Candy Blog

My European candy blogging friends latched onto a new product last year, the Peanut M&Ms Intense 65% Cacao which are made in France but sold in quite a few European countries. When I had the opportunity to do a candy swap with Kristian at CandyBrain.de, this was on my wishlist of items.

I have to admit that the United States has the most diverse selection of M&MS, and we’ve even had Dark Chocolate Peanut M&Ms in stores before. So, I was mightily surprised to see that France got 65% cacao M&Ms before we did.

The bag is pretty big, with 9 ounces in a stand up gusset package. Instead of the zip top that many snack sized packages are getting the US, this on has a little sticker on the back you can peel off to use to hold it closed after you roll the top down.

The color variety for these is interesting. I looked at the ingredient panel to check if these were all natural, and it appears that it’s nearly so. I looked up all the colorings and found the following listed:

e100 is Turmeric, a yellow-orange dye (derived from plants)
e120 is Carmine, a red dye (derived from insects)
e132 is Indigo Carmine, a blue dye (derived from plants)
e133 is Brilliant Blue, a blue dye (synthetic)
e160e is Apocarotenal, a red-orange dye (derived from plants)
e162 is Beetroot Red, a purple dye (derived from plants)
e171 is Titanium dioxide, a white pigment (derived from minerals)

Here’s the weird thing about the coloring used on the shells. I could tell what some of the colors were without looking by the taste. The red one had a banana note and the orange one had a hint of curry.

The shell is quite the same as in the US version. It’s crunchy and not too thick but doesn’t crack easily. They smell nicely of cocoa and a hint of roasted peanuts. The chocolate inside is quite dark, with an immediate bitter note and a little bit of a dry undertone. It’s creamy and a little chalky but not in a grainy way. The peanuts however, were weird. I found most of mine were over-roasted, too dark, bitter and just plain ... well, not right. Maybe they’re not American peanuts, which I admit I’m quite acclimated to.

I wanted to like these more than I did, though I had no trouble eating them all. Of course the fact that they’re not available in the United States solves any issues I’d have if I did love them a little too much. Now ... maybe if they started putting Marcona almonds or Hazelnuts in there along with the dark chocolate ... then we might have something that would drive me to order from eBay regularly. I would be even better if the M&Ms World Stores would stock these international versions.

Some other reviews in the local territories:
CandyBrain (German)
Frau Shopping (German)
Grocery Gems (UK)
Foodstuff Finds (UK)

Related Candies

1. Sugarfina: The Chocolates
2. UNREAL #41 & #54 Candy Coated Chocolates
3. Crispy M&Ms
4. William diCarlo Perle di dolcezza
5. M&Ms Premiums: Dark Chocolate
6. Boston Baked Beans
7. Dark Chocolate Peanut M&Ms

Walgreen’s has a house brand of candy called Good & Delish which includes bars, chocolate clusters, mints, chocolate sticks and Belgian chocolate gems.

One of the items I’ve been eying for almost a year are the Good & Delish Milk Chocolate Maple Cream Charms. It’s hard to find good maple creams; my favorites were once the See’s Maple Cream, but now that my walnut allergy has developed, they’re off my list of edibles. It seems like these Maple Cream Charms are too good to be true. They were on sale for $2.99 for an 8 ounce bag. The ingredients looked good: real milk chocolate, real vanilla and whole milk without any weird fillers.

I was a little concerned that they were just going to be a sticky mass inside the bag, however, they’re individually wrapped. They’re even marked, so you could buy several bags of different candies from this line and be able to mix them in a candy dish and still be completely sanitary.

The pieces are nicely domed and a little over an inch at the base and an inch tall. They’re each about a half an ounce and come in at 75 calories each.

They don’t smell like much other than sweet. I didn’t get any maple hints, but perhaps a more woodsy note to the milk chocolate.

The filling is only lightly tinted on the caramel side. The fondant (made with egg whites) is soft and slight grainy. But there’s no hint of maple, only sweetness. It’s more sweet than possible for the size of the candy. The milk chocolate is similarly sweet but at least has the light milk notes, though not much in the way of cocoa flavors.

They’re terribly disappointing, given the packaging and the ingredients. I guess I shouldn’t have expected so much for a candy that’s only $8.00 per pound at regular price.

I was thinking these were also made by Harry London like the Cornflake Clusters, but they have a different Kosher certification, so now I’m stumped. It could be Bloomer’s in Ohio, which also does all natural chocolates at quite an affordable price. It appears that there are a lot of different sources for the Good and Delish line, so it’s hard give the brand my full confidence. Some of the Belgian bars and treats I also recognize from good companies as well, like their Belgian Crisps (they look like Pringles made out of chocolate).

Here’s another review: Hunting for the Very Best: Delish is Delish

Have you tried anything else from the Walgreen’s Good & Delish line you’d like to recommend or steer others away from?

Related Candies

1. Walgreen’s Good and Delish Milk Chocolate Cornflake Clusters
2. Zitners: Butter Krak, Peanut Butter, Double Cocoanut & Butter Cream Eggs
3. Brach’s Maple Nut Goodies
4. Cream Drops versus Creme Drops
5. Caramilk Maple

Candy Crush is a line of candy based on a game based on candy. Got that?

The candies are licensed by King.com and made by Healthy Food Brands, which also makes the Angry Birds gummi candies (snacks) and licenses the Sunkist brand as well.

The initial offerings for the Candy Crush line are: Candy Crush Sour Fruit Gummies, Fruit Mix Gummies, Jelly Fish and Color Bombs.

Earlier this week I reviewed the Gummies and Color Bombs, today I have the Candy Crush Jelly Fish.

Like the other candies, the boxes are big but they contain very little. They’re 7” x 4.25” - which is bigger than the more typical theater box that you’d see from Mike and Ike, Hot Tamales or Starburst, which are about 6” x 3.25” and holds 4-6 ounces. The Candy Crush line gives you between 3 ounces and 3.5 ounces in each box. I can’t fault the graphic design though. They’re bold and easy to tell apart but also easy to spot from a distance. The happy mermaid character on the front and depiction of the candy is great. At first I didn’t like package artwork but they grew on me this week.

Here’s the weird thing that you might notice right away. The flavor set listed on the box for the Jelly Fish is exactly the same as the Gummies: Blue Raspberry, Lemon, Lime, Cherry, Orange, Grape. I thought this was a great selling point, because Swedish Fish only come in four flavors. So this would be a similar candy with a different flavor variety. However, it’s pretty clear that the colors are Orange, Yellow, Green and Red. I thought maybe I didn’t get a full variety, but checking the Dylan’s Candy Bar website (which says it’s selling them exclusively in the first few weeks of the roll-out), I saw that they had the exact same description but still only showed the four colors.

The fish are soft with a matte finish to them. They didn’t stick together, but tended to tear and break when bent instead of just, well, bending. My assortment was in perfect ratios - four of each.

Red is Swedish Fish (Lingonberry) - lovely, sweet, floral and jammy. They’re soft and chewy and maybe stick a bit to my teeth.

Green is Lime - this is a dying flavor, so it’s rather strange to get it in a box (especially one that says that it’s going to be green apple). Tangy, zesty. Done.

Yellow is Lemon - a well rounded lemon flavor, a little on the zesty side without much of a tangy note.

Orange is Orange - this was good. Zesty, sweet with a hint of juicy tartness.

Even though the candies were purchased four days after their announced release, came in a sealed pouch inside a sealed box, they seemed a bit stale. Three of my fish were broken. Yes, jelly fish that were broken. They weren’t different from Swedish Fish. I love Swedish Fish, but there’s really no reason for me to buy these instead of Swedish Fish.

They’re expensive. Only 16 fish in the box. This is a sugar candy, not made with organic ingredients or all natural flavorings, yet it’s more than $22 per pound. It’s not even a unique set of flavors like it promised on the front of the box ... there’s no grape! (Which is missed by many in the Assorted Swedish Fish world.) The Mixed Fruit Gummies and Sour Gummies were at least in themed shapes that matched the game. These Jelly Fish had nothing about them that indicated they were anything other than a repacked existing product. Swedish Fish have either Swedish or Malaaco on them. Albanese Gummi Bears have a little A on their bellies. These have nothing that says anything other than generic. (Okay, I do recognize that in the game they don’t actually have a name on them either. But Jelly Bellies and M&Ms have little brands on them as well.)

For the entire Candy Crush line I can only say I’m disappointed. There’s really nothing here that’s new or innovative and since they’re more expensive than many other candies of similar quality, I can only surmise that the premium goes to the licensing fee.

Related Candies

1. Candy Crush Color Bombs
2. Candy Crush: Mixed Fruit and Sour Gummies
3. Swedish Fish Eggs
4. All Gummies Gourmet Fruity Fish (Swedish Fish knock-off)
5. Gummy Fishies
6. Swedish Aqua Life

Candy Crush Saga is one of the popular tablet/phone games on the market right now. The concept is simple, you just move one “candy” match three or more of the same “candies” in a row to eliminate them from the board.

Since the game is candy-themed, it’s only natural that someone would get a license to develop a line of candy to go along with it. King.com granted its license to Healthy Food Brands, who already makes the Angry Birds gummies in stores now. The initial offerings for the Candy Crush line are: Candy Crush Sour Fruit Gummies, Fruit Mix Gummies, Jelly Fish and Color Bombs. Yesterday I reviewed the two gummies, today I have the Candy Crush Color Bombs.

The box for the Color Bombs features some sort of a horse creature (or maybe that’s a dinosaur), the package describes them as Chocolaty Drops with Rainbow Sprinkles. Note that it doesn’t say that they’re chocolate, which is disappointing. The box was $4.00 (though the retail price on the press release says they’re supposed to be $1.99) and it only holds 3 ounces. It’s a really big box for such as small amount of candy. It’s 7 inches long and 4.25 inches wide. I compared it to the more standard Mike and Ike box which was 6 inches by 3.25 and holds 5 ounces. The candies in this line are also inside a white plastic pouch inside the box. For freshness. But it highlights the fact that the candy only takes up one third of the volume of the box.

Sugar, assorted nonpareils (sugar, corn starch, confectioners glaze, red 40, yellow 5, yellow 6, blue 1, carnauba wax), hydrogenated palm kernel oil, whey protein concentrate (milk), cocoa powder, chocolate liquor, cocoa powder processed with alkali, soy lecithin, natural flavor.

For a company that’s making Better for You Confections, that’s a lot of stuff that’s not chocolate in a chocolate confection.

The drops are about 3/4 of an inch across. They’re covered in nonpareils in orange, white, yellow, blue and purple. It’s a festive look, though you can imagine that some come off in transit so the bottom of the bag is a rather substantial puddle of maddeningly rolly sprinkles.

They’re sweet and have a comforting cocoa flavor to them. It’s like eating a paste made from hot cocoa mix. There’s a cardboard note to it and the crunchies add even more sweetness. The melt isn’t much, it becomes fudgy but never smooth. They’re passable for decorations, but not something I would ever spend my own money on for actual eating.

So, they’re chocolate flavored disks with colorful nonpareils ... that cost over $21.00 for a pound. There are some excellent, beautiful chocolates available at that price that taste terrific, are sourced well and have exceptional ingredients. They might not come in a box that references a game, but they’re probably more satisfying. (If you must, buy this box and then refill it with something good, heck, I bought some Ghirardelli 60% cacao chocolate chips for $2.49 for 12 ounces at Target over the weekend, they’d fit well in here. Or if you must go colorful, Nuts.com has some semi-sweet buttons with colorful crunchies for only $6.00 a pound.)

In short, a dismal disappointment. Bad ingredients, deceptive package size and just regrettable candy. Probably not unlike the feeling of accomplishment when you finish a level of one of these video games ...sure, you finished it, but how satisfying was it really?

Related Candies

1. Candy Crush Jelly Fish
2. Candy Crush: Mixed Fruit and Sour Gummies
3. Klondike Mint Chocolate Chip: The Candy!
4. Sockerbit Swedish Candy Selections
5. Six Kilos of Felchlin Arriba 72% Chocolate
6. Tjerrild Flicks
7. Nestle Toll House Mint Holiday Gems
8. Sno-Caps, Goobers & Raisinets
9. Krunchy Bears

One of the most popular tablet and phone games is Candy Crush Saga, which is a variation on the “match 3 on a grid” style of timed puzzle games. (I was a fan of Bejeweled when it first came out.) The overriding theme, of course, with Candy Crush is the fact that it’s candy-themed. Why didn’t they come out with this a year ago?

The game has finally been licensed for actual eating instead of just virtual play by King.com to Healthy Food Brands. The launch of the candy line includes four varieties: Candy Crush Sour Fruit Gummies, Fruit Mix Gummies, Jelly Fish and Color Bombs. They come packaged in boxes, with between 3 and 3.5 ounces in each. I picked mine up at Dylan’s Candy Bar where they’re priced at $4.00 a box.

The design of the box is trippy and colorful, matching the design elements of the game very well along with more animated characters on each box. Today I’ll review the Gummies together (the others later this week).

The Candy Crush Mixed Fruit Gummies box features a colorful unicorn on the front. There gummi flavors are: Blue Raspberry, Green Apple, Lemon, Cherry, Orange and Grape. Each of the candies, as you’d imagine, relates to a candy piece within the game.

The gummis are soft with a bit of a matte finish to them. Most are about 1/2 an inch in diameter, with the red ones clocking in at almost one inch.

I don’t know what the pieces are supposed to be in the game, if they have names or represent some sort of real world candy.

Orange Oval is orange. It’s mild and ordinary. It’s a soft chew with a nice balance of zest, juice and tartness.

Green Cube is green apple and it’s completely weird. It tastes rather ... grassy. There are the apple juice notes and less of the fake Jolly Rancher flavor to it, but mostly it was weird. It was also inconsistently sized. Some were cubist, some were flat.

Purple Berry is grape. The shape indicates it should be raspberry, but the flavor is definitely grape, as in grape soda. Nice, not too dense and artificial but a note of the colorings does taint it with a bit of a metallic note.

Yellow Drops are lemon. These are nice, well rounded with a lot of zest, a zing of tartness and just a little sweet lemon poundcake note.

Red Stripes are cherry. Well done black cherry. It’s much more intense than the orange or purple flavors, a better gummi version of Life Savers than the Life Savers gummis.

Blue Dots are blue raspberry. This is quite nice, they’re understated and rich. There’s a floral note to begin with, then a sort of black-tea seediness that really sells the berry flavors. They’re a little tart, so it’s kind of jammy. I’m not usually a fan of the blue varieties of raspberry, but this one is good.

The gummis are good, the flavor variety is different from the standard Haribo or Life Savers gummi combination, so there’s that going for it. The pieces are quite small, so you can get quite a few flavor combinations in a single handful if you’re into that.

The Candy Crush Sour Fruit Gummies are just a sour sanded version of the fruit mix. The flavor variety is the same: Blue Raspberry, Green Apple, Lemon, Cherry, Orange and Grape. This box has a green theme and a friendly alligator on the front.

(Nope, there are no plays on this game board.)

Orange Oval is orange. Sour orange is actually less flavorful than the regular one. It seems less about the zest flavors are more about Tang.

Green Cube is green apple. It’s hard to say much about these since I only had two of them in my bag. They have the same weird grassy flavor combined with apple juice but this time it’s quite sour to start then too sweet at the finish.

Purple Berry is grape. Shazaam! These are a curious little, poppable version of grape soda.

Yellow Drops are lemon. These retain all of their zest but get the extra zing of the sour sand. Very well done without being too acidic.

Red Stripes are cherry. These are quite tart, which brings out more of the wild cherry flavors and less of the dark berry notes of the black cherry. (As if there’s much of a difference.)

Blue Dots are blue raspberry. The seed flavor that’s kind of like iced tea doesn’t quite work in the super sour version. It’s still floral and tart, but towards the end it gets into something that’s trying to be sincere but just feels sarcastic. It’s too sweet with a sort of vanilla note to balance with the earlier tartness.

Of the two candies, I preferred the Mixed Fruit. The sours just weren’t as good as many other sour gummis I’ve had. As far as whether or not they meet my expectations of what the candy from the game should be, I kind of though the candy pieces were different kinds of candy - that some were like Runts, others hard candies and some might be jelly beans.

According to their website, Healthy Food Brands is the international marketer of “better for you” confections and chocolate products. The Candy Crush Fruit Gummis are made with white grape juice from concentrate, along with sugar and corn syrup, a touch of sorbitol (a sugar alcohol that bulks up the product but adds less sweetness than sugar) and a bunch of artificial colors and flavors. They’re made in Mexico.

This isn’t the first game-app-themed gummi I’ve tried from Healthy Food Brands, as they also make the officially licensed Angry Birds Gummis. Those packages were also made in Mexico but marked as peanut free and gluten free. I don’t know why this product couldn’t also qualify for that notification. There’s actually no allergen statement at all on the package. If you have questions, they list only a mailing address… no email, no website. Not exactly what I’d say fulfills something called a healthy brand.

Related Candies

1. Candy Crush Jelly Fish
2. Candy Crush Color Bombs
3. Haribo The Smurfs Gummi
4. Angry Birds Fruit Gummies
5. Sky Bar Twilight Saga - Eclipse
6. Au’some Snerdles Super Mario Power Up Box
7. Sunkist Fruit Gummies
8. Wii Candy Dispenser & Nintendo Gummis