I’m a big bubble gum fan, though not much of a chewer. I’m a purist, I like my bubble gum to be the traditional bubble gum flavor. I saw this Cotton Candy Bubblicious at the beginning of summer, though, and thought it was a splendid idea for a gum flavor.

The pieces are ridiculously blue, the package design is wonderfully summery, and it all smells like an air freshener designed for a child’s room.

The lightly strawberry sweet scent is strong enough that I new which room I’d left this package in without even looking. It’s not chemically or unappealing, though it doesn’t necessarily smell like food.

The pieces were easy to open from the little paper wrappers and soft. The easy chew was very sweet with less of the strawberry or cotton candy notes and more of just a clean sweeteness.

However, as the sugar in the chew dissipated, I was left with the taste of the gum base, which is rather like some door mats I got at Ikea. It’s just a touch of asphalt with the berry. The longer I chewed, the more that note came out, until I was pretty sure it was a sign that the whole thing had turned into a big tar ball. Nope, when I took it out of my mouth, it was just a piece of blue gum.

So, if you’re looking for some room freshener that looks like blocks of sidewalk chalk that you’re not going to chew, these are great. But even for the type of person who chews the gum until the sugar is gone, the awful aftertaste is too much.

Related Candies

1. Candyology 101 - Podcast Episode 19 - Summer Flavors
2. Mike and Ike Cotton Candy
3. Bubble Gum Flavored Peeps
4. Elmer Cotton Candy Marshmallow Eggs
5. Festival HiCHEW: Candied Apple & Cotton Candy
6. Three Pink Bubble Gums
7. Dubble Bubble Fluff

Lindt Hello Toffee Bites is the second review I have for the line of Lindt’s HELLO Bites line. They’re pretty simple, just milk chocolate covered toffee bits.

Now that I’ve purchased the full set, I’ve noticed the packaging for the line. It’s an odd design style. The HELLO line is a very friendly, with that hipster coffee-house style mix of hand printing and script. The embossed Lindt logo, on the other hand, is old-world elegance. The rest of the package is just an image of the product. In this case it’s a bowl of toffee bites and some pieces of toffee (I know, the photo makes it look like they might be pats of butter). Each of the packages for the HELLO Bites has a different metallic color on the top band. For the toffee, it’s bronze, for the mint it was green and for the pretzel line, it’s a light blue (which is consistent with the M&Ms Pretzel which is also blue).

The pieces a little on the small size, mostly the size of a garden pea. The milk chocolate is very light in appearance, like the Minty Bites, there’s no indication of the cacao content. The coating is very creamy, with no detectable waxy glaze to interrupt the immediately melty chocolate.

The chocolate to toffee ratio is very balanced, so there’s enough of both to give full flavor development and texture. The toffee is crispy and has a good crunch. There’s a hint of butter and a touch of salt with some good toasty flavors to balance it. The milk chocolate has a lot of dairy notes, but not so much of the dried milk flavors that I don’t care for in a lot of Swiss-style milk chocolates.

These are easy to munch but also such high quality that it’s fun to savor them as well ... the chocolate has a delightful melt and the consistency of the toffee is great if you’re a cruncher or a dissolver. The key here is that this is a simple item that can be done poorly with cheap ingredients and no attention to detail ... instead Lindt has delivered an excellent product and actually surpassed my expectations.

Related Candies

1. Lindt Hello Minty Bites
2. Lindt Hello Dark Chocolate Cookie
3. Lindt Hello Crunchy Nougat
4. Hershey’s Heath Pieces
5. Poco Dolce Popcorn Toffee
6. Lindt Holiday Almonds
7. Kraft Daim
8. Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Almond Toffee
9. Lindt Excellence Toffee Crunch
10. Recchiuti Asphalt Jungle Mix

Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are the most successful cup-based candy in North America (I just made up that statistic, but I’m pretty sure it’s right). In this episode Maria and I talk about the essential elements of the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and their other product extensions.

Download the MP3 or subscribe on iTunes. You can also listen online while reading the copious show notes here.

There are two new flavors of M&Ms out for fall this year. M&Ms Milk Chocolate Pumpkin Spice Latte is a Target exclusive and M&Ms Milk Chocolate Pecan Pie is a Walmart exclusive.

I picked up the Pumpkin Spice Latte, though I admit I was a little confused about how different this was from the Pumpkin Spice Milk Chocolate M&Ms from 2013.

It’s always a little odd to pick up “seasonal” items when I live in Los Angeles. The package here shows the brown M&M all bundled up with steamy drink. It was 96 degrees in the shade when I got back to my car with the purchase (it’s also hot in a lot of other places around the country, it was still August when these hit the shelves).

The pieces are large, as all of the specialty flavors lately have turned out to be. They come in orange, cream and dark brown. (The earlier 2013 Pumpkin Spice were orange, green and dark brown.)

The ingredients list no specifics about the flavors, there are no lists of spices and definitely no actual pumpkin or coffee. What I expected to be different about this variety is more of the latte beverage experience. So, I’m hoping for creamy milk notes, maybe some espresso and of course the spice mix known as pumpkin.

The flavor combination here is immediately cinnamon with a touch of coffee and chocolate. The spices are warm, but not very evenly balanced, it’s almost all cinnamon and not much in the way of nutmeg or ginger. The coffee notes keep it from being as sweet as some others, though it’s a little inconsistent. The chocolate itself is grainy and not terribly creamy. In general the chocolate quality on M&Ms is disappointing as a chocolate item, but fine as a candy.

I’m a little confused how this whole coffee craze can come about and there are no coffee M&Ms, but some how a beverage that includes coffee can actually get the M&M treatment.

Related Candies

1. Birthday Cake M&Ms
2. M&Ms Milk Chocolate Gingerbread
3. Limited Edition M&Ms Cinnamon Milk Chocolate
4. M&Ms White Chocolate Candy Corn
5. Bosco Milk Chocolate
6. Limited Edition Strawberried Peanut Butter M&Ms
7. Mint Crisp M&Ms (Indiana Jones)
8. M&Ms Razzberry - Limited Edition