I’ve seen the Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Filled with Creamy Peanut Butter at the stores for over a year now, but only in the super-duper 4.5 ounce slab bars. I didn’t really want that much of a bar and I figured it’d come around to the smaller size at some point. Sure enough I finally found them in the King Size. (I’m guessing they couldn’t quite swing a regular sized bar because of the proportions involved in making a filled bar like this.)

The bar puzzles me. It’s a Hershey’s product, just as Reese’s are, but it’s not branded under the Reese’s name, which is where most peanut butter products go (except for the Peanut Butter Kisses). I just couldn’d figure out what would be better about this bar compared to all the other Reese’s products in their line.

I’m not sure why I was so surprised at how it looked when I took it out of the wrapper. It’s downright unattractive. The five rounded rectangular segments have a “default font” look to them. The bar is long and thick, a little narrower than the traditional Hershey bar and of course triple the thickness to hold the “creamy peanut butter” filling.

As proportions go, this is more about the chocolate than the peanut butter - there’s probably a 2 to 1 ratio of chocolate to peanut butter here. The chocolate on this bar doesn’t quite taste like Hershey’s. There’s no familiar yogurty tang to it, but it does have that sort of soft & fudgy texture. The peanut butter filling isn’t an ultra-smooth cream as I was expecting, but not the dry crumble of a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup either. I wouldn’t call it creamy. It didn’t have much of a salty hit to it, though the package did say that it has 140 mg, about half of what you’d find in a Reese’s.

It’s a nice tasting bar, it seems designed for the market of people who don’t want too much peanut butter in their chocolate and seem perfectly happy with a recommended portion of 2.3 ounces and 370 calories (the recommended portion when eating the jumbo bar is more responsibly set at about 1.5 ounces). The other difference between this bar and a Reese’s is that this one contains partially hydrogenated oils ... I’m not saying that’s a selling point.

Related Candies

1. Reese’s Whipps
2. Twix PB
3. Boyer Smoothie
4. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Line
5. Take 5 Peanut Butter

I don’t think I’ve ever thought that Sour Patch Kids needed to be sourer. Perhaps some sour enthusiasts did, but there are lots of super-sour, tongue-burning candies out there.

What I think is interesting about the new Sour Patch Extreme candies is that they didn’t just make them more sour. They mixed the flavors up a bit.

Each candy is a mix of two flavors. The head is one flavor and the shock of hair is a second flavor. I don’t think they looked too much like faces, more like feet with different colored toes to me.

Watermelon Grape (purple hair and pink head) - I was surprised, these went together pretty well. The fake grape has a little concord snap to it and the watermelon, though pretty much a straight high pitched sour also has that slight note of the rind in there.

Orange Blue Raspberry (blue hair and orange head) - I would have preferred my citrus together - maybe a little lemon and orange, but this was okay. The orange seemed to overpower the raspberry in the sour department, but after chewing to the point where it gets sweet, that’s when the raspberry kicked in.

Sour Apple Strawberry (red hair and green head) - This combo was quite as abundant in the mix and that was fine by me. The flavors were so distinct they didn’t seem to go together.

I rather prefer my flavors separate. The good thing is that you can just bite off the half that you feel like eating, but of course you can’t throw the other half back into the bag for later (well, maybe you could, but I wouldn’t).

While they are more sour, they’re also a smidge less flavorful. I think I’ll stick with the regular ones.

I got these as a sample at All Candy Expo, but I spotted them at Target and 7-11.

Unlike gummis, Sour Patch products contain no gelatin (they’re technically a “jelly” product). For that reason they are suitable for vegetarians.

Related Candies

1. Sour Gummi Bears
2. Twizzler Sourz
3. Haribo Fizzy Cola
4. Warheads Juniors Extreme Sour
5. Swedish Aqua Life

I love peanuts, though I rarely eat them plain. Peanuts are one of the most perfect nuts for candy. Moderate fat content, mild flavor that combines well with other flavors (especially chocolate) and spices. They’re also inexpensive, so can be found in a wide variety of candies from cheap to upscale.

Ferrara Pan Boston Baked Beans are one of those classic candies that capitalizes on simplicity. Candy covered peanuts. They’re sold in these little boxes, pretty cheap too, 25 cents for .95 ounces.

They’re named for a dish, a mix of beans in a brown sugar or molasses and spice sauce. These don’t taste anything like that, though they do have legumes at their center!

Sugar shells like the panned coating of Boston Baked Beans are great because they seal in freshness (in fact, when first developed as a process, panning was used to preserve herbs and seeds).

The sugar coating isn’t quite crisp, but has a slight grain. There’s really no flavor to it, just sugar. The peanut inside is a little soft, and tastes a little raw. No dark roasted flavors, just the fresh taste of peanuts. A little earthy, not at all salty and even a little on the sweet side. The nuts are well chosen. Even though all of them are not large, I didn’t run across any rancid or bitter ones.

When I was a kid Boston Baked Beans confused me. I don’t think I ate them until I was a teenager. I think I was afraid they actually were candied beans (and that’s not really that outlandish, as there’s an Indian confection which is candy coated garbanzos). The appeal of candied nuts just wasn’t apparent as a kid ... I don’t think I cared much for Jordan Almonds back then either.

But as an adult, I think these are fun and a nice snack. Not that easy to find though. These are suitable for vegetarians and vegans who eat beeswax, however the package states that the product is processed in a facility that also uses milk, egg and soy products (and wheat for those who are gluten-sensitive).

Just for giggles, I decided to list my favorite nuts for eating plain, in descending order of affection (though I have great affection for all):

1. Almonds
2. Cashews
3. Peanuts
4. Pecans
5. Hazelnuts

Here’s what my favorites lists looks like for my favorite nuts that are included in candy:

1. Pecans
2. Cashews
3. Hazelnuts
4. Peanuts
5. Almonds

So, what are you top nuts, and do you have a different preference when they’re included in candy?

Related Candies

1. Romanego Dragees, Cordials & Fondants
2. Sno-Caps, Goobers & Raisinets
3. P-Nuttles
4. The Lemonhead & Fruit Heads

I wasn’t much for dolls as a kid. I never had a Barbie. Instead I played with things like microscopes, art supplies and Playmobile/Lego. Sure, I liked to dress up, but I never considered myself very feminine and wasn’t terribly interested in fashion, makeup or my appearance. (I admit that I liked to braid my hair though and collected rhinestone jewelry ... and often wore much of my collection at once.)

There were candy cosmetics when I was a kid, not that they did anything. You can still get the little lipsticks. Which weren’t actually meant to be applied to the lips, they’re just little cylinders of compressed dextrose in a lipstick container. (The most successful candy lipstick, as most kids know, would be Easter Malted Milk Eggs, which could be used to painting lips, faces and dog noses.)

So in two ways this candy is kind of lost on me. It’s based on the idea of cosmetics (I still rarely wear makeup) and the fashion dolls line called Bratz. But it’s candy ... and good candy should stand on its own!

All four of the candy products from Dracco in a licensing agreement with MGA Entertainment are related to lips. Or is that Lipz? Bratz are a group of girlz who love clothz. Their appearance is stylized, kind of like the Troll dolls from when I was a kid, except instead of being asexual, these are hypersexual.

The first up: Lip Bubble Rolls. It’s a roll of bubble gum tape. Inside a plastic set of lips.

It’s pink.

It’s strawberry.

It’s sweet. Not an overly sour bubble gum, just lightly tangy and fragrant. It has a nice soft chew, a little slick without much graininess, so bubbles were pretty much ready to go.

It really wasn’t that flavorful though. And it didn’t make my lips look any different.

(5 out of 10)

The only “makeup” I wear on a regular basis is tinted lip balm. But usually regular lip balm. When I was a pre-teen I did fall into the obsession with BonneBell Lip Smackers. But I was always disappointed that they had no real flavor, just scent.

This cute little Candy Lip Gloss Tube is much like a package of Blistex. It’s a gooey liquid in a clear plastic package. The applicator tip is angled and has a little hole. A gentle squeeze to eject a little drop and then press against the lips to apply.

I was expecting something sweet and sticky. And though it smelled like lipgloss often does, it tasted like a liquid strawberry hard candy. A little tangy and lacking in a deep flavor.

As for lip decor, it was a little runny at first, then when left on the lips it became dry and sticky. However, this did impart a glossy appearance. The light pink tone in the tube did nothing on my lips (well, they’re kind of that color anyway).

(4 out of 10)

The stand up bottle with a wand style of the Candy Lip Gloss is pretty much the same as the tube. It has slightly different proportions of water, but the ingredients are the same.

It took has a light strawberry smell and light pink color.

I have less experience with bottles of gloss, but the ones that I’ve tried usually have some sort of spongy tip for precision application. This is just a plastic stick. (But probably slightly more sanitary. If licking a stick and putting it back in the bottle can ever be considered sanitary for candy or cosmetics.)

(3 out of 10)

This Candy Lipstick is the same as the others, only in solid form. A little smaller (more slender) than a real lipstick, but hard candy certainly doesn’t have the engineering problems that a semi-solid fat does.

This one was easy and satisfying to simply eat and not apply. The other goos just didn’t lend themselves to licking off the applicator. After numerous applications though my lips were actually a bit chapped ... hmmm. But they looked redder!

(4 out of 10)

I’m of two minds about candy lipsticks & glosses. First, lipstick is consumed. We think it’s for external application only when in reality it’s slowly eaten off the lips by the wearer. Some may be lost due to transfer to a cup or a kiss, but most of it is eaten. What’s in there? Here’s what’s in Lip Smackers. Try reading what’s in lipstick sometime. Definitely not something you’d slather on your toast every morning. So this is definitely safer for pretend play for kids than the real thing or even flavored lip balms. Second, imitative play is good, natural and healthy. Children have been “playing house” and aping their parents for thousands of years. But it may be training girls to eat the lip products! So, I simply don’t know.

Most of all, I’m not a parent.

This is a product that’s capitalizing on the licensing of the Bratz characters on the packages. If you’re already a fan of the Bratz brand, then these are probably a nice product, especially for the younger kids who want to experience cosmetics but really aren’t ready.

As a candy, these are marginal at best. But mostly harmless from the standpoint of a cosmetic item. (Well, they’re made in China, I can’t vouch for their safety.)

Related Candies

1. Disneyland Candy Novelties
2. Hubba Bubba Sour Gummi Tape
3. Ausome Jewelry Kit
4. Bubble Roll Message Maker
5. Florida’s Natural Sour Fruit Juice String

Terra Nostra is a favorite chocolate brand of mine. I know, I’ve never written about their bars before. I’ve been buying the Organic Dark Chocolate with Pecans and Raisins since I first saw it at Trader Joe’s ... I’m guessing at least six years ago. I was never a fan of chocolate and raisins until I met Trader Joe and he changed my mind with his wonderful dark chocolate covered raisins in a tub. With that in mind, I gave that bar a try, drawn by the pecans and dark chocolate and pretty well sold on the addition of the tangy, chewy raisins.

It’s not the most complex bar in the world, but it’s a good all around contender when it comes to satisfaction. My biggest problem with it? It’s too big. Yes, I know that the 3.5 ounce size is pretty popular when it comes to premium bars, but it’s just too big for me to finish in one sitting and I want a lot of variety in my life.

Imagine my pleasure at seeing that Terra Nostra is bring out a new line of “Pocket Bars”. At only 1.5 ounces, which means a nice sized portion of chocolate, and they even come with a little zazz to make them more like candy bars.

Each bar is four sections, slightly domed, for most of them to accommodate a filling of some sort.

Creamy Caramel in Satin Milk Chocolate - this was an excellent bar, far superior to most other single-serve caramel bars I’ve had. The milk chocolate is rich, creamy and has a lot of the complex dairy flavors to it. The caramel, though rather syrupy is salty and smooth with a pretty good hit of butter to it. (7 out of 10)

Creamy Caramel in 60% Dark Robust Chocolate - this was a nice bar! The dark chocolate is robust, just like they say, with some coffee notes that set off the salty, sweet and gooey caramel center. I’d prefer a caramel that wasn’t quite so gooey (think Caramello) and it does have a little bit of a grain to it. The whole thing comes together nicely. (7 out of 10)

Goji Berries and Pink Himalayan Mineral Sea Salt in 73% Dark Chocolate - this one took away all the fun of being a candy bar and injected a bunch of trendy items. Goji berries are also known as wolfberries; they’re little red berries (related to tomatoes and deadly nightshade) about the size of a peanut, they’re always sold dried. Goji berries tangy, kind of dry and leathery; though they do have some distinctive flavors, but they’re also really fibery. I’m often left with some piece that feels like a wad of chewed paper - really, I shouldn’t have to spit bits of my chocolate bar out. The chocolate itself doesn’t taste salty, just less sweet (but it’s hard to do a one for one comparison with the others since this is the only 73% dark bar in the range). Honestly, this bar just clicked with a bunch of my pet peeves about trendy foods ... if you want to read something really fun, try this piece from the Sydney Morning Herald about the goji berry. (5 out of 10)

Pomegranate Truffle - a base of 60% cacao dark chocolate has a rich chocolate truffle filling flavored with pomegranate. The dark chocolate is creamy, but not too dark or dry. The truffle center is a light and creamy truffle, not greasy but smooth and of course with a tangy & berry bite of pomegranate. The pomegranate kind of overwhelms most of the chocolate flavors, but blends so well with the texture. (8 out of 10)

All the bars are certified organic ... not that it makes them healthy or anything. The Pomegranate Truffle and Goji Berry dark bars are suitable for vegans, however they are made on machinery that also processes dairy (and peanuts, soy and tree nuts). Terra Nostra also participates in Equi-Trade programs, though their bars are not specifically certified Fair Trade. They’re fun little bars and if presented with an array of commercial mass-produced bars and these, if price is not the deciding factor, you might want to give them a try.

(Top photo of Robust Dark with Raisins & Pecans courtesy of Terra Nostra)

Related Candies

1. Theo 3400 Phinney Bars
2. Rice Milk Chocolate Bars
3. Equal Exchange: Espresso, Mint & Nibs
4. Dagoba Hazelnut
5. Thompson’s Organic Chocolate

They’re the candies that made E.T. famous: Reese’s Pieces. Little sweet nuggets of peanut flavored candy covered in a colorful shell. Loved across the universe, they were introduced in 1978, but didn’t break out as a widely-known candy until being featured as alien-bait in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial in 1982.

The story is quite familiar to most movie and confectionery fans. Steven Spielberg approached M&Ms about doing a product placement (not a very common thing in those days) in his new movie about a child who adopts an abandoned alien. M&Ms turned down the project, so Spielberg went to his next choice, Hershey’s and the Hershey’s Kiss. Hershey’s wasn’t keen on that, but did offer up one of their new candies that they’d been trying to launch national since 1980, Reese’s Pieces ... which look an awful lot like M&Ms! Sales improved drastically and the idea of product placement was cemented as a way to increase revenue in feature films and television series.

Are they a Halloween candy? Well, the movie takes place around Halloween and they do sport festive harvest colors.

While Reese’s Pieces may sport the Reese’s name, but they’re really not much like the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, except that they contain peanuts.

It’s a sweet, melty peanutty center covered in a crisp candy shell. They come in three colors: orange, yellow and brown. They also come in an Easter version that has a pastel shell and is larger.

The center is made from a peanut powder of sorts, instead of a peanut butter. Much of the peanut oil has been removed, mostly because of a manufacturing problem with peanut oil ... it’s a liquid a room temperature, so it tends to migrate out of peanut butter via osmosis when coated with lower-fat things like a sugar shell. (Some folks may notice that their Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups get a little shiny spot in the center of the shell when this happens.)

I find that Reese’s Pieces lack a big nutty punch. They taste like peanuts, but don’t have that real peanut taste that a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup has. They’re also really sweet and don’t have that little salty hit that most other peanut things like Payday Bars, RPBC and Pearson’s Nut Roll have. I’ve always noticed a bit of a floral note to them as well, that just doesn’t do anything for me.

I keep thinking I’ll like them, then I buy them and I’m disappointed. The Easter versions, with its thicker shell and more concentrated “peanut butter as cookie dough” flavor pleases me a lot more. I’m wondering as well if I’m imagining that the shells used to be more consistent. These seemed a little bumpier, a little less opaquely colored.

Related Candies

1. Reese’s Whipps
2. M&M and Reese’s Pieces Peanut Butter Eggs
3. Trader Joe’s Mini Peanut Butter Cups
4. Peanut Butter Kisses
5. Reese’s Pieces with Peanuts

Since All Candy Expo this year was so close to Halloween, there were a lot of Halloween treats on display. One booth, Zachary Confections, had a huge table with bins holding these little packets of goodies: Indian Corn and Jelly Pumpkins. What sets them apart from other individual packets of ordinary sugar candies for the Trick-or-Treaters is that these have cute little black & white Halloween-themed designs on them: black cats, witches, ghosts, bats and skeletons.

Zachary is one of those candy companies that kind of flies under the radar of most people. They make a lot of “house brand” candies, as Joanna at Sugar Savvy found out, they’re the ones behind Target’s candy corn. But I’ve never been terribly aware of their products as a whole, mostly because so many different companies make candy corn, jellies and chocolate covered nuts in bulk.

After Joanna named Zachary the best candy corn in her taste test, I thought maybe I should give it a try. Unfortunately I didn’t grab any of the traditional candy corn, instead I got some Indian Corn. Indian Corn is usually chocolate flavored on the bottom.

This candy corn wasn’t quite as dark looking as most others I’ve tried. In fact, it looks a little wrong, the orange is kind of peachy and the brown a little watery instead of dark and dense.

But taste? The Zachary candy corn is very smooth. It doesn’t have any graininess at all to it, just a stiffness that melts pretty well after a couple of chews. The flavor is lightly honey ... no different than a regular candy corn, it lacks those toasted notes that the Indian Corn usually has. I liked it well enough to eat two small packets over a couple of weeks. I still prefer Brach’s because I enjoy the slight grain and the stronger honey notes, but this is definitely high quality stuff.

I wonder how many kids like little sugared jelly candies. I have to admit that these are super cute. The little Pumpkin Jelly shapes have a green stem and little fluting on the side like real pumpkins.

They’re lightly orange flavored. Not a vibrant flavor, just sweet and slightly zesty. It doesn’t have any of the tangy elements you’d find in a Sunkist Fruit Gem. I’ve always been a huge fan of Orange Slices (and Spearmint Leaves), so these are a great harvest-themed version. Even better, they fit in my mouth in one bite, instead of Orange Slices that are usually two bites. It’s not easy to find individual packets of Orange Slices, so they get major points on that front.

Zachary is based in Frankfort, Indiana and they have a factory store ... anyone ever been there?

Related Candies

1. Candy Corn Kisses
2. Milk Maid Caramel Candy Corn
3. Gourmet Goodies Candy Corn
4. Brach’s Autumn Mix
5. Halloween Treats at I-Mockery

I puzzled over the Orange Marshmallow Pumpkin at the store for quite a while. Was the marshmallow orange? Was the coating orange? Or was it orange flavored? The small print gave me a clue, “Naturally flavored,” it said. “Covered in milk chocolate,” it said.

“Okay,” I said. “Into the basket you go!”

Opening it up at home I still didn’t smell the orange. After biting through the chocolate shell, the orange flavor became more apparent, as did the color.
This is that cautionary orange, you could strip the chocolate off of this and use it as a fluffy, sticky signal puff if you were stranded somewhere.

The marshmallow is super soft, moist and a little sticky. The light kiss of orange essence really changes this from a ho-hum marshmallow product to something I ate all of without complaining that my candy blog makes me eat these things (okay, that really doesn’t happen). The milk chocolate, though sweet, was rich enough to set off the sweet marshmallow and add some nice creaminess to the whole. I enjoy these sorts of seasonal products from Russell Stover because I know they’re fresh.

I don’t know if I’ll buy them again, unless perhaps they’re 10 cents in a sale bin in November, but I’ll keep an eye out for an Easter version of them next year.

The allergy notice on the package mentions that they’re made in a factory with tree nuts, peanuts, wheat and eggs. It also contains gelatin, so is unsuitable for vegetarians. The orange filling also has artificial colors in it (Yellow 6), so folks looking to stay away from those should opt for the regular unflavored Marshmallow Pumpkin.

Rebecca posted on the Hershey’s orange pumpkins last year and Joanna did both orange flavored ones last year.

Related Candies

1. Frankford Marshmallow Pals
2. Russell Stover Eggs (2007 edition)
3. The Great Pumpkin Roundup
4. Brach’s Autumn Mix
5. Russell Stover Cream Eggs