguely citrus-y sugar bomb with a bright, rotund, Jolly Rancher-y finish of whatever the fruit was supposed to be. The lemon and orange were my favorites, as their citrus tangs went nicely with the sugar bomb innards. Banana wasn’t great, but at least it didn’t taste that banana-y (I hate banana Runts).

I hated the Swiss Petite Fruits. I also couldn’t stop popping them. I would eat one and blanch at the intense, cloying sweetness while simultaneously enjoying the fruity finish. And then, about thirty-seconds or so later when my palate recovered, I’d be overcome with the urge to pop a second. And a third. Then I’d have to go drink some water and maybe brush my teeth.

If you really like super sweet things, I suggest you give them a try if you ever find them in a candy store bulk bin or something. I give them an O. Even though I found them sort of addictive, I also couldn’t eat more than three or four at a sitting.

In the US, Wham is probably best known for “Wake Me Up (Before You Go Go).” In the UK, Wham is also the name of a fairly ubiquitous “tongue tingling chew bar.” It’s super cheap (about 10-15 pence, or 20-30 cents) and seems to be similar to an Air Head. But what is this Super Fizz! they promise?

Out of the wrapper, the Wham turns out to be far softer, stickier, and greasier than Air Heads are. The Super Fizz! are this little white crystals, like the fizzy innards of a Zotz rather than like the popping crackle of Pop Rocks. They do tingle a bit, but I would’ve liked even more tingle. And they were unevenly distributed; my tingles all seemed to cluster on one side of the chew bar. The citrus flavor of the crystals was nice, though.

The bar itself is raspberry flavored, which surprised me. Yes, I know it says raspberry flavour on the wrapper, but the print was tiny, so I didn’t notice it. Raspberry strikes me as a funny flavor to be standard enough for an “original.” I probably would’ve chosen a different flavor had I known it was raspberry, as I have mixed feelings about the flavor. I dislike it when it tastes super seedy in candy, and the Wham did a pretty good job of capturing that seediness.

Consequently, I am not a Wham fan and give it an O. I may eat it again if it came in a variety pack, and it was the only flavor left, but then again, maybe not. I had access to a mix of candies (Nerds, SweeTarts, Shockers, and Laffy Taffy) the other day, and when only banana Laffy Taffys were left, I was tempted but ended up passing instead.