Albanese makes my favorite gummi bears, so I was quite excited to see some of their chocolate-covered gummi bears turn up in my NCA pre-trade show goodie bag.
Albanese gave out their samples in hand-packaged candy dime bags, so I have no idea what the commercial packaging looks like. My guess is that they’re primarily a bulk bin treat, so they may not have commercial packaging.
The name is pretty self-explanatory. Each gummi bear was covered in a thin layer of chocolate. While the coating was far from perfectly smooth, the bears’ basic features and appendages remained distinguishable.
The chocolate cracked when bitten into. It’s not terribly decadent, but it’s decent quality for a milk chocolate coating – sweet, but definitely recognizable as chocolate.
I think the gummi bears inside are their 6-flavor bears (it’s unclear if the 12-flavors includes lemon. My Wegmans’ bears had lemon, but the current Albanese website doesn’t list lemon as one of the 12 flavors, so I’m playing it safe). I only got a handful of bears for sampling and still managed to get multiple colors. As expected by Albanese’s quality gummi standards, the gummi bears are brightly and distinctly fruit flavored.
The enjoyment factor provided by the chocolate-covered bears is highly dependent upon the color and flavor of the bear within. Some flavors (red/cherry) worked well, while others were a bust (yellow/lemon).
All in all, I think I actually prefer my Albanese bears nekkid, like I prefer my… never mind. An O, though high marks for effort!
Varsha