A few months ago I saw Creme Drops at the 99 Cent Store, but since it was hot out, I didn’t pick them. Then I saw Robby’s review on Candy Addict of the Necco variety and I thought maybe I’d made the right decision.

But then I saw these on the website for the Vermont Country Store and made a mental note. Well, that mental note didn’t sit there too long because a couple of weeks later VCS wanted me to try some of their candy and I specifically requested their Assorted Cream Drops.

Since it’s finally gotten cool in Los Angeles, chocolate shipping produces less anxiety than the other 8 months of the year. (They’re packaging for shipping was great, too, by the way. Everything arrived in great shape.)

The best part of the description on their website: real chocolate.

The rest of the description is rather vague. The name they use is Chocolate-Covered Cream Drop Assortment with 6 Luscious Flavors but the box never actually list the flavors by name (but digging around on the description page does yield the list).

And the drops all look exactly the same.

So I set about picking them out of the box and cutting them in half, like it was some sort of logic puzzle like mine sweeper.

After eight of them (three were Lemon and not in a row), I determined that they are randomly loaded into the box. The dividers in the box do a great job of protecting the candies without any fussy papers. (Eventually I found that sniffing them carefully did allow me to pick out orange or maple, but then again, who wants one that I’ve held up to my nose? I think I’m better off poking holes in the bottom.)

Yellow = Lemon: sweet and creamy but a little like a scented candle. The bittersweet chocolate shell set the mellow center off quite nicely. It’s not very zesty, just a light aromatic lemon. All of the pieces had sugar grains in it though, unlike the other flavors. I’m guessing this was just a manufacturing glitch.

Beige = Maple: I could often sniff this one out, the maple flavor was quite pungent. It combined well with the sweet and slightly stringy fondant center.

Orange = Orange: reminded me of a creamsicle. Sweet and with a good mouthfeel and a nice chocolate note that cut that almost-too-sweetness of it.

Pink = Raspberry: this interior was very bright pink, which alerted me that this was probably the one with the Red Dye #40. It was all about the floral and perfumey flavors, not much of the rich tangy berry in there.

Brown = Chocolate: this is the mellowest of the bunch. It’s not so much chocolatey as just less sweet and slightly creamier. The filling is not quite silky, but the gooeyness is more than pleasant.

White = Vanilla: tastes exactly like a Junior Mint without the mint. The fondant center is wonderfully smooth, the chocolate becomes the star. It melts easily though admittedly the whole thing is very sweet. I would recommend eating these with strong black coffee or black tea.

These are a quality product. The consistency of the fondant center was fresh and glossy, the chocolate was good. They’re not really something that I would eat on a regular basis, when I have a box of mixed chocolates, I usually leave the creams for last so actually buying a box of creams isn’t something I’m likely to do. I prefer the slightly fattier creams that Fannie Mae (we had a box of those at the office recently) or See’s make. But if you’ve always wished that Junior Mints came in other flavors or perhaps want a less chocolatey or dark chocolate version of a Cadbury Creme Egg, then this might be for you.

Rating: 6 out of 10

I saw the Zachary version of Old Fashioned Creme Drops at the 99 Cent Only Store, this time with a festive wreath on them, so I figured they were fresh so I bought them.

The description on the package says: Creme Filled Center with Smooth Chocolate Flavored Coating!. So yeah, it’s mockolate. (But at least their snowflakes have six points.)

I had hopes though, since it’s also a full 12 ounces ... for only a dollar? That’s quite a value there. A one pound box of sugar is about $1.19 at my local grocery store.

Because they’re bagged and not in a box with little partitions, they are a little more scuffed than the Vermont Country Store variety. (But again, the price difference is absurd - VCS are $1.25 an ounce and Zachary’s are 8.3 cents an ounce.)

They also only come in one flavor, plain. (Or perhaps I should call it vanilla, but there is no vanilla or vanilla flavor listed on the ingredients.)

The shell is mockolate but has a dark, toasted scent.

The bite of the Zachary candy (left) is vastly different from the soft and glossy VCS variety (right). This is a solid fondant, similar to the center of a York Peppermint Pattie.

The texture is smooth, but crumbly, kind of like an albino fudge.

I rather liked the center but the mockolate coating ruined it for me. It was sweet and had that stale Easter essence. It’s rather sad, I’d gladly take 1/3 of the quantity at twice the price if they were real chocolate because the centers are pretty good.

I can recommend these for people who already love them (and I shouldn’t quibble with folks who like what they like). I can recommend these for placing as a decoration on a tray of cookies or perhaps adding to a dessert plate when you’re really in a crunch and don’t like your guests (or know that they all have colds and would simply appreciate the fondant texture).

Rating: 3 out of 10

I kind of wish both varieties came in mint.

Related Candies

1. Mint Cremes from the Makers of Jelly Belly
2. Junior Fruit Cremes
3. Cadbury Ornament Creme Egg
4. Zachary Candy Corn & Jelly Pumpkins
5. Cadbury Orange Creme Eggs
6. York Chocolate Mint Truffle Pattie

Before Tootsie came out with their seasonal Candy Cane Tootsie Pops fans of peppermint and Tootsie Rolls were relegated to making their own. Though it was relatively simple to jam a Tootsie Roll on a chop stick and then smash a couple of starlight mints onto it, it just didn’t have the same classy, holiday flair as this store-bought version.

Candy Cane Tootsie Pops are a little different than other special flavor editions of Tootsie Pops. But not in remarkable ways. Yet I’ll list them for you anyway. First, the they’re in a clear cellophane wrapper. Second, the wrapper is done in a double twist at both the base of the pop and at the top of the pop. (Remember, the regular wrappers cover the pop and twist only where the stick meets the pop.) Third, the shape is not like the regular Tootsie Pop, which has a band that extends from the base up and around the top. Instead this band goes around the middle, just like a Charms Blow Pop. (Hmm, the wrappers are the same as Blow Pops too ... wouldn’t it be fun if they made mint Blow Pops?)

The wrappers are vexing. They’re sealed at the base, so hard to get off and not as easy to rewrap around the candy if you don’t finish it all at once.

The mint hard candy outside is peppermint. It has a pleasant swirl of red that goes through the white dominant base. It’s very smooth, in fact, smoother than a regular Tootsie Pop, fewer voids. Honestly, it made me wonder why Tootsie Pops aren’t all this smooth.

I’m a cruncher, so it didn’t take long before I was able to dissolve away enough of the hard candy outside to crunch into the Tootsie Roll center. Let me state that’s where this gets disappointing. A Tootsie Roll is just a chocolate flavored taffy. I like them well enough as a durable, all weather candy. But they’re really only good inside Tootsie Pops (orange). Because mint is rather one note (no tartness, just sweetness and cool mint) instead of complex like the fruit flavors (the flavor, the tart, the tangy all combined) the Tootsie Roll scent becomes very obvious. It smells like chocolate scented cardboard.

It smells like the box hot cocoa mixes come in after you take the packets out.

It’s just disappointing.

I think these are a fun idea, but there’s really no way to improve them without fixing the Tootsie Roll. The combo just doesn’t bring out the best that a Tootsie Roll has to offer and hide its shortcomings.

Related Candies

1. Chocolate Dipped Altoids - Creme de Menthe
2. Baskin-Robbins Soft Candy
3. Tootsie Pop Drops
4. Jo’s Peppermint Crunch
5. Tootsie Rolls & Fruit Rolls
6. Charms Blow Pops & Zip-a-Dee
7. Hot Tamales Ice

Some Christmas candy isn’t really particularly special for the holidays, it’s the packaging that sells it.

Long ago there were LifeSavers Sweet Story Books. They were just a folded box that looked like a book that had a bunch of LifeSavers rolls inside. They still make them, every few years the graphics and the rolls included inside change with fashion.

Trader Joe’s has their own house-branded version of this, called Trader Joe’s Sweet Story. There are six no-artificial-anything, vegan, kosher and gluten-free hard candy rolls inside.

The package design is pretty straight forward, it’s a box with a front flap that reveals a “story” on the inside, which is a little poem about the candies. (Probably not so fun for kids.)

I was pretty pleased to see the flavor array and that pineapple was on it. (The others are lemon, orange, cherry, pomegranate and raspberry.)

The box is well constructed (and is even printed on the inside). The rolls aren’t revealed inside the box flap though, you have to open it at the top to reveal them, all sealed together inside a cellophane bag.

Each roll is about the size of a LifeSavers product, 1.1 ounces. The rolls themselves are a bit more demure, a color-coded monochrome array.

Opening them was a disappointment and exercise in frustration.

Though it was not humid on Sunday when I bought these and photographed them, the paper-lined foil was stuck to the candies.

I resorted to picking the bits of foil off the candies before consuming (though still got a fair bit of paper in my mouth). Some rolls were better than others, but all had some degree of issues.

Lemon - one of the stickiest. Very tart, like a good lemon drop. Nice balance of zest, juice and sweet.

Cherry - Sucrets. Without the throat numbing properties.

Orange - really zesty, to the point of being slightly bitter at times. Sweet and tangy.

Pineapple - mild, more like those “low acid” pineapples these days that have a nice floral and strawberry cotton candy flavor but not that tart.

Raspberry - pretty much tasted like raspberry flavoring. A lot of sweet floral “flavor” and some tangy berry notes.

Pomegranate - a combination of raspberry and those winterberry scented candles. It’s trying too hard.

The package was $1.99, which breaks down to 33 cents a roll. Not really a bad price. And the flavor assortment was better than the current LifeSavers array. For those who need something that’s gluten free or all-natural, yeah, it’s a nice way to go. But I sure hope yours aren’t stuck to the wrapping like mine were, because that completely ruined it for me. And bumped my fiber intake.

Other remembrances of the LifeSavers Storybook: The Joy Of ..., Jason Liebig has an actual photo of an old one with the rolls still in it, Candy Critic, and of course The Imaginary World has some (I like this one).

Related Candies

1. Hammond’s Pantry Candies
2. LifeSavers
3. Regennas Clear Toys
4. Yummy Earth Organic Pops
5. College Farm Organic Naturepops
6. Goodbye Reed’s

For years Sugar Babies were just plain old Sugar Babies.

Tiny little caramels panned with a sugar shell like a jelly bean.

Perfect just the way they are.

But Tootsie, like so many other companies, needed to expand the brand. So they covered them in chocolate and then some bitter green ogre skin (oh, wait, that was green apple flavor). Those were interesting extensions, because they actually built on the unique caramel of Sugar Babies and then added something else.

Now Tootsie has given us Sugar Babies Holiday Edition.

What’s different about these?

They’re white, red and green. That’s it.

I went out and bought a box of regular Sugar Babies just to be sure.

Even the original have artificial colors in them (why?) but the only addition to the list of ingredients for the Holiday Edition is titanium dioxide. (Mmm, like licking a lifeguard’s nose.)

Frankly, these Holiday Edition ones are downright ugly. They look like leftover nubs of erasers. The colors are dull but not muted enough to look like it’s on purpose. (And of course I can tell which ones are red by the bitter aftertaste that I get from Red 40.)

The other funky thing about these is the package design. I actually liked the blue and plain clip art style snowman. But I was extremely irritated by the little “snowflake” type decorative elements. Why? Because they have eight points.

Snowflakes have six sides or points.

Instead Holiday Edition Sugar Babies boxes are decorated with asterisks. And you know what asterisks make me think of?

If you have a Sugar Babies lover in your life and want to give them a little treat, make it a fresh box of the classic ones. The only reason to buy these is because you love Kurt Vonnegut.

Related Candies

1. Junior Fruit Cremes
2. Whoppers Sno-Balls
3. Peppermint Peep Stars
4. Junior Mints Pastels
5. Cadbury Christmas Candy Thingies
6. Junior Caramels

Years ago, before the current rage of putting carbonated popping candy into chocolate, there was a Wonka bar called the Exploder. It was released in 1999, though I don’t recall seeing it until the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie was released in theaters. And then poof, it was gone before I even got to try it.

Flash forward about four years and suddenly chocolate and pop rocks are all the rage. And finally Wonka (part of Nestle) has gotten back into the act. Earlier this year they released Wonka Tinglerz which they bill as Poppin’ Tinglin’ Chocolate Candy or Chocolattos que revientan en tu boca.

The package doesn’t hold much, just an ounce, but comes at a pretty dear price of a normal sized candy bar. (I got mine for $.69 at KMart.)

I honestly just figured that these were chocolate covered pop rocks, just like the ones made by the Pop Rocks folks themselves.

Nope, Nestle Wonka-fied these and the result is pretty surprising.

Instead of just chocolate covered unflavored pop rocks, it’s a combination of pop rocks and crisped rice. So biting into the bits, it was a gamble as to whether they were going to bite back.

The flavor isn’t as stellar as I’d like though. The chocolate is sweet and waxy and tastes more like powdered hot cocoa mix than rich chocolate. But the malty flavors of the crisped rice and of course the blend of textures sets this apart from other candies.

Rating: 6 out of 10

Above, on the left are Wonka Tinglerz. On the right are Nestle Buncha Crunch. Obviously Buncha Crunch are bigger nuggets (though some were the same size).

Pretty different, not just in size.

Buncha Crunch came along after I’d already made my crisped rice affections be known. As I’d already decided that I didn’t like Nestle Crunch much any longer, trying Nestle’s movie bite version seemed silly.

So at least I get to approach this with an open mind!

The movie box was a pretty good deal at only a dollar and filled with 3.2 ounces.

The idea behind the candy is pretty simple, globs of crisped rice covered in milk chocolate. They’re irregular, some as large as hazelnuts, some as small as peas.

They smell milky and sweet, a little malty.

Biting into them, they’re less than crunchy. There’s a lot of chocolate in most of them, which is a disappointment for someone who is expecting bunches of crunches.

The texture of the chocolate is decent. There’s a little waxy glaze on the bits but the chocolate flavor is mostly sweet, kind of musty and empty.

I was hoping the crunches would offset the sweetness or have a little salty kick. I can see these being a nice antidote to popcorn, but that’s about it.

Crispy M&Ms were far better at this game.

Rating: 5 out of 10

Related Candies

1. Nestle Treasures 50% Cacao Dark Chocolate Truffle
2. Christopher Elbow: No. 6 - Dark Rocks
3. Nestle Crunch (Now Even Richer Milk Chocolate)
4. Pop Rocks Milk Chocolate Bar
5. Pop Rocks and Shoogy Boom
6. K Chocolatier
7. Wonka Bar

Each year around this time there are lists of the best and worst Halloween candies. At the top folks always seem to have Candy Corn, but right in there is another misunderstood and underappreciated candy, Smarties.

There’s not much too them, they’re a simple tangy compressed dextrose candy stacked into a tight roll and wrapped in cellophane. For almost 60 years CeDe Candy has been churning out the chalky, barely flavored tablets. It’d be a rare Halloween Trick-or-Treat bag that didn’t have at least one roll. More recently CeDe’s product line has expanded to include Bubble Gum Smarties, Mega Smarties and now Xtreme Sour and Tropical Smarties.

The Tropical Smarties roll is attractive, orange and yellow accents give it a sunny, citrus look. The tablets themselves don’t look or smell any different from the original though. Original come in green, yellow, purple, pink, orange and white, Tropical seem to come in green, yellow, orange, pink and white.

In the case of the Tropical array, when eating mindlessly the rolls had a soft sweetness to them with some notes of pina colada and banana/strawberry. In the particular the yellow ones are banana (in the regular array I think they’re lemon) and the white ones seem to be the pina colada.

All of this causes too much thinking for something like Smarties though. Though the different colors are different flavors they’re one of the few candies I won’t separate before I eat.

Tropical Smarties are pleasant, a little milder (if that’s even possible) than the Original.

Rating: 7 out of 10.

The first thing I noticed about the X-Treme Sour Smarties is that they’re more vivid. Not quite SweeTarts colors, but pretty close.

The colors are green, yellow, purple, orange and pink (maybe red). They seem a bit denser and less powdery than the Original.

The flavors are actually perceivable, though not terribly notable. The tanginess is very high pitched. Where SweeTarts are a mid-range tartness (malic acid) these seem more citric acidy.

I like the balance of flavor to tartness with SweeTarts, but I can see this different kind of tartness and the back seat the actual flavors take having its appeal.

Rating: 5 out of 10.

On the whole, I’ve always loved Smarties in the sense that I will eat them, all of them, than later I will feel sick, curse them and vow never to eat them again because of my stupid lack of self control. The ubiquity of Smarties around Halloween is also accompanied by some sort of mind-warping amnesia ray ... and I again repeat my demonstration of how much power these little tablets have over me.

(Note: Smarties are called Rockets in Canada. Smarties made by Nestle are little chocolate lentils and are sold everywhere except for the USA.)

Related Candies

1. Brach’s Chocolate Candy Corn & Halloween Mix
2. Smarties Jelly Beans
3. Peeps Monster Mash Ups
4. Mary Jane Peanut Butter Kisses
5. Green Halloween

When I was a kid and we’d go to the Halloween Parade in town (Mechanicsburg, PA, if you’re curious), both folks from the floats and those watching from the sidewalks would throw corn. (Not on the cob, silly! Just dried feed corn.) I don’t know why we did it, but I kind of likened it to the harvest version of throwing rice at weddings.

This fun little remembrance has nothing to do with anything. Except that I was recently in Mechanicsburg and that it’s National Candy Corn Day and it made me think of throwing corn.

I picked up this Giant Eagle Candy Place Harvest Mix in Ohio. I believe they’re made by Mayfair. Though the colors looked rather faded in the package and the already known-quantity of the Brach’s Halloween Mix was on the shelves, too, I really wanted to try it. At 99 cents, the risk was minimal.

The assortment was much more broad than Brach’s. First, none of the shapes were assigned a particular color/flavor. Second, there were a lot of different shapes and this mix included both candy corn and Indian corn.

The shapes I found were: owl, skull & bones, pumpkin, jack-o-lantern, cat, witch, ear of corn, bat and mellowcreme pumpkin. The colors were orange, tan, yellow and brown.

The whole bag smelled kind of like band-aids and maple syrup.

Orange mellowcremes tasted like marshmallows and honey. Soft, smooth, very little grain and an even and sweet taste.

The tan shapes had a slight maple flavor to them and were my favorite in the bunch even though they lacked the touch of honey that the orange had.

The brown had a caramel and cocoa note, but it wasn’t very pronounced and seemed much sweeter than the other flavors.

Yellow tasted just like orange, which wasn’t a bad thing overall.

The candy corn were exceptionally smooth and had that light kiss of honey ... really good stuff.

While I didn’t like them as much as the Brach’s, this particular variety had no gelatin in it (but did have egg whites) and was made in the USA so there are many reasons why folks might prefer it.

Even though the colors aren’t as vibrant and the flavors not quite as remarkable it is a quality product and certainly worth the 99 cents I paid.

Related Candies

1. Brach’s Chocolate Candy Corn & Halloween Mix
2. Zachary Candy Corn & Jelly Pumpkins
3. Candy Corn Kisses
4. Brach’s Autumn Mix

Cost Plus World Market always has a great mix of candies that are both decorative and good quality. This year I picked up their Riegelein Confiserie Halloween Hollow Milk Chocolate foil mix.

They were on sale for $9.99, but going further into the store to the Christmas displays (yes, already out) they had several Christmas mixes that weren’t on sale ... for the same price.

The bag is big, as this is hollow chocolate, and holds 14.1 ounces of actual confection. Not a bad deal for 30% cacao milk chocolate, if it’s good quality.

There were two shapes and seven designs.

Each piece is rather light, weighing approximately 12 grams (about the same as a tasting square).

The designs are cute, the little figures come in ghost, witch, monster and jack-o-lantern ghost. The spheres are just different varieties of jack-o-lanterns.

Each of the pieces has a little design embossed on it, nothing that reflects the foil design in the slightest (I’m guessing that it’s generic so they can use the same molded pieces year round).

The figures look like of like board game pieces, little pegs with flat bottoms (though much bigger, about the size of a meaty thumb). The spheres are about the size of a golf ball.

The chocolate itself is glossy and well molded. It smells, well, a little like parmesan cheese and caramel. Not entirely sweet or chocolatey. I’m guessing this is the high milk content (14% minimum) that comes from dried whole milk.

It takes a little getting used to, it’s rich and creamy, rather smooth but still has a strong dairy component that is less confectionery tasting and more like something I’d expect in a bechamel.

The foils are very pretty and nicely done. They’re a bit thin and I had to pick my package carefully as it’s easy to break these (I’m guessing some thumbs poked through two of mine before I got it home).

The ingredients include PGPR and whey (not allowed in the American definition of real chocolate) but also natural vanilla. But the package was fresh, which I think makes a big difference. (Expiration is July 2009.)

They’re well worth it on sale after Halloween if you can find them, but I think that the Christmas ones are a bit nicer. There’s more variety to the shapes, the balls come with little strings so that you can hang them as edible ornaments and I found the Santa to be quite attractive and would make a great centerpiece accent. But I wouldn’t buy a bar of this chocolate.

Related Candies

1. Lindt Chocolate Bunnies (Dark & Milk)
2. Mori Ex Cacao Gift Set
3. The Great Pumpkin Roundup
4. Thompson All Natural Milk Chocolate Crisp
5. Brain Candy! (gummi brains)