There are quite a few of these puffed plastic hearts filled with candy at the stores. The shelves are packed with them. You can get plastic hearts filled with Skittles, Kissables, Reese’s Pieces ... anything that comes in little morsels.

I decided to go a bit further afield and chose a product that didn’t contain a big brand name candy. This SpongeBob SquarePants embossed heart holds Yogurt Covered Raisins (and stickers). The little saying that you can’t quite make out there next to SpongeBob is “Valentine ... let’s soak up some smiles!” (I’m sure if they could spell it they’d put his creepy laugh in there, too.)

I have to admit that I don’t watch SpongeBob that often, usually when I’m visiting my niece and nephew. (I like to ask them if each of the characters are called Crabby Pattie ... who is this Crabby Pattie? Is that Patrick’s nickname?) And that’s who I’d be tempted to buy these for.

Inside the heart was a little packet of candies and the stickers. I was pleased that the candy was further wrapped to keep it fresh, however it didn’t look that appealing, as the raisins kind of peeked through the yogurt coating, making them look dirty or scuffed. The smelled like absolutely nothing.

Upon biting into them I found that the yogurt coating was not a soft “chocolate-like” experience, but a crunchy shell. The shell itself had no real flavor, but did have a slight cooling effect on the tongue. There was a strange, gamey/musty aftertaste, which I suppose is the yogurt, but was really off. They were, um, unappealing in all respects.

The candies are under the brand label “NickTrition” which I’m guessing makes it look like it’s healthy. However, here are the ingredients: Raisins, Sugar, Partially Hydrogenated Palm Kernel Oil, Yogurt Powder, Titanium Dioxide, Soy Lecithin, Salt, Vanilla & Confectioner’s Glaze, Artificial Colors.

I will admit that raisins are plenty healthy. But I think the only reason there’s no listing for trans fats in the nutrition facts is because the serving size is only 20 grams. So I guess they’ve achieved the goal of balanced nutrition, because you’re really paying for a plastic box and some stickers and the nutritional benefit or hit is negligible from these candies ... if your kids eat them. I suspect you’ll find them in the cushions of the couch in a month or so.

When I was the All Candy Expo there were lots of candies there that I’d never seen before, and many that I’ll probably never see again. One that seemed to be everywhere in the little freebie bowls were Garfield’s Chocobites by Arcor.

Yeah, they’re knock-offs of Peanut M&Ms. They’ve been sitting in my pile o’ candy I really don’t wanna eat.

I got a little piece of email last week that I had to share. Kendra wanted to make sure that everyone know about the bad candy known as Garfield’s Chocobites.

Here are some of her words:

For awhile now they’ve been offering “Garfield’s Chocobites” in my company’s vending machine, and I’ve wisely avoided them. However today I found the vending machine to have slim pickings, so I decided to give the chocobites a try, how bad could they be?

How bad you ask? Bad. I bought the “Peanut Chocolate Candies” variety, and the first one I pulled out, was covered in a fairly large splatter of lard. You heard me, lard. At first I thought it might be some candy coating glaze, but it was most certainly some sort of fatty lardy, crisco-like substance.

Technically that white greasy substance isn’t lard, it’s probably cocoa butter (though the ingredients also list something called polyricinoleic acid, which is a red flag that whatever is in the package will disappoint you). And usually I say hurray for cocoa butter, but when cocoa butter leaves the chocolate, it’s not a pleasant thing. If the cocoa butter has left the candy, it means that the candy has been stored improperly, in a warm environment long enough for the cocoa butter to melt and vacate the candy ... ew. And what’s left inside the candy shell if the cocoa butter is gone? Sugar and cocoa, dried milk and some other additives. What’s worse is that a vending machine would have this issue - it should be some sort of climate controlled machine! It’s plugged in, can’t they keep the temperature below 80?

Now, I’d say that Kendra should just forgo that vending machine ... but she’s not the only one. Even Candy Addict Victoria has found the similarly dismal results with her experience:

I bit a red one in half, which is what I do to almost everything when I eat, just to make sure there’s nothing unwanted hiding inside. It looked okay, again, much like a peanut M&M, so I chewed up the entire thing, which was a mistake.

A quick websearch did find one person who liked them, giving them 4.5 gummi bears out of 5.

Some anonymous person commenting at Junk Food Blog posits that:

You have to take into account that the Chocobites are made using real milk (the traditional way to make milk chocolate). [snip] So its not that they taste “terrible” one here is just not used to it…

Um, yeah, anonymous should check out the ingredients list and notice the presence of PGPR. It’s not that we’re uneducated dweebs, they’re made with inferior ingredients.

Anyway, my take on them (and mine are fresh) is that the peanuts are substandard. The candy shells are pretty but not tasty looking. They’re a little more textured than M&Ms (which isn’t a bad thing, just different) and the colors are vibrant, but a little uneven. The red and orange ones were a little mottled which made it look like someone had dribbled another color of dye in there. The shell is very crisp and thicker than M&Ms which is kind of fun. It makes them very crunchy. But after that it’s downhill. The peanuts are simply substandard. At least half of them were awful, chewy and bitter or tasted burnt. The chocolate is sweet and uninteresting with no creamy balance to the peanuts or crunchy shell.

I’m really sorry that some vending companies are putting in bad quality products to up their profits. At 1.74 ounces, it’s the exact same size as a bag of Peanut M&Ms, so you’re not the one getting a better value here. I’m all for generics, I buy them all the time, but this is one case where you’re gonna get burned.

While on the show floor I came across this booth on the first morning, in one of the first aisles I went down:

Real Espresso! Liquid Center!

I was thinking it’d be the American version of Ferrero’s Pocket Coffee from Italy. And we really need those.

There they were, looking so lovely on the silver platter. I had gotten up at 5 AM, so maybe my judgement was a little clouded by 9:30.

I took one and bit into it. No liquid center! Only a shiny, soft and bitter tar. Like that stuff that’s left at the bottom of a coffee pot when you’ve left it on the heating element overnight.

But in order to be fair about them, I took another on the last day to bring home and trash with photographic evidence.

Well, lo and behold the one I brought home had the liquid center!

The texture might have been more satisfying, but the flavor was no better. Still bitter and acrid, syrupy sweet and without as many of the coffee notes that I would have liked. The chocolate was decent, but completely overshadowed by the center. And the production concerns me as well, if one of the samples I got was sub-par, I wouldn’t be terribly confident about a whole box of them being consistent.

I have no idea where they sell these, or much about the company at all. I hope that they can tweak though, because it’s obviously a good idea if Pocket Coffee has been doing so well. The big difference here is that there was no sugar granules in here like I found with the Pocket Coffee, so maybe it’s a completely different process. I’m wondering what their Espresso Secret is ...

I’ve been so caught up with Easter candy lately that I’ve been neglecting my regular candy. I couldn’t wait until the Easter rush is over to post about the Limited Edition KitKat Milkshake.

I’ve been looking everywhere for these and was surprised that they weren’t available at my trusty 7-11 that always seems to have new and limited edition products. Instead I found them at the Dollar Tree, which always makes me nervous that it’s old and skanky candy. How could it be old though, it’s limited edition!

The bar is described as: KitKat Milkshake - Crisp Wafers in Extra Creamy Malt Milk Chocolate (naturally and artificially flavored)

The bar was pretty looking, smooth and glossy, it was definitely fresh. But there was something off about it. It smelled a little musty, like an old, damp closet or something. I had a piece of it and decided it tasted musty too. I threw the rest out and started over with a second bar. This one doesn’t smell as musty, but still has a definitely “off” smell to it. I know that malt can sometimes be considered a gamy scent, but this just wasn’t it.

I decided that this was how it was gonna be and I plowed through to the tasting. First I needed to get past what I wanted the bar to be. I wanted it to be a malted KitKat ... I wanted creamy milk chocolate with malt between the wafers. But that’s not what it is, it’s malt flavor in the chocolate and I think the regular old wafers & cream we’re used to.  What it does taste like is a milkier version of a KitKat ... with a slight buttery taste, kind of like popcorn and kind of like coconut. These aren’t pleasant combinations in my realm of chocolate candy bars, so I wasn’t really enjoying it. In fact, as I got to the last finger, I was really sick of it and didn’t want to finish it.

I wonder if I just got a bad batch: News You Can Eat liked hers and CandyAddict found it acceptable. Suffice to say I was severely disappointed, especially since I loved the Limited Edition Twosomes Whoppers last year.

Candy is a microcosm of society and existence. I know this because there are certain candies that indicate the presence of the divine in every scrumptious bite. Then there is evidence of evil on this planet. The Easter “marshmallow egg” is one of the latter candies.

This candy has promise on the outside, as all temptresses do. It’s big, so of course it’s appealing to any foolish child who hasn’t learned that “bigger is not always better.” What’s more, it is an evil that has no name. Really, what are these things called? If I say marshmallow egg, you might thing of the satisfying marshmallow half-hemispheres that are drenched in chocolate this time of year. Or even something that resembles an Easter-themed Circus Peanut. Brachs has chosen to call their version of these Bunny Basket Eggs. I will hereafter refer to them as BBBE, which when pronounced as an acronym (as all good acronyms should be) it will sound like a stuttered bee-bee or a very cold person trying to say ‘bean.’

Part of their temptation lies in their beguiling size, which is made up entirely of sugar with a dash of artificial color and carnauba wax. That’s a Starburst Jelly bean there; it’s no match for the Mastodon known as a Brachs Bunny Basket Egg.

I hope you understand that Brachs probably makes the finest BBBEs there are. They’re generous with the color and they’re even flavored. The green ones are lime and orange ones are orange. I can’t tell you what the rest are. Please don’t make me eat more of them.

If you haven’t already guessed, these are horrid candies. It’s not like I’m against eating pure sugar, I have in fact indulged in full spoonfuls of honey or brown sugar as a treat quite often. The shell of a BBBE is similar to a jelly bean. It’s a rather grainy sugar coating that’s smooth on the outside and lightly flavored. The center of a BBBE is a fluffy, grainy sugar that really isn’t like marshmallow, but I call it that because the ingredients mention gelatin and corn starch.

I don’t think BBBEs can be made and delivered fresh, not to mention the fact that few people eat them right out of a pristine bag. They’re intended to sit in amongst the pastel cello grass of an Easter basket until all the other choice candies are consumed and a desperate sugar-toothed child is force to eat it. Then the last thing this child remembers of his Easter experience is this deplorable egg. The smell of these inside the bag is like a mess of flavored lipsticks or a bad candle shop. A combination of fake fruit flavors and of course airborne microfine sugar which is intent on giving you that satisfying sweet feeling on your tongue before you even eat one.

I realize that this candy has its champions, and that by no means makes you minions of evil. I can only surmise that the experience of eating these foul little fingers of pure sucrose is inextricably tied to a pleasant experience and these help you relive a little of it. If that’s the reason, then I completely support their continued, but limited, production as a therapy device. If you would like to read someone who might share your unending love of these, you might want to pick up Hilary Lifton’s memoir called Candy and Me: A Love Story (you can preview the chapter online). 

I honestly did try to like these. I never cared for them as a child, but I did buy them, make them look pretty in the photos (they are actually very pretty) and of course ate TWO! That’s why they get a rating of two instead of one. (You may now commence in the comments section telling me how wrong I am.)

Related Candies

1. Hiding Eggs
2. Circus Peanuts
3. Cadbury Canadian Creme Eggs
4. Brach’s Fiesta Eggs
5. Russell Stover Eggs (2007 edition)
6. Melster Marshmallow Eggs
7. Cadbury Eggs: Creme & Caramel

I bought this tin of Java Bark on sale just after Christmas from Crate & Barrel. At only $4.50, marked down from $15.00, I couldn’t resist. Besides, I was buying some Mint Cookie Joys, so the shipping was a done deal.

I wasn’t quite sure what Java Bark was going to be, and it’s not quite what I was expecting. I didn’t know if was going to be chocolate or toffee or good. And it was none of those things.

Basically it’s a sweet coffee flavored “chocolate” with chocolate cookie chunks in it sprinkled with a coffee powder and then drizzled with some white chocolate. They’re cut into squares (about 2”) and individually wrapped. Then they’re tucked into a pretty oval tin.

Did I mention the tin is really pretty?

The little plastic wraps are incredibly hard to open for some reason, which leads me to believe that these are not made by Harry London, who made the Mint Cookie Joys, because those little cello sleeves were easy to open.

Once open the squares have a very sweet, coffee smell to them. The “chocolate” has a rather graham flavor to it, a bit grainy and after looking at the label, I see that it’s not really chocolate at all. The cookie bits are firm and crunchy and actually really good, mostly because they add a dash of salt to the sweet and chalky combination. The coffee powder (coffee grounds) gives the whole thing and unpleasant grain but a good boost of flavor.

The nicest thing about these is that I can bring them to work and set the tin out and no one will think I’ve pawning off Christmas candy on them. And that’s just what I’m going to do. I’ve gotta make room for the Valentine’s sale candy.

I saw these mentioned on the Junk Food Blog a while back and then noticed them at the 7-11 and thought, what the hey, I’ll give them a try! I’m generally not into eating things with extra caffeine, especially not sweets as I have sleep problems, but I figured I could sample them before noon.

I don’t know how I could be more annoyed with these.

I love the tins, I think the color and design is great. The text on the tin is a little odd “Finally some mints with BAWLS. Spiked with the same high-caffeine guarana that fuels our BAWLS soft drink, these fizzy sweet mints are the first candies that help you stay up all night. Feel the power of BAWLS mints. Because regular candy is for babies.” First, this is far from the first caffeinated candy. Penguin Mints jump to mind. And if that’s too recent, how about any number of coffee candies. Including those Italian ones with real espresso in them that truckers use called Pocket Coffee. Oh, and the old standby, chocolate covered espresso beans.

Okay, so let’s just step away from the assertion that they’re the first “stay-awake candies”. How about the fact that they keep calling them mints. Now, I understand how sometimes names get co-opted. Like white chocolate isn’t really chocolate, but because it shares some of chocolate’s qualities and ingredients, we call it that. I don’t think that just because your candy is pellet shaped that it can be called a mint. These are not mint flavored. They’re some sort of punch flavored. And that’s fine, but when I’m expecting mint and I get razzleberry, I’m annoyed. 

So, let’s take this candy as if no one showed me the package or told me what it is:

It’s a strangely speckled aqua-blue tablet, about the size of a baby aspirin and the color of a toilet bowl freshener. They don’t smell like much, but once on the tongue there’s a very pleasant tingly sensation, especially if you keep it on the tip of the tongue where the sour zap enhances it. Crunching it or splitting it makes it foam a little more. The flavor is rather bland, something sour and perhaps berry. There’s no indication of what flavor it is (I’ve never had BAWLS soda) but a little search on the web calls it a cross between lemon/lime and cream soda. It’s kind of fun, but gives me the burps. (One of the reasons I avoid sodas.)

I don’t know how caffeinated these little buggers are, but to be safe I only ate about five a day during the time that I was evaluating these. As a candy they’re rather disappointing. I want more flavor out of them, like Pop Rocks. But then again, I’d rather have the fizzy and no caffeine. Way too expensive for candy, but as a caffeine supplement to keep on hand when I have a coffee withdrawal headache, they probably rival that pack of Black Black that I keep at the office. But maybe if they were gonna call them mints they might have wanted to make them, well, mint flavored.

Further reading: Wikipedia on Guarana, Guarana.com on Guarana,  for sale at ThinkGeek, review of BAWLS mints by Eugene at pbworkzpc.com (he gives it a 4/5) and death by caffeine - how many BAWLS mints will it take to kill you?

For those of you wondering, Wikipedia pegs the caffeine content at 5 mg per tablet.

Name: Sun Drops - Plain Milk & Peanut
Brand: Sun Spire
Place Purchased: Wild Oats
Price: $.79 (on sale)
Size: 1.19 ounces
Calories per ounce: 151
Type: Chocolate/Peanuts

Here’s a perfectly good idea gone awry. There’s no reason there can’t be good, tasty, “natural” chocolate candies (I think that’s been proven more recently with things like Equal Exchange, Green & Black, Newman’s Own, etc.). This is an example of a weak candy line. Here’s why: First, the colors are dull and unappealing. They’re not colors that I want to eat (except for the yellow, they look like old-lady lipstick colors). They’re not strong or clean, they’re muddy looking and uneven. A grainy looking outside does not bode well for the inside.

The ingredients are basically sugar (natural with unsulfured molasses, blah, blah) then milk powder, then the chocolate ... that’s a long way down the list. And it shows in the final product. The addition of molasses is a little odd. It gives the whole thing a rather toasty burnt flavor, which I enjoy with my oatmeal but not in my chocolate. In fact, I can taste everything in these drops except for the chocolate. The powdered milk, overly sweet sugar and slightly grainy chocolate just combine for a depressing treat. The crunchy shell is too tough and again adds sweet without flavor and further distances me from any chocolately goodness. If it’s possible, the peanut ones tasted more like burnt sugar and milk powder.

With the same number of calories and fat as M&Ms, why am I eating these? I gave them to Amy to try and after much cajoling (because the package, colors and list of ingredients scared her off - and she was the one that wanted to go to Wild Oats on Saturday!) she did put one in her mouth. She chewed a couple of times and then spit it out in my trash can.

If you are a parent trying to find a wholesome treat for the kids, this isn’t it. It sets them up for a lifetime of disappointments, now that’s spoiling them. Just let them have some M&Ms in moderation (the Almond ones are actually not bad for you since the bulk of the candy is actually a very healthy nut). Or just let them have plain old semi-sweet chocolate chips. Dark chocolate really isn’t that bad as a food. Raisinettes? Really, anything but this. Don’t tease the poor kids by telling them this is candy.

Rating: 2 out of 10