Candy Blog

Haribo Maoam have been around for a long time. The early history is a bit murky, but according to Haribo, Edmund Munster (not this one), who ran the Düsseldorfer Lakritzenwerk (Dusseldorf Licorice Works) bought the license for the chewy, fruity candy Maoam and began making it in Germany.

It was packaged as a penny candy, an impulse item with bold, colorful wax paper wrappings in popular flavors like Lemon, Strawberry, Pineapple, Orange and Raspberry. In 1986 Haribo bought the Edmund Münster company and began making the already iconic Maoam fruit chews.

After 80 years on the market, Maoam sweets are found in a variety of formats and features packaging designed to appeal to children (though plenty of adults are fans). They’re sold around the world. The most common packages are probably the Maoam Minis which is a long package that looks like a bar but is actually five different packets of individual flavors. The current flavor set includes: Cola, Orange, Lemon, Apple, Cherry and Raspberry.

One of the funnest parts of Maoam sweets is how outrage pops up every once in a while about the supposedly suggestive characters on the packages.

There’s a lot of packaging in a Maoam packet. Each piece is individually wrapped, then packaged together in a little stack of five for each flavor, then another cellophane over-wrap. This leaves plenty of evidence that you’ve been eating candy (though the wax papers are mercifully quieter than the cellophane).

Orange They are small, about the same mass as a Starburst. Though the packages are colored, the candies themselves are only lightly tinted. The chew is soft and bouncy. I’d call it a cross between Starburst and HiCHEW. They’re even a little creamy. The orange is a bit like a Creamsicle. It’s a soft orange flavor, not overly zesty, more on the juice side of flavor with a nice zap of tang to it.

Cola is glorious. I would marry these. It’s kind of weird once they’re unwrapped because the candies are white (remember Pepsi Clear?). The flavor is great, it’s a little nutty, creamy but with a snap of lime and that cola flavor. There’s tartness to it and even a feeling of effervescence since there are little tangy spots that give a little jolt of flavor while chewing.

Lemon is tart and smooth without much lemon peel essence to it. They’re quite tasty and have just a hint of a yogurt note to them.

Cherry is a really interesting flavor. It’s different from American black cherry (like Life Savers). It’s dark and woodsy, but also quite tangy and has a little bit of a caustic medicinal flavor to me. There’s no coloring in it, so I can’t complain about that weird aftertaste I get so often.

Raspberry is very fragrant and nuanced. All the notes are there: the perfume, the seeds and the boiled jam.

Maoam sweets come in a bunch of different formats and a few other flavors that I didn’t cover with the minis.

I picked up this bag of Haribo Maoam Mixx which features a variety of little individually wrapped items. The main character on the front of the package is the Maoam mascot, a big green blob with a hat and riding a bicycle. (He’s the one who cavorts with the fruits on the packages. His character was introduced in 2002.

This bag cost 2 Euros and holds 400 grams (a little over 14 ounces). There’s a lot of variety.

Stripes are little flat taffy, 7 gram pieces. In this package I got a Green Apple version which wasn’t in the little block pack. The flavor is quite American at first, rather artificial, but after the tartness fades away, there’s a realistic apple peel/juice flavor that dominates. I also found a few Strawberry in this shape. They even had little pink flecks in them which tasted just like little bits of dried strawberry. A very realistic flavor and long lasting, smooth chew.

ChewTwo was another version of the Stripes that’s packaged in clear plastic to see that there are two flavors side by side. In this instance they were colored (or else it wouldn’t be very impressive looking to have two slightly different versions of not white).

Joystixx are long pieces, kind of like the Tootsie Roll Sticks. They’re probably double the mass of the little squares. In this form, they’re easy to bite, or take two different flavors and twist them together for a combo.

Pinballs are more than just a shape change. These are slightly fluffier balls of the chewy then coated in a candy shell. Think of them like an easier-to-chew fruit Mentos or giant fluffy Skittle. The flavor was interesting also because the candy shell had little crystals inside, mostly sugar but occasionally a zap of tart flavor. I could have sworn a few of the yellow ones were pineapple, not Lemon. In some cases the candy shell made them sweeter, and of course grainier. I enjoyed the variation in the texture with the shell, but not the graininess.

There were also individually twist wrapped pieces, I think they’re called Happy Fruttis.

I had no idea that Maoam were so good. I’ve seen them a few times before, and tried a few Pinballs but didn’t realize that the regular chews were so flavorful. They are different from other candies in this category too. They’re a softer chew than Starburst or Mamba and not quite as bouncy or smooth as HiCHEW. Also, if you’re a parent looking for a candy without artificial colors, this is a good kid-friendly option. (Though they’re not exactly all natural.) They do contain gelatin, so they’re not appropriate for vegetarians and those who keep Kosher/Halal.

Related Candies

1. Eat with your Eyes: Haribo Cola Wheel
2. Haribo Happy Cola
3. Fresh Cola Mentos
4. Mamba Sours
5. Starburst Berries & Creme and Fruit & Creme
6. Starburst
7. HiCHEW Assortment
8. Ramune & Cola Bubble Ball
9. Storck Mamba Chews

Here’s what I’m giving out for Halloween this year. I decided that it was more important to take a stand against child slavery in West Africa than give out the most loved objects of Halloween, such as Snickers and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Hershey’s, Nestle and Mars have had more than 10 years to assure consumers that they’re not buying from growers that enslave children on their cacao plantations. When they have, then I’ll start giving it out to children.

So to avoid this issue completely I bought sugar candy - that is, candy made without chocolate.

Airheads - multiple flavors of chewy fruity flavors. Made in Kentucky, USA.
Chick-O-Stick Nuggets - peanut butter flaky goodness. Made in Texas, USA.
Annabelle’s Abba Zabba & Big Hunk - nutty nougat. Made in California, USA (by union labor).

What I lack in chocolate, I’ll likely make up for with quantity and variety. We usually only get between 25 and 40 visitors. With more than 300 pieces of candy, each kid gets a heaping adult-dispensed handful. And it won’t melt. (Yes, it’s still in the 80s here this week in Los Angeles.)

So what are you giving out for Halloween this year?

Related Candies

1. Look! and Big Hunk
2. Airheads
3. Abba Zaba
4. Chick-o-Stick

This is not so much a review as a recounting of an ongoing chocolate Odyssey.

I regularly watch the eBay candy auctions. And when I say regularly, I actually check the pages several times a day during the week. Partly to spy new candy products, partly to find international candies that are hard to get in the US, partly to find deals and partly to squash folks who like to use Candy Blog photos for their auctions without asking.

About a month ago I saw a new auction pop up for someone selling 13.2 pounds of Felchlin Swiss Couverture chocolate coins of Grand Cru Arriba 72% Cocoa (conched 72 hours).

The auction was priced at $95 and included local Los Angeles delivery. I bid. I won.

Because it’s for use as an ingredient, it’s packaged modestly. The mini case holds three bags. Each bag is 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds). I pulled out one bag for immediate enjoyment and put the other two, inside the box, into the bottom of my wine fridge. (Okay, I’d probably call it a chocolate fridge, which keeps everything at 58 degrees.)

Each little coin is about 3/4 of an inch around and has a set of embossed cacao pods on it. They’re kind of scuffed up, as they come in a bag like chocolate chips. They work as extra large baking chips but function better as eating chocolate. At this writing I am finishing up the first bag. I’ve made one batch of chocolate pudding, one small batch of Chocolate Hazelnut Rocher (meringues from a recipe from Tartine) and the rest has simply been eaten.

The disks fit in the mouth wonderfully, especially if you’re the kind of person who likes to let their chocolate melt. (Put two together to create an oblate spheroid and they’re doubly good.) The flavor is exceptionally well rounded, there is no dominant flavor though I get notes of molasses, honey, coffee and raspberry jam sometimes. 

As noted above, this is a 72 hour conch. Conching is the process of both mixing and grinding chocolate over low heat. The longer the processing the smaller the grain size of the cacao bits and the more emulsified the chocolate becomes. This process varies in time depending on what the cacao is like and the necessities of the final product. It can be anywhere from 24 hours to 100 hours. The grinding part is done with either stones or metal rollers.

This long conch also allows Felchlin to make an uncompromising chocolate without emulsifiers. So all that’s in there is cacao mass, sugar and vanilla. (So if you must avoid soy, try this.) It’s also creamy without cream. (So if you’re a vegan, try this.) It’s made from Criollo beans from the Los Rios area of Ecuador.

Earlier this year I got to try a great example of how important conching is. When I was in Germany at ISM Cologne, one of my favorite chocolate companies, Coppeneur gave me this box of two chocolate bars. They were both made from highly prized Chuao beans (review of those bars here) but inside this box were two versions - one that was conched 70 hours and one that was conched 100 hours. The difference is quite remarkable. The longer a bar is conched, the silkier it becomes.

What I’ve learned is that I love long conched chocolate. It’s so smooth that the texture itself becomes like a flavor because it’s simply so forward in the experience.

I’m not sure why the local gal was auctioning the bulk lots of chocolate, but I did find out that she runs a local chocolate catering company called Chocolate by M. She was kind enough to leave me with these huge nonpareils along with the delivery. The photo might make them look small, but they’re huge 3 inch platters of dark chocolate (I don’t know if it’s the same as the Felchlin 72%) with a dense sprinkling of nonpareils on the bottom.

It’s just one easy idea of what I could do with my bevvy of chocolate.

Mostly what I think I’m going to do with my chocolate stash though is eat it. It’s incredibly munchable but also exceptionally intense. I’ve found that I can’t make it an evening snack as there are too many caffeine-like compounds in there that keep me up at night. But I’ve found that it’s a great treat during the day while I work, I’ve been keeping a little dish of them on my desk and probably eat about an ounce of them a day. They’re filling and sustaining.

But maybe the last bag will make it to December and I’ll end up making chocolate truffles for Christmas.

I saw these little candies making the rounds as a meme, but I didn’t see them in person until I went to Germany.

It’s a Swiss hazelnut chocolate confection shaped into a pocket knife and wrapped in red foil to look like a Swiss Army Knife.

The Mindestens Swiss Chocolate Knife is a pretty simple little candy. The center is soft gianduia (chocolate hazelnut paste) and covered with milk chocolate. It’s sweet and soft, nothing spectacular, as I’ve had much better gianduia before. But it’s hard to quibble with the design, as both the foil and the molding of the chocolate is so attentive to details. Seek them out if you have a Swiss Army Knife fan in the family.

Jordan Almonds are one of the oldest confections. Panning nuts with a hard sugar shell is not only a beautiful way to serve nuts, it also seals the nuts up so that they don’t get rancid.

I picked up this cheap box at Rite Aid a few weeks ago because it was on sale for 75 cents but it’s not the first time I’ve purchased them. I picked them up on sale before, about three years ago when I took these photos. No, the packaging hasn’t changed. In fact, the copyright on the box says 1999 (but the expiration date for this box was December 2011).

I’ve never heard of the brand La Pone which is a division of Kings Candy Company. But I figured Jordan Almonds are all kinda the same.

I was encouraged that these were Thin Shell, as sometimes the sugar coating is so thick as to scare me that it’s really a candy encased rock.

The sugar coated almonds come in a variety of soft pastel colors: pink, yellow, orange and green plus a bright pink. They’re shiny and huge. At first I thought it was because the almonds were really big, but it turns out that the shell is really thick. So thick that I have to wonder what their regular non-“Thin Shell” version is like.

They were hard, definitely not something to just mindlessly crunch away at. The shell is sweet, but not sticky or sickly. The nuts are fresh and chewy but not quite crunchy. I didn’t get any fake flavors like a lot of vanilla or almond extract, though an unnamed artificial flavor is on the ingredients.

The shell made me nervous, and I’m not good at sucking on things until I can crunch them. They’re pretty cheap, even at regular price which seems to be about $1.25 when I’ve seen them. It’s a nice snack that cuts down on the overall calorie load of plain nuts (almonds area bout 160 calories per ounce, these are 127 calories per ounce). The shell definitely kept me from gobbling them up too quickly.

The colors are inoffensive. This sort of packaging isn’t quite right for weddings or favors, but as a sort of way to bring back that wedding feeling they’ll do in a pinch.

(Also of concern in the ingredients is flour, so this is off limits for gluten free folks. They’re Kosher and otherwise vegan as long as you’re good with artificial colors and titanium dioxide.)

Related Candies

1. Eat with your Eyes: Maison Pecou Jordan Almonds
2. Marich All Natural Holland Mints & Chocolate Jordan Almonds
3. Sconza Jordanettes
4. Romanego Dragees, Cordials & Fondants
5. Confetti & Agrumetti