Candy Blog

Late last year I did a head to head between Shoogy Boom and Pop Rocks, just to see if the original is actually the best. I actually prefer the Shoogy Boom brand, made by Hleks in Turkey.

While Pop Rocks were displaying their new Pop Rocks Milk Chocolate Bar at the All Candy Expo, Hleks was quietly showing their chocolate popping candies as well. I don’t know how long these have been on the market, the copyright on the back of the package says 2003 ... and also says that these are a product of Impact Confections (known for their Warheads line).

These little chocolate spheres are smaller than a malted milk ball but larger (or perhaps just more spherical) than a Peanut M&M. They look a little waxy, but smell pleasantly sweet. (I can figure that I beat them up pretty bad on the trip, because they were unmarred and glossy at the All Candy Expo booth.) Each sphere is milk chocolate mixed with unflavored carbonated hard candies.

With the popping candy mixed with chocolate, I find initially chewing them a bit to expose the carbonated bits helps to activate them. The chocolate isn’t stellar on these, but they’re just the transportation medium for the popping. They flavor is a little malty, with the popping bits adding only texture and sound with a little extra sweetness.

They can get kind of noisy inside my head and I was surprised at how well I could hear the popping inside other people’s heads when I passed them around last night when the neighbors came over.

I don’t know if I’d eat them often, but they’re kind of fun. I wish the chocolate as a bit better, but these might be fun to mix with other things in a “movie mix” (but maybe you wouldn’t be able to hear the movie?) like popcorn, SnoCaps and Junior Mints. I like the spherical design of them a bit better than the bar format of the Milk Chocolate Pop Rocks Bar. I shared most of them, which is the way candy should be!

Brad Kent has this wrapper on his excellent database, so I’m guessing these have been around for a while.

Related Candies

1. Soda Can Fizzy Candy
2. Astra Flying Saucers
3. Pop Rocks Cherry Cola
4. Rolly Pop

Stuffed, bite-sized marshmallows are not a new product, but certainly not one that’s widely available in the United States.

I’ve seen them at Japanese grocers and Aji Ichiban before, but never packaged just for Americans. And certainly never in these sassy little three puff portions.

Enter GudFud. They’re here to bring us the Asian foamy sweets. They’re packaged to look like they’re Japanese (terribly cute and with Japanese characters on the label, what they say, I know not) but they’re actually made in China. I tried some before and wrote about them here.

The name is a little wacky, and rather Germanic with the umlauts (G?dF?d). Call it fusion! It’s supposed to be pronounced Goood Foood.

I’ve never considered jelly and marshmallows “food”, but perhaps I can start thinking of them as “foood.”

The little individually wrapped Fruit Jelly Stuffed Marshmallows are a bit smashed when inside the package but fluff back up pretty quickly. There’s a lot of packaging, which I guess I didn’t notice at first because it’s mostly clear. The fruity ones were cute and once unwrapped, completely identical on the outside.

The jelly center is where things get different. The jelly is smooth and soft, not quite flowing, but not quite firm like an “orange slice” would be. Really, kind of like the jelly you’d spread on your toast. The flavor is mild, a little tangy, not terribly complex ... just, well nice.

The mix of fruit and marshmallow isn’t really great in my mind. So I tried toasting a package or two. They toasted nicely, though the center didn’t get that molten consistency that I’m used to with Jet or Kraft marshmallows. The marshmallow skin puffed well and browned (well, one caught on fire, but consider it a sacrifice to the marshmallow fire god). Still, the toasted flavor and jelly didn’t really grab me either.

So what about a Chocolate Stuffed Marshmallow. Though each of these are the same, the little packages still have a different little character on them. Each with a different reaction to getting a chocolate bar stuffed into their cranium.

The chocolate filling isn’t firm, it’s soft and easy to bite. It still doesn’t have a lot of chocolate oomph to it, more like a chocolate cream.

I like that the package has three marshmallows in it and you might be able to just pick them up where you buy candy bars. For those on calorie-restricted diets, a single package with three marshmallows is only 50 calories and practically no fat. I don’t know how satisfying they’d be, you might burn more calories opening all the wrappers than you’ll take in from the treats.

I expect they’ll start showing up in stores soon (they pretty much debuted at the All Candy Expo). If they came in large bags they could be fun Halloween treats. (You can buy a box of singles through their phone order system.)

Check out Sera’s review on Candy Addict.

Related Candies

1. Circus Peanuts
2. Peeps Mash Ups
3. Candy Source: Aji Ichiban
4. Brachs Bunny Basket Eggs
5. Artisan Marshmallows: Plush Puffs

At All Candy Expo the Hershey’s booth was highlighting their international flair in one corner giving out all sorts of Asian Kisses (a candy, not a different version of French Kisses) and bars. It’s nice to feel so global and try them, but of course I wanted to know what we could get here in North America.

The Hot Cocoa Creme Kiss is the newest edition to the celebratory line of Limited Edition Kisses marking the 100th anniversary of the confection. I’m not sure if they’re coming out with 100 versions or not, they may be getting close.

These molded Kisses sport light gold wrappers with gold wigglies on them. The little flag says Hot Cocoa instead of Hershey’s Kisses.

I wasn’t really sure what they were and the young woman at the Hershey’s booth was really no help, but I snagged a cup of coffee and a few handfuls to take back to the Candy Blog labs to see if I could answer the questions myself.

Inside is a chocolate creme, not unlike the Chocolate Truffle Kiss (now a regular item) creme. Except this one was a little lighter in flavor, perhaps a touch of malt-taste and a little saltier. In fact, they are saltier than the Truffle Kiss, which has 45 mgs of salt per serving. The Hot Cocoa Kiss has 55 mgs of salt per serving. Just enough to be perceptible.

They don’t do much for me. I think they’re pretty, but I certainly wouldn’t buy them. These are available in stores now (I saw them in Walgreen’s over the weekend).

The ones that Sera and I were most excited about were the Matcha (Green Tea) Kisses that they had out for two days. They sport a green foil wrapper with darker green squiggly stripes.

I don’t know what they’re really called, as the little flag on them just said Hershey’s Kisses. They smell like jasmine. The chocolate is sweet as is the creme center. The creme is distinctly salty at first, then develops into a grassy, green tea melody. Then comes the harsh truth of matcha ... a strong bitter note at the end that’s barely cut by the sticky sweetness of the rest of the Kiss.

I found them interesting, again, a novelty that I don’t know that I’d want to eat regularly. If I’m going to have something Matcha, I’m probably going to go upscale.

The other Kiss they were offering samples of was a Strawberry Creme Kiss. Again, I’m not sure if it’s the right name as the little flag didn’t say. The pink foil wrapper already smelled of strawberry. Like strawberry ice cream. The chocolate is sweet and the creme center had a nice authentic taste of strawberries. This center was, as well, a bit on the salty side. I kind of liked how that helped to focus the strawberry flavor.

The strawberry wasn’t terribly strong and on some of them I missed it completely. It certainly tasted better than some of the other strawberry flavored efforts Hershey’s has put forth in the past (but I admit that I liked the white chocolate Raspberry bar they did). Since I was pretty fond of the strawberry and chocolate ice cream from the Neapolitan mixes, this felt familiar and friendly.

Other Limited Edition Kisses you might see around, these may not have shown up yet or may have come and gone. I doubt I’ll try them all, but feel free to pipe up in the comments if you think they’re worthy:

And if you want photographic evidence of many of these, visit Zoe’s Kiss Collection.

Related Candies

1. Hershey’s Mint Truffle Kisses
2. Candy Corn Kisses
3. Kisses Coconut Creme
4. Kisses Chocolate Truffles
5. The Mint Kisses: Chocolate Mint & Candy Cane
6. Peanut Butter Kisses
7. Cherry Cordial Creme Kisses
8. Head to Head: Rolo vs Caramel Kisses
9. Short & Sweet: Caramello /  Mega M&Ms / Orange Kisses

One the much anticipated Limited Edition items at the All Candy Expo (at least for me) was the new Java Twix.

The cookie and caramel covered in chocolate combination is pretty flexible and creating new versions of this doesn’t mess with the essential Twix-ness (just like there are many different cream and chocolate variations for the KitKat).

I’ve been searching for a good coffee flavored candy bar for years, for a country so obsessed with coffee it’s rather surprising that we don’t have one. (Yes, I’m aware of the Coffee Crisp and it just doesn’t do it for me.)

The bar is the standard construction: a chocolate cookie with a stripe of coffee-flavored caramel covered in milk chocolate.

It smells sweet and a bit like caramel and graham crackers but not much like coffee at first.

Once broken in half and the caramel revealed it has a pleasant roasted-coffee aroma. The caramel is a bit salty with an actual authentic-tasting coffee flavor to it (in addition to the natural and artificial flavors they list espresso ground coffee as an ingredient). The chocolate cookie is crumbly and crunchy with it’s own salty contribution. The milk chocolate on the outside is super sweet but pulls it together.

I didn’t like the bar much when I first tried it out on the floor (I split a package with Ginny). But I have to admit that it was day two and I’d really only been eating candy for 36 hours (except for an awesome pile of shrimp at a party the night before).

But with the clarity of a lone bar on my desk without the clutter of a gagillion other flavors in my mouth and a billion other conversations flitting by on the show floor ... I really like this bar. I think it’s the best Twix bar I’ve ever had. Yes, it’s still a little sweet for me, but in combination with some nearly black coffee, it’s growing on me.

You can expect these to start showing up later this year (reported release date is December 2007). In other news, if you were a fan of the Triple Chocolate Twix, it’s actually back in the miniature form. Mars released a few “autumn mixes” this year (that included the Vanilla, Strawberry & Mocha 3 Musketeers). The Twix one has regular Twix, Twix Dark Chocolate and Twix Triple Chocolate. I found them at RiteAid in the Halloween candy aisle.

I hope the Twix Java at least finds its way into a seasonal bag ... and in dark chocolate please!

UPDATE 9/29/2009: Mars has announced that TWIX Java will become part of their permanent line of candies. You can expect them in stores starting in April 2010.

Related Candies

1. Candy Teases - New Products
2. Trader Joe’s Espresso Chocolate
3. Twix PB
4. Twix Triple Chocolate
5. Coffee Beat

Oh, disappointment.

I had high hopes for the Reese’s Whipps bar. The bar goes something like this: light and fluffy peanut butter flavored nougat wrapped in a layer of peanut butter then coated in mockolate. Okay, I’m not completely certain it is mockolate, as the ingredients include chocolate, but it’s so low on the list, I have my doubts. Especially since they don’t list it as part of the description of the bar and say that this element is “Made with Smooth Chocolate.” Whether it is or not is immaterial because it’s flaky and not that good.

The bar is hefty at 1.9 ounces, just a little smaller than a 3 Musketeers (2.12 ounces) and wrapped in that unmistakable Reese’s orange.

A little blue triangle in the corner heralds that this bar has 40% less fat*. That * leads to the disclaimer that it contains 9 grams of fat versus 15 grams of fat for the average leading chocolate candy brands. I really want to know what they consider the leading chocolate candy brands, which I’m guessing are M&Ms, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Snickers and Hershey Bars. The bar itself has 230 calories. But I’ll rant about that more a bit later.

The bar looks just like the wrapper promises. It smells lightly sweet and peanutty. The bite on the bar is soft, not stiff. The nougat inside has an immediate peanut butter flavor to it with a little salt and a kind of molasses darkness.

The peanut butter layer around that gives a little extra peanutty zazz to it. The mockolate adds nothing. It gives no chocolatey contribution to the thing, no creamy component, no milky, buttery texture. It merely contains the other two elements, that are actually pretty good. The only good thing about the glaze is that it’s used sparingly ... it’s ultra thin. You could probably shine a light through it.

Yes, with a good coating of real chocolate (like a 3 Musketeers), this could have been a standout bar.

But I guess my real disappointment is that they’ve grabbed a play from the book of 3 Musketeers and are calling it “lower in fat” without mentioning on the front that it contains pretty much the same number of calories as any other candy bar. I’ve made a little list of the size, calories and caloric density of the leading bars, arranged with the least dense at the top. Pay careful attention to the number of calories though, even if it’s not dense, it’s certainly big:

Candy Bar…..............size in grams….calories/cals per gram
York Peppermint Pattie…....39 grams…................140/3.59
3 Musketeers…..............60.4 grams…..............260/4.30
Reese’s Whipps…............53 grams…................230/4.34
M&Ms Peanut…...............49 grams…................220/4.49
Butterfinger…..............60 grams…................270/4.50
Snickers…..................58.7 grams…..............280/4.77
Reese’s Crispy Crunchy…....48 grams…................230/4.79
KitKat ......................43 grams…................210/4.88
Twix…......................57 grams…................280/4.91
Hersey’s Milk Chocolate…...60 grams…................300/5.00
M&Ms Milk Chocolate .........48 grams…................240/5.00
Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups…51 grams…................260/5.10

It’s pretty clear that the York Peppermint Pattie is the candy to have if you want straight carbs (no fat, no protein). 3 Musketeers does pretty well as does the Whipps, but remember, if there’s no fat and no protein it’s all sugars. While I find sugar to be wonderful, straight sugar doesn’t really provide much long-lasting satisfaction if you’re looking for a snack that’s a treat.

That chart means nothing if you don’t actually like the candy bar though. And this bar proves that Hershey’s does not need the FDA to change the definition of chocolate, they’re free to make a substandard product and try to sell it to us. Yeah, I’m probably been pretty harsh, but this could have been a really good bar.

Shopping Jen found these at WalMart already and has a review posted here. I also saw these this weekend at Walgreen’s (at two for a dollar!), so they’re in the wild now.

Related Candies

1. Factory Fresh Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
2. What Made Hershey’s Want to Change Chocolate?
3. Reese’s Crispy Crunchy Bar
4. Head-to-Head: Butterfinger vs. 5th Avenue