Nestle Mini Smarties Filled Chick are little hollow chocolates wrapped in yellow foil. Inside is a small handful of mini Nestle Smarties. I kind of made up the name of the candy, the name on the sticker on the base of the foil is

Hollow milk chocolate figure containing mini Smarties. Seems like they could have named them something like Nestle Nestling.

The idea of a hollow chocolate figure filled with other treats is nothing new, but is a fantastic idea that’s utilized much better in Europe since these overprotective Americans think that we’ll all choke on the fillings. Nestle has many different sizes they do for Easter, as well, including a foil wrapped hen filled with Smarties as well, and often sold in a box that looks like a chicken coop with a bunch of the little chicks.

There were a lot of displays of these in grocery stores and drug stores while I was in London, so it was easy to pick up both. Most were priced at about two for one pound, which I thought was a bit steep for 30 grams (about 1.06 ounces) when you factor in that it’s Nestle chocolate.

Unwrapped the little chick is just as cute. It’s very well molded. The best thing about the candy is really the sound. Just shake the figure and it’s like a rattle.

The milk chocolate isn’t stellar, as it is Nestle; the ingredients are subpar. It wouldn’t qualify as real milk chocolate in the United States, as they use milk whey as a filler. However it’s 25% cacao content and they do use sunflower lecithin instead of soy, so if your kid has a soy sensitivity, you might want to seek the UK Nestle confections. The Smarties also use all natural colors for the shells and rice starch. Still, the label states that it may contain traces of soy, gluten, peanuts and other tree nuts.

For those of you not familiar with them, Nestle Smarties are little chocolate lentils. Unlike many of Nestle’s global brands, they’re not sold in the United States very often, as they have the same name as a pre-existing candy. Instead of renaming them, Nestle just doesn’t compete with M&Ms in the United States. (They do in Canada, though.)

The little chick is rather thin. The chocolate is rather soft, so it was easy to stick my thumb through it to break it up. Inside were 15 little Smarties lentils, far smaller than the regular Smarties. They come in pleasant pastel colors.

The chocolate is bland and sweet and sort of fudgy-thick. It doesn’t taste like something that should be eaten, more like packaging. The texture is decent enough, but I admit I’m spoiled from the Rococo Chocolate I had yesterday, so perhaps the proximity of the reviews is unfair. The Smarties don’t use the same chocolate. They taste nutty, like unroasted peanuts and porridge. The thin, crispy shell is fun. They’re about as good as Sixlets.

Even though I thought this was a marginal product, they’re inexpensive enough to buy and use as place settings for a dinner or give to a child. The interactivity of the candy inside is really what makes this special along with the attention to detail in the foil wrap and mold.

The Nestle Milkybar Rabbit is just as cute in his little white foil outfit.

Milkybar is a Nestle white confection bar. It’s made with natural ingredients, but like the Smarties chick, it contains extra whey as filler and some vegetable oils ... but there is real cocoa butter in there. It does seem to have a mix of sunflower and soy lecithin. The other allergens listed on the label were traces of peanuts and tree nuts. While I may complain about the use of vegetable oils, this is 26% dairy, so they’re not kidding when they say milky.

This fellow clocked in a little shy of a full ounce, my guess is the difference in weight between the two is the little Smarties. (Why this one doesn’t get Smarties, I don’t know. They don’t make a white confection Smarties at the moment.)

Out of the foil, this rabbit looks a bit like a themed guest soap. It’s cute and has a very thick base so he stands up well.

It smells okay, very “dairy” though I’d also say slightly rancid or just not quite fresh. The texture is good, not as silky as, say, the M&Ms White Chocolate, but still not terribly grainy. The dairy flavors are thick and just unpleasant overall. The whole thing has a bit of a plastic note to it, as if I was eating a foam egg carton, not a white chocolate.

I’m not a white chocolate snob, I actually like the stuff, but this is not good white chocolate. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a Milkybar (I haven’t review them before) but it never impressed me since there are many excellent true white chocolate bars available these days. It’s still fun to look at, and for a child who doesn’t care for the milk chocolate stuff, if this is what they ask for, it couldn’t be cuter, and on top of that, the portion is already controlled.

Nestle has been doing a lot to source their cacao through verified sustainable sources, however, their Easter novelty line does not seem to have any of those certifications.

Related Candies

1. Aldi Choceur Flame Egg & Chocolate Rabbit
2. Eat with your Eyes: Acorn filled with Squirrels
3. Riegelein Confiserie Hollow Chocolate
4. Peeps inside a Milk Chocolate Egg
5. See’s Hollow Eggs with Novelty
6. Upscale Hollow Chocolate: Michel Cluizel & Hotel Chocolat
7. Palmer Hollow Chocolate Flavored Bunny
8. Russell Stover Hollow Milk Chocolate Bunny
9. Lindt Chocolate Bunnies (Dark & Milk)
10. Kinder Egg

Wonka Everlasting Gobstopper HeartBreakers are a clever holiday version of the Gobstopper. They’re not the same candy, so it’s an interesting mash-up of elements and holiday themes.

The pieces are small compressed dextrose centers with some layers of hard sugar on top with some extra flavors in there. Classic Gobstoppers had many layers and flavors, but Wonka doesn’t make those any longer because they can take weeks to create from a center the size of a sesame seed. So they use a large SweeTart type candy at the center and the coating changes flavors only a handful of times.

A lot of candies get revamped over time. As I’ve heard unofficial from a Wonka insider, the classic SweeTarts Chicks, Ducks & Bunnies changed size & shape because the original equipment broke and since it was used only for that product line, they decided to reformat the molds to be more consistent with the Valentine’s and Christmas shapes.

The Everlasting Gobstopper HeartBreakers shifted colors in the newly available version for 2014. It’s not a drastic change, but a small tweak.

Cherry is mellow, with a sweet cherry flavor. After the top layer dissolves away, the coating is yellow. It doesn’t take much then it’s crunchable and I can get to the SweeTart-style center. The interior flavor is pretty neutral.

Watermelon is sweet and fresh, a little unexpected for this type of candy. After the initial layer dissolves, the layer under that is also a medium pink. The center is lightly tangy, but not overly sour. The layer under the watermelon-pink is also watermelon-pink.

Pineapple is delicate and light. It’s only slightly floral and fruity, but not tart bite. After the flavor dissolves away, the next layer is yellow. It’s smooth and cool on the tongue.

The classic HeartBreakers (above) were more vividly colored, with yellow and magenta instead of white and pink. While I miss the original colors and really don’t care much for the watermelon, I still love these. The limited palette is still attractive. I’m hoping the Easter version will also be back.

Related Candies

1. Wonka SweeTarts Chicks, Ducks & Bunnies (2012)
2. Wonka Everlasting Gobstoppers Eggbreakers
3. Gobstopper Heart Breakers
4. Runts Freckled Eggs
5. Ausome Jewelry Kit
6. SweeTart Hearts
7. Gobs of Gobstoppers

This fall Nestle announced it was launching Butterfinger Peanut Butter Cups in January 2014. Butterfinger is an iconic American candy bar, combining peanuts and sugar and chocolate. The bar has been adapted into a half a dozen other formats and confections. There’s were Butterfinger BBs, Butterfinger Crisp, Butterfinger Snackerz, Butterfinger Stixx, Butterfinger Bites, Butterfinger Chocolate Bars and even the caffeinated Butterfinger Buzz.

I suppose it was only a matter of time before Nestle decided to take on the cup format and the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. Nestle plans to go big with their launch of the Butterfinger Peanut Butter Cups, with a full ad campaign including a commercial during the 2014 Superbowl.

There’s a couple of curiosities about these cups. First, they have no paper cups. They are fluted, but there’s no paper liner on the tray in the package.

The second thing is that they’re not round. The circular base is far smaller than the top, which is a rounded square. There’s quite an angle towards the top which means that the ratio of chocolate to filling changes at the perimeter versus the center.

The cups are described simply as Smooth & Crunchy on the package.

The filling is quite salty. There’s a creamy component that is very sweet, then the chunky, crunchy bits of Butterfinger centers. There’s a very strong artificial butter flavor to the whole thing, much stronger than an actual Butterfinger bar.  The chocolate profile itself is overshadowed by the butter flavor of the center, so it’s hard for it to contribute anything other than texture. That said, it’s pretty smooth though sweet. It’s certainly better than the coating on a Butterfinger Bar.

The ingredients are interesting, notably that they’ve removed the artificial colorings from this candy. (Butterfinger Bars have artificial yellow and red food coloring in them.)

Nestle Butterfinger Peanut Butter Cups Ingredients: Milk chocolate (Sugar, chocolate, cocoa butter, nonfat milk, milkfat, lactose, soy lecithin, vanillin), sugar, peanuts, peanut toffee pieces (sugar, corn syrup, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, peanut butter [peanuts, dextrose, hydrogenated rapeseed and cottonseed oil, salt], peanuts, butter, salt, soy lecithin, paprika extract color), fractionated palm kernel oil, partially hydrogenated palm kernel oil, less than 2% of milk, nonfat milk, salt, cocoa butter, hydrogenated palm oil, natural and artificial flavor, hydrogenated rapeseed and cottonseed oil, soy lecithin, soybean oil, TBHQ, annatto and paprika extract color.

Contains milk, soy and peanuts, may contain nuts. No mention of gluten.

The package has the Cocoa Plan logo on the front. This is Nestle’s new initiative to bring sustainable practices to their cocoa growers through education programs. The programs are to help growers use better practices to increase yields, reduce losses as well as creating schools for the children in their communities. It’s an internal program that Nestle operates that does not, as far as I know, have any external audits or benchmarks, though they do also buy from Fairtrade and UTZ certified sources in quantities to match certain products so that they can bear their logo.

There are a lot of similarities between the Butterfinger Peanut Butter Cups and the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. It’s probably not a coincidence. Each cup is .75 ounces, with the package holding two totaling 1.5 ounces.

From the above you can see the long and complicated ingredient list for the Butterfinger Cups. The Reese’s cups are far simpler.

Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups Ingredients: Milk chocolate (sugar, cocoa butter, chocolate, nonfat milk, milkfat, lactose, soy lecithin, PGPR), peanuts, sugar, dextrose, salt, TBHQ.

Simpler does not necessarily mean better. Both cups have TBHQ in them, which is a preservative (keeps the peanut oil from getting rancid). But both are rather small in mass for a candy bar these days. A Snickers Bar or Butterfinger Bar is over 2 ounces. These cups are kind of puny.

But in the ingredients list, you’ll notice that the Reese’s have no added oils, no fractionated palm kernel oil or hydrogenated rapeseed oil. But I’ve got to admire the bang for the buck I get with the Butterfinger, it has 20 more calories from fat than the Reese’s. Here’s the comparison of the nutritional panels for both cups:

So, the Butterfinger is less salty and just slightly fattier - some of the protein grams of the Reese’s are fat grams in the Butterfinger. This is an odd observation, since the Reese’s Cups I know and love usually have a soft, greasy spot in the center of the chocolate on each cup where the peanut oils have migrated from the peanut butter into the chocolate. As far as I can tell, the Butterfinger Cups are far more stable and consistent.

They’re different candies. They share some of their format and the basic flavors but the textural experience is different. I still prefer the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, but that’s probably because I’ve grown up with it. I don’t care for the fake, overly sweet butter flavor of the Butterfinger Bar or these Cups. But I do appreciate the variation in the textures. Overall, I usually go for the smaller ingredients list and I prefer my candy to have the innate oils from the flavor ingredients, not added ones. But it’s a good candy and I think they’ll probably last longer than Butterfinger Stixx.

Related Candies

1. UNREAL #77 Peanut Butter Cups
2. Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups
3. RM Palmer Giant 1/4 Lb. Peanut Butter Cup
4. Justin’s Organic Peanut Butter Cups
5. Nestle Butterfinger Pumpkin
6. Nestle Butterfinger Snackerz
7. Head to Head: Clark, Butterfinger & 5th Avenue
8. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Line

Name: Butterfinger Peanut Butter Cups
Brand: Nestle
Description: The cup just got crunchy!
Introduction Date: January 2014
Notes: I have no doubt that Butterfinger can make a good peanut butter filling, but I have to wonder if the chocolate cups will be any good. Their actual Butterfinger Bar is pretty waxy and tasteless. But the package says something about being part of Nestle’s Cocoa Plan for certified sustainable cocoa, that would certainly set them apart from Hershey’s which is still not using cocoa that is certified to come from slave-free sources. The product launch will get a commercial during the Superbowl, which is pretty wild since Mars has the official sponsor spot with their Snickers & M&Ms spots.

Name: Lancaster Caramels
Brand: Hershey’s
Description: The surprisingly soft, rich and creamy Lancaster Soft Cremes provide a modern caramel taste experience to meet a growing consumer demand. The soft cremes were inspired by similar candies that company founder, Milton Hershey, made more than 120 years ago in his original candy company located in Lancaster, Pa. Three flavors at launch: Caramel, Vanilla and Caramel and Vanilla and Raspberry.
Introduction Date: January 2014
Notes: This brand was launched in parts of China earlier this year that went well enough that they’re going to bring them out here. (No word if they’re making them in China, but I have my doubts they would.)

Name: Werther’s Original Caramel Popcorn
Brand: Werther’s Original (Storck)
Description: Perfectly popped corn wrapped with rich and creamy Werther’s Original Caramel. The Caramel Popcorn for Caramel Lovers!
Introduction Date: 7/1/2013
Notes: I’m really curious if these are made in Germany like the other Storck products. Which might mean that this uses non-GMO corn, which would be an intriguing prospect for some folks who eschew many candies because of the GMO corn products used in them (mostly corn syrup). Ultimately, I’m never sure if caramel coated popcorn is a snack or a candy.

Name: Werther’s Original Baking Caramel
Brand: Werther’s Original (Storck)
Description: Rich and Creamy Caramels great for baking making delicious caramel apples! Easy to unwrap!
Introduction Date: 7/1/2013
Notes: I like that they feature the statement that they’re easy to unwrap, it looks like they’re twisted like the regular Werther’s caramels. I can attest that those Kraft caramels in their clear plastic are a devil to unwrap.

Name: Jelly Belly Camo Beans
Brand: Jelly Belly Candy Co
Description: The new Jelly Belly Camo Beans were inspired by the art of camouflage. Sportsmen, military and outdoor enthusiasts will discover seven Jelly Belly bean flavors in a camo-colored mix: Chocolate Pudding, Green Apple, Licorice, Juicy Pear, Orange Sherbet, Toasted Marshmallow and Watermelon. With Jelly Belly Camo Beans, the company continues its initiative of supporting U.S. troops. For every bag of Camo Beans sold, Jelly Belly Charities will donate $0.25 to support U.S. veterans and their families.
Introduction Date: 10/1/2013
Notes: It’s a strange assortment of flavors, with watermelon and orange sherbet right next to chocolate pudding and licorice ... so many things could go wrong.

Name: Fruit Vines Bites
Brand: American Licorice
Description: Building off decades of loyal followers of the Red Vines brand, American Licorice Company is helping candy lovers “live on the sweet side” with the launch of Fruit Vines Bites – soft, chewy bite size candy packed with fruit flavors designed to give everyone a new candy experience.
Introduction Date: Early 2014
Notes: I’m not sure what the difference between Fruit Vines will be and the Grape Vines that have already come out ... unless these are more like the Natural Vines.

Name: Ovation Mint Filled Break-A-Part
Brand: SweetWorks
Description: SweetWorks is introducing a new flavor to the Ovation Break-A-Part family: Mint Filled! It’s an all-natural dark chocolate sphere that breaks into 20 individual slices and each segment is filled with a cool mint center. The 6.17 ounce sphere will retail for $3.99
Introduction Date: November 2013
Notes: This sounds like an After Eight mint formed into a break-apart orange. It’s a great idea, though I wonder how messy it might end up if the center is flowing like a Junior Mint.

Name: Ovation Milk Pumpkin Spice Break-A-Part
Brand: SweetWorks
Description: Milk Chocolate Sphere infused with all-natural pumpkin flavoring. “Breaks apart” into 20 slices The 6.17 ounce sphere will retail for $3.99
Introduction Date: September 2013
Notes: I was surprised to see the ingredients listed not only spices like ginger and nutmeg but also natural pumpkin flavoring. Pumpkin Spice is all the rage, and this one sounds like it’s actually made with good ingredients, so I hoping to find one soon for review.

Images courtesy of the respective candy company

Update 10/31/2013 - An earlier version of this post listed Welch’s PB&J Snacks, but I was just informed that the information is not accurate, so I have removed it.

Related Candies

1. Candy Tease: Mars 2014
2. Candy Tease: Sweets & Snacks Expo - Part 2
3. Candy Tease: Sweets & Snacks Expo - Part 1
4. Candy Tease: Bar None, Reed’s and Regal Crown Sours
5. Candy Tease: October 2012

The Skinny Cow line of candy from Nestle gives consumers the option of buying candy that has fewer calories than most other single servings.

The Skinny Cow Divine Filled Chocolates with Caramel is a slight offering, only 130 calories packed into only 1 ounce. As far as that making it a lighter version of candy, its caloric density is great than York Peppermint Patties (113 calories/ounce) or 3 Musketeers (122 calories/ounce). However, compared to other nuttier offerings like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups (147 calories/ounce) or Snickers (134 calories/ounce), it sounds like a better choice. But the biggest issue becomes the satisfaction, because there’s no point in the empty calories of a treat if they’re not full of pleasure.

Line up the cute little medallion shaped pieces and you’ll be impressed. They’re adorable and because they’re so flat, even at about a third of an ounces they look like a lot of candy. They’re about 1.5 inches across. They smell like, well, sweet.

The pieces have a little stripe of sticky caramel inside. It’s not so much caramel as salty buttery flavored syrup. The milk chocolate is passable; it’s at least real but lacking in an satisfying chocolate flavor. The caramel’s salty kick balances out the overly sweet chocolate.

They’re disappointing, especially since I’ve had the Dove Sea Salt Dark Chocolate Promises, which are only 135 calories per ounce and about half the price per ounce. (Of course it’s up to you to control yourself and not eat a half pound in one sitting.)

Related Candies

1. Nestle Skinny Cow Divine Filled Chocolates with Peanut Butter Creme
2. Dove Sea Salt Caramel Dark Chocolate Promises
3. UNREAL #5 Chocolate Caramel Nougat Bar
4. Trader Joe’s Les Chocolats Belgique (Belgian Bars): Caramel, Chocolate Buttercream & Speculoos
5. Nestle Skinny Cow Dreamy Clusters
6. Nestle Skinny Cow Heavenly Crisp
7. Milky Way Simply Caramel

Nestle is continuing their expansion of the confectionery line for Skinny Cow. The dairy dessert brand is now a candy brand as well. They started with wafer bars, which were passable, but contain a poor listing of ingredients.

These single serve packages of Divine Filled Chocolates have only 130 calories, but that’s to be expected because it’s only 1 ounce of candy. The wrapper describes the Peanut Butter Creme variety as velvety milk chocolate and delicious peanut butter creme.

As a treat, they’re lovely. The pieces are well sized and really attractive. If you lined them up on a plate, you’ll really feel like you’re getting a treat. So kudos to Skinny Cow for recognizing that part of candy is the beauty of it.

The ingredients list is long and the filling isn’t really peanut butter, it’s more like a peanut syrup, as it’s a combination of peanuts, corn syrup, sugar, dried milk and palm oil.

They smell sweet and nutty, not that unlike a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. The chocolate is soft and has an easy bite. The center of the chocolate has the thinnest possible strip of peanut butter creme in it. The chocolate is very sweet and milky, without much of a distinctive chocolate taste. The peanut butter creme is salty, that’s what I got at first, an intense amount of salt. There’s 80 mg in the package, which is a lot for only one ounce of candy, but really stood out because it was only in the filling. The peanut butter is gooey and melts right away because it’s mostly sugar, not peanuts.

I actually prefer the wafer bars, even though they’re not covered in real chocolate, because they have a lot of texture to them and feel more like a snack. This feels like a tease, it’s pretty but it doesn’t live up to the expectations that it’s going to be decadent or filling. There’s so little peanut butter in there and it’s only one ounce, the package has only 1 gram of protein. For the same calories, you could have three Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Miniatures (44 calories each, almost 1 gram of protein each).

I really don’t understand paying so much money for so little candy when it’s of poor quality. I’d say get something like the Q.Bel Wafer Bars or just have some Reese’s Miniatures (if you can stand to have the whole bag in the house).

Related Candies

1. Hershey’s Simple Pleasures
2. Nestle Skinny Cow Dreamy Clusters
3. Nestle Skinny Cow Heavenly Crisp
4. Bissinger’s 100 Calorie Bar
5. Q.Bel Crispy Wafer Bars
6. Trader Joe’s 100 Calorie Chocolate
7. 100 Calorie Packs - How Lazy Are We?

It’s great when friends go traveling and bring back candy. My friend Amy (who often spits things out and then gives me her opinion) went to Tokyo and Kyoto. She was lucky enough to be there for the start of Cherry Blossom Season, which means that the limited edition KitKat Sakura are also on store shelves.

Sakura is a popular flavor in Japan. What that flavor is, is kind of a mystery to me. It’s not cherry or the orange blossom equivalent of orange. It’s just a soft flavor that’s more like almond to me, if other candies I’ve had are indicative.

This particular Sakura Matcha KitKat package is a little different from others I’ve had. It’s kind of like a King Size. The box is a little longer, and on the back is a little “to and from” space where you can add a personalize message.

Inside the package are three individually wrapped pairs of KitKat fingers. They’re not large, a bit smaller than the American version, as a matter of fact. They’re only 68 calories each (sorry, I couldn’t figure out the exact weight since it was all in Japanese).

It’s a white confection outside that’s flavored (and colored) with green tea. It’s not a very good white confection, a little greasy and waxy and very sweet. The green tea notes are not as bitter as some earlier varieties of matcha candies I’ve had from Nestle Japan. In this version, the Sakura adds a bit of a cereal flavor to it, maybe a hint of cinnamon and brown rice and a much lighter vanilla note.

As a whole, it was okay. It’s not a KitKat I would buy for myself regularly, even if I was excited that the trees were in bloom. I’ve had a few other varieties over the years, earlier versions were just cherry blossom with no green tea.

The other prized variety that I haven’t been able to find in the United States (unless I mail ordered, which usually ends in a melted disaster) was the Wasabi KitKat.

This is also what I’d call a gift variety, as I highly doubt people just go out looking for Japanese horseradish flavored candies. I love wasabi, but it belongs in my mashed potatoes and on my tuna and avocado roll.

The box in this version is very presentational, with stylized block print wasabi roots on the front. The box opens up to reveal 12 small, individually wrapped finger pairs of the candies.

Like most Japanese KitKats, the packaging is exquisite.

The flavor is, well, sweet. For the most part it’s a bland white confection, equally greasy and waxy as most other Nestle white KitKats. In this version there’s a peppery bite to it, like arugula or horseradish. It’s mild but noticeable. It was too strange, but also didn’t add anything to the experience. I think wasabi works best with starchy foods (mashed potatoes or rice), not with fatty foods like chocolate (or mock chocolate).

This is a novelty, not an extraordinary new flavor combination. I’m all for the combination of sweet and savory (umami), but this isn’t it.

Related Candies

1. David’s Signature Beans Jelly Bean Sampler
2. Morinaga Sweet Potato Caramels
3. KitKat Otonano Amasa (Adult Taste)
4. KitKats: Royal Milk Tea, Ginger Ale, Bubbly Strawberry, Kinako Ohagi & Milk Coffee
5. Vanilla Beans KitKat & Bitter Orange Aero
6. KitKat Red Bean & Fruit Parfait

Nestle NestEgg Creamy Caramel come in a lovely purple bag with little flowers and butterflies on it. It’s all quite charming.

The idea of caramel filled milk chocolate eggs is pretty appealing, too. There’s no dearth of choices at Easter, as I think that Cadbury may have the corner on that market with their mini version of the Cadbury Mini Caramel Egg that comes in a little egg carton. But the Nestle version, though not quite as charmingly packaged, were far less expensive. (The Cadbury’s were actually the same price, but only had 4.8 ounces in them, instead of 10 ounces in the Nestle bag.)

The little foil wrapped eggs come in two different colors: purple and a sort of pastel green. They helpfully have the candy contents printed on the foil; if you’re like me and like to mix your foil covered sweets, this is extremely helpful. Inside the foil the little eggs are nicely molded with the Nestle logo on two sides.

The eggs smell sweet and a little like cereal. The size is nice, I like to gently press along the seam to pull the eggs apart into little dishes of caramel. The chocolate is exceptionally sweet, a little grainy and on the fudgy side. The caramel is smooth and has a little bit of a salty and dark note to it, keeping it from being equally sweet. On the whole, they’re, well, cloying. I can have a couple, but then I’m done. They make my throat hurt. I’m still drawn to the look of them.

I’m hoping that someday Ghiradelli will do a dark chocolate salted caramel version (their new Easter eggs here) ... I’d definitely pay the premium for that.

Nestle also makes several other versions of their NestEggs. There’s a classic Nestle Crunch and a version of the Butterfinger that has milk chocolate mixed with Butterfinger peanut butter pieces. I’ve had the Jingle (Christmas bell) version, and they’re pretty good. Again, there are better versions if you’re willing to pay a premium.

Nestle has not given any information about the sourcing of the ingredients, though they are on track for more sustainable targets for the future.

Related Candies

1. Dove Sea Salt Caramel Dark Chocolate Promises
2. Ghirardelli Intense Dark Sea Salt Soiree
3. Nestle Butterfinger Pumpkin
4. Nestle Creme Eggs
5. Russell Stover Eggs
6. Wonka Golden Creme Egg
7. Cadbury Eggs: Creme & Caramel