I browse eBay a lot, just to see what sort of candy is being sold. It’s a good place to “make a friend” in a particular area who can send you a special candy on a regular basis. Of course a good deal of the candy on eBay is also Limited Edition items, which can be devilish to find as inventories wear thin in parts of the country.

It’s also a great way for me to find out about newer Limited Editions. Like the Candy Corn Kisses that showed up there last week. I immediately searched all my best spots (RiteAid, WalMart, Target & CVS) with no results. So I emailed Hershey’s ... they confirmed that they exist at least.

Then yesterday I gave Target another try and there they were!

I must admit, they’re lovely. The wrappers are silver, yellow and orange with little flags that say Candy Corn.

Upon opening the bag I can only say that they stink to high heaven, like fake butter flavor (perhaps I should be concerned that there’s diacetyl in there and I’m going to get Pop Corn Workers Lung?).

Unwrapping the foil, they are super-cute layers just like candy corn. Wider on the bottom than normal candy corn, the proportions may be a little squat, the colors are also rearranged, with yellow on the bottom and orange in the middle, instead of the reverse. I can see why they did it though, it is a pleasant combo.

While I enjoy candy corn that has a slight honey or caramelized sugar taste to it, these go for the buttered corn flavor. I know that the Buttered Popcorn Jelly Belly is one of the most popular, but it’s never floated by boat. Same with this one ... a little caramely white chocolate would have made me very happy. This doesn’t. The fake butter just turns my stomach when I smell it. If I don’t smell it, then they’re not bad, not too sweet with a light little hit of salt.

Unlike many of the other white confection offerings from Hershey’s, these are not white chocolate (which has a cocoa butter base). The ingredients go like this:

Sugar, Vegetable Oil (Palm, Shea, Sunflower and/or Safflower Oil), Nonfat Milk, Lactose, Reduced Minerals Whey (from milk), Milkfat. Contains less than 2% or less of Natural and Artificial Color (Yellow 6, Yellow 5 Lake), Soy Lecithin, PGPR, Tocopherols (to maintain freshness).

I think the idea is cute and I could actually see these being a great cookie decoration (as suggested on the package with a peanut butter cookie recipe). Other than that, I’m going to just admire the photos and the idea and keep the package way from me. I couldn’t decide what rating to give this, mostly because my personal revulsion to fake butter flavor (it actually gives me a headache when someone makes microwave popcorn) is, well, a personal thing. The product is well executed ... I just wish they called them Butter Kisses and made them like real candy corn, not that Milk Maid Caramel Candy Corn. My nose said give them a two out of ten. But looking at the photos, I can’t help but bump it up to a four out of ten ... what can I say, I’m a sucker for design!

UPDATE 9/25/2007: I found out from Hershey’s that this is an item that they created exclusively for Target. So don’t bother looking anywhere else but Target & eBay for these.

UPDATE 9/5/2008: The Candy Corn Kisses have returned for 2008. I found them both at Target and Rite Aid, so they are enjoying a wider release this year.

Related Candies

1. Rising Cost of Candy - A Brief Study of Hershey Prices
2. Vanilla Creme Kisses
3. Hershey’s Mint Truffle Kisses
4. Limited Edition Hot Cocoa Kisses
5. Elvis Reese’s Peanut Butter and Banana Cup
6. Kisses Coconut Creme
7. Kisses Chocolate Truffles
8. The Mint Kisses: Chocolate Mint & Candy Cane
9. Gourmet Goodies Candy Corn
10. Peanut Butter Kisses
11. Cherry Cordial Creme Kisses
12. Head to Head: Rolo vs Caramel Kisses
13. Butterfinger Crisp

These Zip Bomb candies showed up recently in one of the 99 Cent Only stores that I visit. I thought maybe they were a knock-off of Zotz available in little pouches.

Warning: this is another story about how I am pretty much willing to try anything, no matter how much evidence is presented that it’s a bad idea.

All wasn’t sitting well with me long before I opened the package. Part of that was the name Zip Bomb ... that’s a malicious file that’s delivered as a .zip file with a gajillion files inside that will occupy scanning software while worse things go on. Perhaps these candies came along before that, right?

Of course this made me wonder what was going to happen when I put it in my mouth. Would it occupy my taste buds while it stole my wallet? Would it swell to the size of a 63 terabyte file with tart foaming sherbet and tasty hard candy and then delete all my photos?

The other thing that struck me as odd is that the website listed on the back of the package, www.zipkidz.com, doesn’t exist. Oh, it might have or might someday, but as I type this, there is no website to visit for fun and games. A search on Archive.org reveals that there was a website at that address back in 2004-05. Hmm, could this code on the wrapper that says 021902 mean that they were made back in 2002?

Yes, these are the things that suddenly fill me with dread when looking at a package of candy.

But you know, I’ve already taken their photo ... what fun would this be if I didn’t go all the way and eat some?

The little individual candies were cute in their wrappers. Sure, the design wasn’t the most sophisticated in the world, but they were bright and colorful and said which flavor was which.

The candies themselves were bigger than Zotz, round instead of oval.

After putting one in my mouth I can tell you that they’re not like Zotz! The hard candy has an intense sour layer on top. Seriously sour ... but it fades away pretty quickly to reveal a simple tart and flavorful hard candy.

At the center of the candy (whether you’re a sucker or a cruncher) is a small reservior of sour powder. I was expecting it to foam, but it didn’t. It was just sour.

The hard candies were nicely flavored, each one distinct. Blue Raspberry was my favorite followed by Strawberry and then Green Apple. Watermelon was odd, probably because I just have a stubborn part of me that thinks that sour watermelon is wrong.

I wanted more of the sour center than I got in the candies, there seemed to be more hard candy than I wanted. They’re fun and something I probably would have enjoyed more as a kid than I do now, but I have to say, that first blast of throat-tingling sour is pretty fun at any age. They were probably much better when they were fresh.

Note: the candies were made in Thailand.

Related Candies

1. Sour Bloops
2. Zotz Apple
3. Skittles Fresh Mint
4. Bonkers

Bazooka’s Bubble Gum Filled Pops have a lot going for them. They’re a nice compact size, kind of like Blow Pops, but perfectly spherical. They have a plastic stick, which is great if you’re a moist person. The flavor varieties are pretty normal and bound to please: Grape, Orange, Green Apple and Cherry.

But I hate to say it, they just don’t live up to this promising conceptual start.

First, the hard candy isn’t that flavorful. While it’s nicely dense and doesn’t have too many sharp holes, it just doesn’t taste like much. The orange, which was by far my favorite, was rather like weak orange-ade. Cherry in this case was also weak and a lot more pleasant. I kind of liked the Grape in it’s mild form here, even though it in no way rivaled the Blow Pops.

Second, the stick was very close to the top of the candy sphere. With these hollow plastic stick it means that once you dissolve a top layer, the hollow stick makes it hard to “suck” on the sucker without taking in air through the stick.
Third, the gum center is hard. Seriously, frighteningly hard. I’m not sure how that happens, but it’s not hard all the way through, just on the first bite, like it’s been coated with cement or something. (I’m guessing it’s just a gumball that has one of those polished coats instead of being a lump of gum.

The gum itself is okay once it warms up and softens. It seems like a smaller portion than a Blow Pop. It’s very sugary, which I rather like, but once the sugar is gone it’s too stiff and such a small piece that blowing bubbles isn’t easy.

If you’re going to come late to the “gum filled lollipop” genre, you’d better get in with a top notch product that offers something either better or significantly different. This just doesn’t do it for me. They’re attractively packaged and come in a smaller “mini” version that I had similar issues with. I think I’ll stick to what I think Bazooka does best ... bubble gum.

Related Candies

1. Topps Baby Bottle
2. Bubble Roll Message Maker
3. Smarties Bubble Gum

There are a lot of marketing tie ins between movies and candy. Some of them work really well and some seem rather strange. I’m going to put these little Ratatouille Rat Racers Pocket Slider Lollipops in that category.

Ratatouille is a new movie from Pixar/Disney that stars a rat (named Remy) who wants to be a chef. But, you know, he’s a rat. And in this world he can’t talk to humans. He has a brother named Emile, who is less discriminating about his culinary tastes. These little candy pops are simply a hard candy cylinder housed in a little slider topped with a toy. In this case the toy is a little plastic model of one of the characters with a wide steel wheel on the bottom for racing.

As a little toy, the racers are kind of fun. They’re slippery and move easily. The detail on them is pretty good, though I can’t figure out why they’re racing around on cheese or petit fours. But that’s simply my lack of imagination.

The two flavors I picked up were Blue Raspberry and Green Apple.

They’re both rather tart and have a good chemical, manufactured artifical flavor (kind of like computer animation!).

As a candy, I’ve certainly had better hard candy in better flavors. The little toy roller cars are certainly better than a Happy Meal (TM) prize, but limited in their appeal. The retractable lolly is a nice idea, especially for kids who may want to space out their enjoyment of this marginal treat.

The same company who makes these also did the similarly branded Peeps Pops. (I reviewed the ring ones and Jeanna at Wisconsin Candy Dish reviewed the slider pops that are pretty much the same as these.) They’re made in China, which at this moment doesn’t make me feel very good ... expect for the fact that I didn’t finish these. I just ate enough of each to get the flavor.

Related Candies

1. Disneyland Candy Novelties
2. Gummi Lightning Bugs
3. Kinder Egg
4. Frugal Swedish Sweets

I had really high hopes for the new Nestle Crunch Crisp bar. I found it on Friday while I was filling my gas tank and wandered into the convenience store because it was so freakishly hot. (Okay, maybe it’s not freakishly hot, it was the end of June in Southern California, what should I have been expecting at four in the afternoon?)

The blue metallic wrapper is promising and describes this as “Crispy Wafers, Chocolate Creme.” Sadly, it also doesn’t list chocolate as an ingredient. Which leads me to wonder what the essential element is to be called part of the Nestle Crunch line of products ... apparently it’s not chocolate, it’s crisped rice. I’m sure there are volumes of marketing research that prove this.

The bar consists of sturdy planks of bland wafers filled with a greasy and grainy chocolate cream, topped with some crisped rice and a slurry of thin mockolate (63% of your daily value of saturated fats!).

Here are the ingredients:

Sugar, Wheat Flour, Hydrogenated Coconut Oil, Hydrogenated Palm Kernel Oil, Alkalized Cocoa, Nonfat Milk, Crisped Rice (rice flour, sugar, barley malt, salt) and 1% or less of High Fructose Corn Syrup, Soy Lecithin, Artificial Vanilla Flavor, Salt, Baking Soda, Lactic Acid Esters, TBHC and Citric Acid, Ground Peanuts.

While this all comes off as rather negative, I think I might find this tasty when the ambient temperature is below 90 degrees. Even at 85 degrees, however, the bar was a slippery mess (this is one of the differences between mockolate and most chocolate). It was certainly creamy and the crispy wafers were distinct and crunchy. But the mockolate and chocolate creme just weren’t up to delivering any flavor to the mix. It wasn’t too sweet though, as the bland wafer and crispies were a good counterbalance to the mockolates. Honestly, the crispy wafers were good.

This would be an awesome bar if it were real. If there were some sort of real chocolate on there, something with character and depth, I could completely get behind it. In the mean time, I’m going to stick to my also-high-in-full-hydrogenated-oils Chocolatiers.

Candy companies are still getting the hang of this internet thing, so you can go to the website listed on the package, ForTheKidInYou.com, but I couldn’t find any mention of this bar there. On a slightly related note on the mockolate front, here’s an article from Reuters ... that Cebele May they mention, that’s me (plus Emily from Chocolate in Context!).

Related Candies

1. Baby Ruth Crisp & Nestle Crisp Bars
2. Q.Bel Crispy Wafer Bars
3. Wonka Tinglerz & Nestle Buncha Crunch
4. Nestle Milk Chocolate
5. Nestle Crunch (Now Even Richer Milk Chocolate)
6. I Miss: Bar None

This is another one of those products that I’ve only seen at the 99 Cent Only Store. These Sour Bloops are billed as “Intense Chewy Fruit Candies” and are made by Lance. Yes, Lance, that company that you makes those bright orange Cheese & Peanut Butter crackers that come in mini-bricks in vending machines.

As something you would find in a vending machine, these fill an important niche. They’re like mega-Skittles or fruity Mentos. The flavor assortment is definitely unique.

Each candy is a rustic looking Mentos, same size, same basic shape.

The name Sour Bloops may be a little pedestrian and unimaginative but the candy certainly lives up to it. Basically they were okay.

Green Apple - tangy, with a pretty good combination of apple juice notes and that fake green apple flavor of Jolly Ranchers. Pretty soft and pleasant. The flavor stays with the chew to the end.

Wild Cherry  - tastes like a red cherry Lifesaver, but much more tart. Flavorful and a smidge medicinal, especially towards the end where I get a little burning feeling in my throat.

Peach Lemonade - I haven’t the foggiest what this tastes like, since there were none in my mix.

Stick with Mentos or Skittles unless you really need a peach lemonade fix ... which I can’t comment on, as they’re so rare as to not make an appearance in my bag. If you’re stuck with what your vending machine offers, well, this is a far better choice than Garfield’s Chocobites. These candies may also appear in rolls called Chewz.

I’m not quite sure what’s going on here. I first saw these at the 99 Cent Only Store (but only in Strawberry). They’re billed as “candy and chocolate flavored pops” which I thought sounded kind of fun. Like a chocolate toffee lollipop.

The commercials aren’t really helpful, they call it half-crazy. And they have freaky & disturbing animation. Who are they aiming these at?

So maybe the wrapper will be helpful. There’s a little drawing of the candy on the package. But I don’t know what I’m looking at. Smacking the candy on the corner of the table reveals that one side is hard and the other isn’t. How about a look what they use to make them.

Ingredients: Sugar, Corn Syrup, Hydrogenated Palm Kernel Oil, Cocoa, Dry Whey, Natural and Artificial Flavors, Cocoa Processed with Alkalai, Skim Milk Powder, Buffered Lactic Acid, Soy Lecithin, Salt and Artificial Colors

Well, after opening up the little packet it’s much more obvious what this is. One third of the pop is a swirl of hard candy with a boat of mockolate stuck to it.

Cookies and Cream - this has nothing to do with cookies and cream. Things can’t be cookie flavored. What makes cookies cookies is the texture, not the flavor. The mockolate boat here is mild and cool on the tongue. Sweet and not very chocolatey, it tastes more tropical, a little like coconut and a little like fudge. The sliver of candy is rather nice. Super smooth and a little tangy like yogurt. It’s sweet and bland but perhaps a little creamy.

Chocolate Caramel - well, this is not caramel flavored. The mockolate is the same on all of them. The candy part is tangy and sweet but missing all the caramel notes I would expect. I’m getting tangy, I’m getting maple or pecan, but definitely not caramel.

Chocolate Strawberry - finally the tangy bite works with the flavor. The strong and fake strawberry flavor completely overshadows the mockolate.

The long narrow shape is pleasant for a pop, it certainly fits in the mouth better. The candy part is actually really good. It’s superdense so it’s great for a pleasant and smooth feeling on the tongue and if you’re a cruncher it’s also really easy to chew.

The quality is apparent here with just about every element. They’re nicely packaged, the metallic plastic wrapper protects and is easy to open. The sassy plastic stick means that the stick doesn’t dissolve while you’re still eating the pop. Even the name is pretty good, the swirly colors support the name Vertigo (which is a fancy way of saying dizzy).

But the candy quality goes astray with the mockolate. It’s just ghastly. I ate it, but I’m certainly not happy about it.

I would certainly buy this if it was just a hard toffee pop, like the See’s Pops (except these are actually smoother). But as a mostly mockolate product, I just can’t get behind it.

Note: Topps is an American company, but these candies were made in China.

I love the names on all of these candy bars! Santos of Scent of Green Bananas gave them to me a while back. They reminded me a bit of my uneven bunch of Peruvian candies.

Tourist
A crisp wafer plank with two domed compartments with a chocolatey paste inside.

The brand Gandour heralds they have the ingredients for happiness. Those ingredients include shea butter. Okee dokee.

The chocolate filling is rather firm, a little salty and pretty creamy. It’s not very chocolatey, more on the fudgy side. The crisp wafers are fun, though a little dry. The whole thing reminded me of the Happy Hippo, though there’s no hazelnut in this creme paste filling.

6 out of 10 (Halal)

Safari

This one is sporting a sassy jungle green wraper and woodsy font. Inside is a stack of wafers and creme then some caramel and crunchies with a mockolate coating.

It’s a big old jumble not jungle inside the package. The lumpy crispies and mockolate don’t quite get a good grip on the caramel and wafer center. It just doesn’t work for me. There’s too much mockolate and not enough caramel.

4 out of 10 (Halal)

XL’Z

M&M knock-offs made with mockolate. These were kind of a hybrid in size between Smarties and M&Ms. They’re bigger than M&Ms but thicker than Smarties. The colors were vivid. Though the package showed red, blue,  yellow, green and orange, I only had orange, red and green in my bag (which held 17 morsels). The mockolate was less milky than the other products and passably good. It actually tasted better than Garfield’s Chocobites. Kind of smoky and rounded, though not quite the smooth mouthfeel of cocoa butter chocolate. For a treat for little kids, I guess these would be just fine, but I could probably only bring myself to decorate a cake with them.

4 out of 10 (Halal)

Tofi Luk

This is one that I had no clue about judging from the name. But the description and image on the wrapper seemed pretty agreeable. A biscuit bar with caramel and a chocolate flavored coating. So it’s like a Twix! The bar was just a little flatter and a little shorter than a Twix, but it’s kind of fun that they sell these smaller portions. It looked pretty good, with the same rippled appearance on the coating.

The inside was a lot different from a Twix. Instead of being a very dry shortbread, this one was a little salty and reminded me of a dense Ritz Cracker plank. The caramel was not chewy or gooey here, just a sweeter texture between the cookie and mockolate (and not always there either). The whole thing had a rather strong “butter flavor” to it.

5 out of 10 (Halal)