After reading the publicity materials and nutrition label on these, I don’t think they can be called candy. But I have them and some folks expressed interest in the new Welch’s Fruit ‘n Yogurt Snacks, I thought I’d do a review.

The snacks come in five flavors: Blueberry, Strawberry, Cherry, Raspberry and Peach. They are little, firm jelly pieces made with real fruit puree covered in a yogurt confection coating.

The first ingredient on the label is Fruit Puree (depends on the flavor, which always includes real fruit of that kind), followed by Fruit Juice Concentrates ... then Sugar. Of course the next item is Partially Hydrogenated Palm Kernel Oil, but I’m guessing that’s so low on the proportions it explains why the fat content is only 3 grams per serving (approximately 1 ounce or half the bag) and it says 0 grams of trans fat.

Not all the flavors interest me much, so I’m not even going to open the Peach ones. Some lucky Trick-or-Treater will get that later this month. While getting my samples on the last day of All Candy Expo the guy at the Promotion in Motion booth (they folks who make these for Welch’s) apologized for not having any Cherry. I told him that was no big loss either for me.

Generally, the little bits are kind of crumbly. The yogurt confectionery coating isn’t like a white chocolate, it’s not buttery smooth. It’s kind of like a flaky frosting. It’s not bad, it’s not too sweet and adds a bit of a milky flavor to the whole thing, but also a little chalky texture ... I’m guessing this because so many of the ingredients are dairy powders (whey powder, yogurt powder). But the coating has something to offer - both calcium (10%) and vitamin D (25%) as well as active cultures of Lactobacillus acidophillus and Lactobacillus caseii. Oh, yeah, and 100% of the RDA of vitamin C and 25% of your RDA of vitamin A.

Raspberry: lovely light scent, sweet and tangy. The jelly center is firm, with a nice crumbly chew. It’s not sticky, it’s not at all like a gummi or a standard jelly candy like Dots or tough like a fruit leather. It doesn’t have that fine smoothness that jellies of all kinds have, but the texture is pretty nice. The yogurt coating is only okay, as mentioned above.

Strawberry: smells like light spring flowers and cotton candy (pretty much how fresh strawberries smell to me). There’s a slight tangy ice cream scent as well.

Blueberry: this really tastes like blueberries, though it doesn’t have the deep flavor profile that the two other berry flavors sport.

The yogurt coating fell off of the centers when I jostled the bags around a lot. I would have recommended throwing these into a snack mix of some sort - nuts, maybe some chocolate panned nuts, dried fruits and pretzels. But I don’t know if the could stand up to it.

The ones shown here are a two portion bag (perhaps for parents to share with their kids or kids to share with each other). They’re also available in “snack packs” which have less than 100 calories (and I’m guessing are a little under an ounce).

Are they candy? No, they’re too fortified.

Are they something you might be able to sell your kids on instead of candy? Possibly ... it’s more likely you’ll be able to get your kids to eat these as a healthier snack than just chips or perhaps a finicky kid who won’t eat fruit might sample them. (There’s no significant fiber in there though.) As snacks go, I still think that the Florida’s Naturals Sour Fruit Strings do the best job of feeling like “no compromise” on taste, but if your kids like these and think they’re candy, then by all means, let them indulge in this instead of something worse.

Related Candies

1. Shigekix Aha! Brain (Citrus)
2. Jelly Belly Pomegranate
3. Organic Surf Sweets
4. Florida’s Natural Sour Fruit Juice String

Late last year I did a head to head between Shoogy Boom and Pop Rocks, just to see if the original is actually the best. I actually prefer the Shoogy Boom brand, made by Hleks in Turkey.

While Pop Rocks were displaying their new Pop Rocks Milk Chocolate Bar at the All Candy Expo, Hleks was quietly showing their chocolate popping candies as well. I don’t know how long these have been on the market, the copyright on the back of the package says 2003 ... and also says that these are a product of Impact Confections (known for their Warheads line).

These little chocolate spheres are smaller than a malted milk ball but larger (or perhaps just more spherical) than a Peanut M&M. They look a little waxy, but smell pleasantly sweet. (I can figure that I beat them up pretty bad on the trip, because they were unmarred and glossy at the All Candy Expo booth.) Each sphere is milk chocolate mixed with unflavored carbonated hard candies.

With the popping candy mixed with chocolate, I find initially chewing them a bit to expose the carbonated bits helps to activate them. The chocolate isn’t stellar on these, but they’re just the transportation medium for the popping. They flavor is a little malty, with the popping bits adding only texture and sound with a little extra sweetness.

They can get kind of noisy inside my head and I was surprised at how well I could hear the popping inside other people’s heads when I passed them around last night when the neighbors came over.

I don’t know if I’d eat them often, but they’re kind of fun. I wish the chocolate as a bit better, but these might be fun to mix with other things in a “movie mix” (but maybe you wouldn’t be able to hear the movie?) like popcorn, SnoCaps and Junior Mints. I like the spherical design of them a bit better than the bar format of the Milk Chocolate Pop Rocks Bar. I shared most of them, which is the way candy should be!

Brad Kent has this wrapper on his excellent database, so I’m guessing these have been around for a while.

Related Candies

1. Soda Can Fizzy Candy
2. Astra Flying Saucers
3. Pop Rocks Cherry Cola
4. Rolly Pop

Stuffed, bite-sized marshmallows are not a new product, but certainly not one that’s widely available in the United States.

I’ve seen them at Japanese grocers and Aji Ichiban before, but never packaged just for Americans. And certainly never in these sassy little three puff portions.

Enter GudFud. They’re here to bring us the Asian foamy sweets. They’re packaged to look like they’re Japanese (terribly cute and with Japanese characters on the label, what they say, I know not) but they’re actually made in China. I tried some before and wrote about them here.

The name is a little wacky, and rather Germanic with the umlauts (G?dF?d). Call it fusion! It’s supposed to be pronounced Goood Foood.

I’ve never considered jelly and marshmallows “food”, but perhaps I can start thinking of them as “foood.”

The little individually wrapped Fruit Jelly Stuffed Marshmallows are a bit smashed when inside the package but fluff back up pretty quickly. There’s a lot of packaging, which I guess I didn’t notice at first because it’s mostly clear. The fruity ones were cute and once unwrapped, completely identical on the outside.

The jelly center is where things get different. The jelly is smooth and soft, not quite flowing, but not quite firm like an “orange slice” would be. Really, kind of like the jelly you’d spread on your toast. The flavor is mild, a little tangy, not terribly complex ... just, well nice.

The mix of fruit and marshmallow isn’t really great in my mind. So I tried toasting a package or two. They toasted nicely, though the center didn’t get that molten consistency that I’m used to with Jet or Kraft marshmallows. The marshmallow skin puffed well and browned (well, one caught on fire, but consider it a sacrifice to the marshmallow fire god). Still, the toasted flavor and jelly didn’t really grab me either.

So what about a Chocolate Stuffed Marshmallow. Though each of these are the same, the little packages still have a different little character on them. Each with a different reaction to getting a chocolate bar stuffed into their cranium.

The chocolate filling isn’t firm, it’s soft and easy to bite. It still doesn’t have a lot of chocolate oomph to it, more like a chocolate cream.

I like that the package has three marshmallows in it and you might be able to just pick them up where you buy candy bars. For those on calorie-restricted diets, a single package with three marshmallows is only 50 calories and practically no fat. I don’t know how satisfying they’d be, you might burn more calories opening all the wrappers than you’ll take in from the treats.

I expect they’ll start showing up in stores soon (they pretty much debuted at the All Candy Expo). If they came in large bags they could be fun Halloween treats. (You can buy a box of singles through their phone order system.)

Check out Sera’s review on Candy Addict.

Related Candies

1. Circus Peanuts
2. Peeps Mash Ups
3. Candy Source: Aji Ichiban
4. Brachs Bunny Basket Eggs
5. Artisan Marshmallows: Plush Puffs

Last year I tried the Limited Edition Chocolate Covered Pop Rocks. They were interesting, not really anything to bring me back to eating Pop Rocks on a regular basis.

But this year Pop Rocks had something completely new and not packaged in a flat envelope. This is the new Milk Chocolate Pop Rocks Bar. The gentleman at their booth at All Candy Expo was careful to tell me that they used premium chocolate for this bar. (I’m not sure I’d call it premium, it does have PGPR in it.)

The bar is petite at only 1.16 ounces and three chunky segments.

The chocolate is soft and rather creamy but sweet. It melts quickly to reveal the chunks of Pop Rocks that, well, pop. It’s like a proactive Nestle’s Crunch Bar (with better chocolate).

The chocolate is light and lacking in the darker chocolate flavors, I got an overwhelming taste of raisins, but I don’t know if that had something to do with some actual flavor to the Pop Rocks.

The bar can be eaten two ways, as far as I’m concerned. The first is to simply let it melt and allow the Pop Rocks to pop. This creates a mild and interesting effect, but not terribly different. The second is to chew up much of the bar and then let it melt, giving it another chew or two as it dissolves completely. This is extremely noisy (at least inside my own head) and by far the most fun.

Popping candy chocolate bars have been around for a few years, most notably a brief appearance in the United States by the Wonka Xploder bar, which I never got to try.

I expect them to be found in the same places I see Pop Rocks (7-11, Target and candy shops), no word on the retail price. This bar was made in Spain.

Related Candies

1. Gummy Fishies
2. Soda Can Fizzy Candy
3. Astra Flying Saucers
4. Pop Rocks Cherry Cola
5. Pop Rocks Limon

If you haven’t been in a Target store and browsed their candy aisles, you’re missing a price-conscious chocoholic’s dream. There are shelves and shelves of high end bars at reasonable prices these days. They’ve started carrying more European bars and even some lines of organic and fair trade bars.

I noticed a series of bars in smart paperboard wrappers called Frey from Switzerland and thought I should give them a try. All the bars were flavored (I kind of wanted to just try their “chocolate” first) so I ended up choosing two of the lemon flavored bars.

Frey Supreme White Lemon & Lime is a pretty bar made with, as you can guess, white chocolate as a base.

The white chocolate is more off-white (that’s real cocoa butter in there), and has a nicely sweet, milky scent mixed with citrus zest.

The little flecks in the bar looked promising too. I didn’t read the ingredients until after I opened the bar, so I was a little confused when I finally had a bite.

It was crunchy! There were little tangy, citrusy, crunchy bits, like someone had mixed some pulverized lemon drops in my chocolate!

Here I was thinking I was going to get bits of zest. But why was I thinking that? Pure assumption. Mostly because that’s what I wanted. After I got over that initial shock, it wasn’t bad. The tartness of the candy bits set off the chocolate nicely, but interfered with the overall creamy texture because it had a dry aspect to it. There was a very small note of black pepper in this as well, which did give the ordinarily bland white chocolate a little kick.

The second bar I picked was also on the lemon theme, Citron & Poivre. Mmmm, lemon and pepper. Lemon and pepper go so well together, they’ve bottled it and called it Lemon Pepper. And if it’s good on fish, it ought to be great in chocolate. (If they had a milk chocolate and lemon bar, I would have bought that, too.)

The package says that this is extra fine dark chocolate with a fruity touch of lemon and black pepper. The bar is lovely, large and thin with a good snap. It’s 55% cocoa solids ... which isn’t terribly dark, so I was expecting a sweet and creamy bar.

A couple of things bugged me about this bar before I even started eating it. One, it’s very thin. While some folks like that, I kind of like a little depth to my chocolate when I bite it. It also makes the bar a bit more compact. This 3.5 ounce bar was packaged to look big (at least an inch longer than a regular 3.5 ounce bar from Green & Black’s or Endangered Species which are featured nearby on the shelf), but was really no different in mass.

The scent of the bar immediately gave off woodsy notes and the black pepper.

Biting into it I found the same bitty, crunchy candy crumbles in it as the white chocolate bar. They had a nice tart bite to the, though some had a different bite: the black pepper.

The dark chocolate was largely overshadowed by these strong flavors. The texture was nice, not as buttery as the Lake Champlain I had yesterday which was a similar cocoa content. Instead it was sweet and then had tangy bits that just made the sweetness more apparent.

The dark bar contains no milk products so is suitable for vegans. (However it is processed in a facility that also uses milk and nuts, so is not for those who are allergic or very strict.)

I have to say that I wanted to like these more. The flavor combinations are certainly ones that I’m predisposed to like, but I wanted a smooth, creamy, Swiss chocolate experience. They have a huge selection of bars and I might have to try the Caf? & Cacao, which is extra fine milk chocolate with coffee and crispy cocoa nibs. At $1.99 I certainly don’t feel cheated, they were a fun experience. The White chocolate bar has a slight edge if I had to pick from these two again. The packaging is nice, the box folds back together well and I was able to put a piece of tape on it to keep the leftovers until I finished them. I’m certainly thinking about trying other bars in the line, so stay tuned for what I hope are rave reviews.

SugarHog has a review of the Frey Japonais, which sounds like a winner ... a combo of hazelnut and milk chocolate. Nicole of Slashfood (now of Baking Bites) liked the Citron & Poivre bar a bit more than I.

Related Candies

1. Terry’s Chocolate Orange Confection
2. Chuao ChocoPods
3. Green & Black’s Ginger Chocolate
4. Dolfin: Anise and Red Pepper
5. Dagoba Dark Bars

I guess if there were a national flavor for Canada, it’d be Maple. After all, there’s a Maple leaf on their flag. How cool is it that a flag actually features a flavor? (I don’t consider dragon or eagle to be a flavor ... though I suppose the Olive branches of Eritrea may count.)

Lately Canada has seen quite a few candy bars featuring Maple in it, including the shockingly red-centered Oh Henry! Oh Canada! bar and a version of the Coffee Crisp.

Caramilk are not found in the US, but its cousin, the Caramello is. It’s just a Cadbury milk chocolate bar with a flowing caramel bubble inside each section. The simplicity Caramilk Maple bar really appealed to me, especially since I was hoping that the flavor of maple would cut through the intense sweetness that keeps me from eating Caramellos more often than every 5 years. (Yes, the sweetness is that satisfying!)

This Caramilk Maple bar was the full 100 gram version (3.5 ounces). A little too much Caramilk, really, but beggars can’t be choosers (Amber brought this to me from Toronto back in April).

Even without breaking a section open to reveal the molten caramel, the bar smelled like sweet, woodsy maple.

Biting into the little section causes the caramel to ooze out. It’s actually pretty nice, smooth and creamy and not too sweet ... it appears that the chocolate itself is the throat-burningly sweet part of this bar. The caramel filling is woodsy tasting without being too artificial and has a little salty hit to it. The milk chocolate, well it’s Cadbury and it has a distinct milky flavor to it that many folks crave. I’m not one of them, but I find it interesting. It reminds me of baby formula or powdered milk.

It’s a fun bar, and I think I’d probably like it in the single-portion size better (they also have a slightly different proportion of chocolate to caramel) and they also come in the Cadbury Caramel Egg for Easter. (I think they’ll be back next year.)

Note: this was not marked Kosher, though American Cadbury products are.

Related Candies

1. Eat-More
2. Naked Chocolate Maltballs
3. Pure Fun Candy Floss
4. Russell Stover Cream Eggs
5. Pearson’s Buns

A couple of months ago I reviewed a dollar store find called Soda Can Fizzy Candy thinking that it was a cheaper and possibly cuter version of Jones Soda Co’s new Carbonated Candy.

Allow me to say that I was wrong.

While it is true that the Soda Can was less expensive and had a nice variety of flavors in one package, the candies inside are not the same. It’s not just that the Jones candy tablets are bigger, they’re simply more flavorful and fizzier.

The nice tin from Jones is substantial. It’s tall and has a firmly locking flip top. Inside the top is a little encouraging missive, mine said “jump up and down for no reason” which is somehow more encouraging than some of the sayings inside the Dove wrapped candies. I did have trouble getting the tin open much of the time, but unlike the difficulties with the York tin, I never spilled anything.

I bought these at Target, which had them for $1.39, not a bargain but certainly less than the $2.49 quoted on Amazon which scared me off of them in the first place.

The selection was limited at Target though, at least at the checkstands I checked, so I had a choice of M.F. Grape and Green Apple. Seeing how grape is an actual soda flavor I enjoyed as a kid, I thought that was the deal for me.

Later I pondered the “MF” part of the flavor name. I can imagine quite a few things that might fit into those initials:

Marty Feldman Grape
March Forward Grape
Medium Frequency Grape
Minnesota Farmers Grape
Madison Forensics Grape
Majorly Freaky Grape
Mighty Fine Grape
Maximus Frutus Grape
My Favorite Grape

There’s probably something I’m missing as a possibility ... but this is a family-friendly blog.

The little tablets are the size of a regular aspirin. The smell when opening the tin is absolutely grape, like the foamy head on a chilled grape soda or sitting next to a mouth-breathing child chewing Grape Bubble Yum.

The flavor goes through and through with a tart bite and pretty well rounded grape flavor of both the chemical variety and a small dose of the grape juice note. What is most notable is the carbonation. These are pretty much fizz bombs for your mouth. Not blisteringly sour ones, just a simple frothy foam.

Frankly, they’re not that appealing to me. I enjoyed the flavor more than the Bawls mints (but there’s no caffeine here). Carbonated things make me burpy and while a grape repeat isn’t too bad, I’m not fond of the later revisit of flavors like green apple. This is pretty why I don’t drink sodas anyway. But my husband liked the flavor of them, so I give them marks for appealing to him. The tin mentions that you can drop them in your soda as a flavor booster.

So, if you’re a soda fan and are looking for a dried out capsule version to carry around with you, this might do the trick. The tin is pretty sweet looking and it’s easy to share a little pep-me-up with friends. There are only three calories per tablet and 50 tablets in the tin. I feel a bit more confident recommending them since they’re made in Canada and not China as the Soda Can candies were. Now, if they had a Root Beer version or perhaps Cola ... then I’d probably be more excited. I’ll stick with Bottle Caps for now.

ZOMG Candy has a great review of the Green Apple.

Related Candies

1. Astra Flying Saucers
2. Pop Rocks Cherry Cola
3. Jelly Belly Soda Pop Shoppe
4. Haribo Fizzy Cola
5. Bottlecaps

I reviewed Smarties a couple of years ago, but they were the Canadian version and I thought they merited a revisit with the originals ... especially since they’re so wildly popular around the world with sales topping $140,000,000 a year!

Smarties were introduced by Rowntree in the UK back in 1937. Legend has it that Forrest Mars and a Rowntree family member were traveling through Spain in the mid-1930s and saw the soldiers there would eat chocolate that was covered in sugar to keep it from melting. Both men saw the merits of this novel way of serving candies, especially when combined with the French and Italian panning processes that provides an attractive colored shell. Rowntree first named their new chocolate lentils “Chocolate Niblet Beans” but changed next year to Smarties.

They’re not sold in the United States owing mostly to the fact that the name Smarties is already taken here (and perhaps some sort of gentleman’s agreement between Rowntree & Mars ... I can’t find any record of it though).

Smarties offer a wide variety of colors in their flat chocolate candies and recently change from artificial colors to all natural ones in hopes that it will reduce reticence among moms because of concerns about artificial colors being linked to hyperactivity.

The hexagonal tubes that hold the Smarties are certainly cute. They’re easy to dispense from and they don’t roll around. The candies themselves are attractive, if now a little mottled in color.

Smarties shells are a little thicker than M&Ms and have a light flavor to them that I can only call cookie flavored (maybe ‘Nilla Wafers or Graham Crackers). The chocolate inside is rather unremarkable - not terribly rich or creamy.

What’s most surprising and pleasant about the Smarties is the flavor of the orange ones. They’re actually orange. Kind of a middle-of-the-road orange, not terribly deep or zesty, more like the Terry’s Chocolate Orange.

The colors are remarkably different than they used to be. I tossed out a little array with some M&Ms ColorWorks as a comparison. The difference is pretty easy to see - the Smarties lack a depth to the color. However, it gives them a little artisan, homespun quality that certainly doesn’t turn me off.

Brits are fierce about their Smarties, and even the little changes in the packaging and colors seem to get people all fired up. Here’s a commercial from last year when the Hex tube replaced the round one with the collectible caps.

Here’s another earlier one that might lead one to believe that there’s something really psychedelic about these candies!

While parents may be happy that the artificial colors are gone, vegetarians aren’t. They now use carminic acid to make the reds, which is made from cochineal insects. (It also means that they’re not Kosher.)

Further, it’s not what Americans would consider “pure chocolate” as it contains whey and vegetable fat fillers. Ingredients are: Sugar, cocoa mass, cocoa butter, dried skimmed milk, butterfat, whey powder, vegetable fat, lactose and soy lecithin. The coating is: sugar, wheat flour, modified starch, colors (titanium dioxide, mixed carotenes, carminic acid, vegetable carbon, riboflavin, copper, complexes of chlorophyllins), glazing agents, beetroot juice and flavourings.

Related Candies

1. Disney Branded Chocolate Candies
2. Peruvian Candies
3. Fairway NYC
4. Terry’s Chocolate Orange
5. Jelly Belly JBz