You’ve probably noticed by now that I’m not a big gum chewer. But I’ve had to do a lot of thinking at work lately, and there have been studies that show that chewing gum enhances learning and reduces stress.

I found this bag of 75 pieces of Mike and Ike Fruit Flavored Bubblegum in my package of samples from the National Confectioners Association that arrived in advance of the Sweets & Snacks Expo later this month. I’ve seen these on store shelves already. They’re little bubble gum pieces in the same five flavors as Mike and Ike: strawberry, lime, lemon, orange and cherry.

The bag is an odd portion, it’s 4.25 ounces but a serving size is 2 pieces. Of course that’s just a recommendation. My mode of gum consumption is to chew it quickly until it loses its flavor, toss and start with a new piece/pieces. A portion for me is about 20 pieces for a session. (There are 5 calories per rod.)

The gum itself is made by Ford Gum under license from Just Born, makers of Mike and Ike, Hot Tamales and Marshmallow Peeps.

The rods are just about the same size as the classic Mike and Ike. The only differences are that they’re opaque and more regularly shaped. The outer coating was a light candy shell, not completely crunchy but it had a satisfying grain that created a good texture at the start of the chew and it also released a lot of flavor into the mix.

Orange was better than I expected. I was afraid it would be too tangy and reminiscent of Aspergum. It is a nice citrus flavor, tart at first but then a sweet orange flavor. It hangs onto the zest notes the longest, though it’s not as though it’s a long time at all.

Lemon started out sweet, then got a nice tangy lemonade vibe going on, then all the flavor just up and left.

Lime is all the things I love and hate about lime. It’s metallic and bitter but also zesty and tangy. The lime flavor is rather realistic but part of me is wondering why I’d want to chew lime gum.

Strawberry is fun because it’s sweet and a little like lemon with its tart bite. It seemed to be the one with the best bubble blowing, but that might have been because I chewed it the longest.

Cherry looked a lot like Strawberry much of the time, just a smidge darker. It was like a LifeSavers Wild Cherry gum rod. I liked it, even though it was medicinal, syrupy and rather bitter towards the end. It was also thin and soupy in parts and never really made good bubbles.

I liked chewing mine in pairs. Two pieces made a perfect portion for later bubble blowing. I was mostly a purist, but occasionally mixed the flavors together. Of course all citrus go together and strawberry with lemon is good.

I’d say I liked these better than actual Mike and Ike, but that’s not saying much as a I find the jelly rods a bit bland. Fruit flavored gum made with actual sugar isn’t that easy to find.

They also make a Hot Tamales version of the gum, but it’s made with artificial sweeteners, so I gave it away for a cinnamon gum fan.

Related Candies

1. Dubble Bubble Chewola Bubble Gum Crayons
2. Classic Gums: Black Jack, Clove, Beemans & Teaberry
3. Mike and Ike Alex’s Lemonade Stand
4. Tiny Size Chiclets
5. Gold Mine Gum
6. Short & Sweet: Gums
7. Mike and Ike Tangy Twister

For over eighty years folks enjoyed a simply little candy called Flicks. They were disks of chocolate (or mockolate) like large chocolate chips sold in foil wrapped tubes. Great for munching at the movies or sharing with the kids.

They were originally made by Ghirardelli starting in 1904 and over those decades they never changed. Seriously, never altered the manufacturing equipment at all. So it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that eventually the machines broke down and couldn’t be easily repaired. Instead of developing a new process Ghirardelli simply stopped making them. But folks missed them, so after sitting idle, in 2004 the Tjerrild family bought the trademark and rights to the candy and set about repairing the old machines. Though the actual machinery is no longer in Racine, Wisconsin, but now in Fresno, California - they still use the same Ghirardelli mockolate formula.

The package is simple. It’s a cardboard tube covered in foil that wraps around and into the ends to close them up. Then they’re covered in plastic wrap to protect the freshness. (I believe they’re change it this year and putting the candies inside into a plastic baggy and getting rid of the overwrap.) The tube is about 5.25 inches long and about 1 inch in diameter, about the same as half of a paper towel core. The foil comes in four colors, for no particular reason I guess: red, blue, gold and green.

Sugar, fractionated palm kernel oil, non fat milk, milk, cocoa, partially hydrogenated palm oil., cocoa processed with alkali, sorbitan tristearate, soy lecithin, salt, artificial flavors.

I admit that I’ve been hesitant to review these. I’ve had Flicks before, probably 30 years ago and recall them being cheap tasting (even then I knew the difference between real chocolate and substitutes). But enough people were pining for them that they were brought back after 15 years out of production, so the narrative of something being brought back from the dead is compelling.

The disks are between 1/2 and 3/4 of an inch in diameter.

The pieces don’t smell like much at all and look rather waxy. The texture at first isn’t very encouraging, it’s waxy and immediately gives off sweet and powder milk notes. But then it gets a little creamier as it melts, it’s a little malty, a little bit of salt in there. It’s very sweet. They’re not so much a chocolate as a simple kind of mockolate tablet. I can’t say that I love them, but didn’t mind eating them as much as I thought.

Overall, I have very little interest eating these when there are so many better things I can do with 220 calories and $1.39 that don’t contain palm oil. Ghirardelli makes such nice baking chips, it’s a shame these can’t just be those.

Here’s a little factory video, which is so utterly charming that I forgot I didn’t like them that much.

Related Candies

1. Go Max Go Jokerz Candy Bar
2. R.M. Palmer Quax - The Yummy Ducky
3. Goldie’s Premium Carob Bar
4. Kissables (Reformulated)
5. Smooth n Melty
6. Sixlets & Limited Edition Dark Chocolate Flavored Sixlets

Nestle continues its expansion of the Raisinets line. First it was Dark Chocolate Raisinets and then they really blew our minds with Cranberry Raisinets (which have no raisins! and they’re dark chocolate!). This year they’ve introduced Cherry Raisinets which are “dark chocolate” covered dried cherries. So they’ve ignored two of the three defining features of Raisinets - no raisins, no milk chocolate (but they’re still individually panned candies).

Still, it’s a great idea. How many real fruit candies are there? I loved the idea that they were also using dark chocolate, which I think is an excellent mix with the tartness and wine-notes of dried cherries.

The ingredients list in classic Raisinets is mercifully short: milk chocolate, raisins, sugar, tapioca dextrin and glaze. The ingredients for the new chocolate covered sunshine Cherry Raisinets are Dark Chocolate [with dairy], sweetened dried cherries (cherries, sugar, sunflower oil, citric acid), sugar, tapioca dextrin, confectioners glaze, cocoa processed with alkali.

The package makes some claims:

GOOD to KNOW
Cherry Raisinets are a natural source of FRUIT AND DARK CHOCOLATE ANTIOXIDANTS which help maintain good health.

Fact: the nutrition chart makes no mention of measurable antioxidants. There is no Vitamin C, no Vitamin A. There is 2% Calcium and 2% Iron.

GOOD to KNOW
You get a 1/2 SERVING OF REAL FRUIT in every 1/4 cup of Cherry Raisinets.

I love fresh cherries and even the dried ones, I’ve never seen the need to add extra sugar to them.

But maybe I should ignore the package and expectations and get on with the actual tasting. I was expecting cherry bits, that these were going to be similar in size and shape to Raisinets. Instead they’re actual whole, pitted cherries. The nuggets are about an inch across, though some are larger, flatter or rounder.

With the Cranberry Raisinets I was irritated at how sweet the centers were. Even though they added sugar to these (or maybe because they also threw in some citric acid) they were tart, moist and chewy. The dark chocolate is sweet and rather cool on the tongue. It’s only vaguely chocolatey, but not too waxy or distracting. The cherry notes are well rounded - the woodsy and tangy chew is soft and complex. It gets tarter the longer I chew, so the very end is a lot of cherry flavor.

These are by far my favorite Raisnets product so far (but that’s not hard because I’m not that fond of Nestle’s take on chocolate covered dried fruit). I wish it was better chocolate, of course, and wasn’t so sugary ... but the prospect of getting chocolate covered dried cherries in a vending machine or at the movie theater is tantalizing. I wouldn’t eat them as a health food, but they’re a snappy snack and probably better for you than some other things.

The retail price of $3.29 for 4 ounces is a bit steep for low-quality chocolate candy ($13.16 a pound) but these may end up on sale for less.

Note - I got mine as a sample from the National Confectioners Association as part of their preview of new products. Nestle did some wide sampling and giveaways, mostly with the mommy blogs (that I didn’t care to participate in), so mine is hardly the first review of these even though I have yet to see them in the stores.

Related Candies

1. Recchiuti Asphalt Jungle Mix
2. Nestle Cranberry Raisinets
3. Nestle Noir
4. Sno-Caps, Goobers & Raisinets
5. Dark Raisinets
6. ChocoCherries

Trader Joe’s is getting its “summer candy” on the shelves. Summer candy is usually sugar candy, or candy that bears the heat well. The great thing about summer candy is that it often reflects the taste of summer fruits.

One product is Trader Joe’s Gourmet Jelly Beans in 18 natural flavors. The jelly beans are even naturally colored with vegetable and fruit sources. (They’re not quite vegan though, since they use beeswax for the final polish.)

At first I thought that they might be actual Jelly Belly, but without the Jelly Belly stamp. But then I thought maybe they were Marich, who makes Green Beans for Whole Foods. Then flipping over the box I saw that they’re made in Ireland ... which really doesn’t make much sense to me because there are so many great jelly bean makers here in California.

The flavor mix is almost all fruits, except for liquorice, which is really essential for any mix. The box is a nice size at 5 ounces and $1.99 they’re cheaper than Jelly Belly ($6.40 a pound versus about $9 a pound for most Jelly Belly).

(The photos don’t match up with the flavor review ... they’re just illustrative.)

The citrus flavors included: Lemon, Lemon & Lime, Tangerine and Pink Grapefruit. All were sunny and zesty, though sweeter and not as intense as Jelly Belly. The zest was a little uneven as well, some were rather bitter from the peel oils but the same flavor another time wasn’t at all.

The berry flavors included: Strawberry Smoothie, Strawberry, Blueberry, Raspberry and Blackberry. These flavors had good combinations of both tartness, sweetness and the fragrant floral notes that accompany berries. I liked the raspberry quite a bit, it wasn’t quite jammy but still the best rounded (and possibly the most ubiquitous flavor in my box) but on the other end blueberry was completely lacking in any flavor at all.

Traditional fruits were Cherry, Apple and Grape.

Cherry was weird, in fact, I wasn’t sure for a while that it was the cherry, but process of elimination meant that it couldn’t be anything other.

Apple was dark green, not the light green shown on the package. It’s mild but convincing.

I can’t say that I remember eating the grape.

(The photos don’t match up with the flavor review ... they’re just illustrative.)

Exotics were Banana Split, Coconut, Mango, Passion Fruit, Liquorice and Pomegranate.

Coconut was watery and sweet but still had a “coconut flavor” to it. I didn’t care much for it on its own but combined with other flavors like pomegranate or banana split it was a nice pop.

Pomegranate was sweet and a bit like cotton candy and raspberry.

I was quite fond of Liquorice, mostly because it was the first all natural licorice jelly bean that I think I’ve had. It had all the anise and licorice flavor - very sweet but a balanced woodsy and spicy character - but didn’t have any of the food coloring bitterness.

Mango was like peach for me, a little too much like the peel (or fuzz in the case of peaches) and not enough of the luscious tangy and custardy flesh.

Passion Fruit was similar to mango in that it didn’t quite get the fresh fruit for me, but it was a good mix of sweetness and toasted sugar flavors.

I loved Banana Split. It was sweet but still a good rounded banana flavor that made it taste creamy.

The texture overall is firmer than Jelly Belly and other gourmet beans. They’re smooth and very well made but chewy. Some folks may prefer that texture but I thought they were lacking punch and many didn’t taste different enough to warrant 18 flavors over 12 or 8.

The more exciting product for me was the new Citrus Gum Drops which feature my favorite flavor genre. Tangerine, Key Lime, Pink Grapefruit and Lemon.

Like the Jelly Beans, these are all natural and vegan. They’re also Kosher.

They’re also a better value, at 8 ounces for the same $1.99 price tag. I was hoping they’d be as good as the Starbucks teensy gum drops or the comparably priced but huge Whole Foods Gourmet Gum Drops.

The gum drops fit right in as gum drop sized. Like a thimble of firm jelly candy. The sugar sanding is fine grained and stuck well, so there’s not a lot of dust.

Lemon - spectacularly well rounded, more like a marmalade than lemonade. Very zesty and only lightly tangy. The citrus oils are very pronounced and have a bitter aftertaste that I love until I’m done eating them and I have a bit of a burning tongue.

Pink Grapefruit - I had high hopes for these but they were a bit blander than I’d hoped. They’re more about the juice flavors than the peel. So they’re not bitter but just lacking a well rounded citrus punch but did have a bit of a caramelized sugar/honey smoothness.

Key Lime is subtle and quietly peppery. A little tangy and zesty but much deeper than the usual lime.

Tangerine - it says tangerine but it tastes simply like orange, perhaps even like Tang. Sweet and juicy, but not zesty or tart.

The gum drops were so well suited to my preferences, it’s like Trader Joe’s has been reading the blog. I liked the size and of course the price was great for a premium item. They’re not pate de fruits but they’re more vibrant than Dots.

Related Candies

1. Wonka Exceptionals Fruit Jellies: Grapefruit, Goji Berry & Red Apple
2. Tootsie Sour Dots
3. Gourmet Gumdrops
4. Harry & David Fall Leaves Fruit Gels
5. Organic Zootons

I buy candy a lot of places, but probably the ones that fit best with the original intentions of Candy Blog are the dollar stores. Dollar stores and discounters like Dollar Tree, Family Dollar Store and 99 Cent Only Stores have a mix of closeout products, mainstream candies and then a bunch of weird stuff that you’ve never seen before and may never see again. One of the purposes of Candy Blog was to seek out those fringe candies and demystify them. Here’s a bunch of stuff I’ve picked up:

Old Dominion is a brand I never saw in stores until about a year ago when I found their cheap but tasty Peanut Brittle at the drug store. Now I see them everywhere.

There’s no reason a couple of handfuls of fresh peanuts and some sugar can’t be dirt cheap and delicious. The good news is that I think Old Dominion has done an excellent job filling that niche. Old Dominion Butter Toffee Peanuts don’t come in the most attractive package ever, but the package has five ounces and boasts only four ingredients: peanuts, sugar, butter and salt. They’re Kosher and American made.

They’re a simple panned nut. A buttery toffee coating on whole peanuts.

They’re buttery, a little salty, crunchy and fresh. Not much more to say except that I wish they sold these in the vending machines in the basement of my office building. (My old office had PNuttles from time to time, which is similar, but a little more “toasty” where these are “buttery”.)

I bought the Zachary Thick Mints at the 99 Cent Only Store because they’re called Thick Mints. I mean, how could I resist. They’re mints and they’re thick.

They’re real chocolate, so they have that going for them. I don’t know much about Zachary as a brand for chocolate, I’ve had their sugar candies around Halloween and found them passable, but I’m pretty forgiving when it comes to sugar ... not so much when it comes to chocolate. The tray is flimsy and insubstantial as a serving piece (it bends and spills out the contents) but it did its job along with the box of protecting the product.

They are as advertised, they’re big and thick. They’re about the same diameter as the mini foil-wrapped York Peppermint Patties (about 1.33 inches across) but they’re at least a half an inch high. The inside is more like a Junior Mint (a flowing mint fondant) than a York Peppermint Pattie (a crumbly and dry fondant). The mint fondant is smooth, with a tiny grain to it but a smooth pull and strong almost alcoholic peppermint flavor. The chocolate is a letdown, not terribly cream and lacking a solid cocoa punch. It still does a good job of containing the minty center.

I come up with a lot of ideas for the blog and very few are actually implemented.

A couple of months ago I got the notion that I should review the chocolate covered caramel bites that come in Movie Theater boxes. (Yeah, a very specific genre of candy, but there are at least three of them.) This one got as far as the acquisition of the candy, photography and consumption. I just couldn’t think of much of a hook for it. But hey, I can’t let it go to waste.

I found Hershey’s Milk Duds, Tootsie Junior Caramels and Zachary Chocolate Caramels at the Dollar Tree. So they’re all the same price and basically the same thing. But very different.

Zachary Chocolate Caramels are the newest one on the market. The box is rather generic but at least well made. The photo of the baubles of milk chocolate are appetizing and the product within does actually look like that. The box holds 4.8 ounces, not the biggest value of the bunch, but still a lot of candy, especially if it’s real chocolate.

Of the three this was the only one that had a protective bag inside. They’re really big and have a decent milky smell. The milk chocolate is thick but not very flavorful. There are some dairy notes but the melt isn’t smooth. The caramel center is soft and easy to chew. It doesn’t have a strong butter or caramelized sugar flavor, it’s more like a cereal note. Just slightly toasty and sweet, it reminds me of Kraft Caramels.

The Junior Caramels box says that it has 10% more free, which is good because it doesn’t even manage to cram 4 ounces in there. The package says that they’re soft milk caramels in pure chocolate. (Here’s my original review when they were first introduced in 2005.)

The chocolate isn’t as thick as the Zachary ones and they’re not as glossy. They don’t smell like much and don’t taste like caramel or milk chocolate either.

The chew of the center is soft but not grainy. Again it’s lacking in butter, toasted sugar and that stringy pull that I love about caramel.

Milk Duds have been around since the 20s. They’ve gone through many changes in corporate ownership, packaging and formulation. Recently Hershey’s stopped using real milk chocolate to coat these choice little caramel bits which is too bad.

They really live up to their name when it comes to appearance, the caramel centers are rarely spherical, they’re flattened lumps. The caramel centers of Milk Duds are quite firm. The chew though is completely smooth and slick. The flavor is authentically toffee-like with a luxurious milky note. It’s so sad that the cardboard mockolate on the outside trashes the flavor with off notes and waxy cocoa.  (I can’t say that the chocolate was great when it was real chocolate, but at least the flavor wasn’t off even if the texture was.)

It’s hard to declare a winner with this motley bunch. I love the center of Milk Duds, but the Zachary really do look the most appealing. I can’t say I want to eat any of them again and will probably dump out the rest of them before I flatten the boxes to be saved in my collection.

Related Candies

1. Milky Way Simply Caramel
2. Old Dominion Brittle
3. Nips: Caramel & Dulce de Leche
4. Junior Fruit Cremes
5. Junior Mints Deluxe
6. P-Nuttles
7. Chocolate Covered Sugar Babies

The idea of a dark chocolate KitKat Bar is nothing new. The new part right now might be that Hershey’s is introducing this KitKat Dark not as a limited edition item but as a regular product. (Though that is never a guarantee that it will continue to be produced.)

It follows on the coattails of Hershey’s introduction of the Dark Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup after also flirting with various limited edition releases. The construction is just as you’d suspect: a semi-sweet chocolate covered stack of chocolate-cream filled wafers all molded into a four finger bar.

Some folks who also spend an inordinate time not only eating candy but also reading about it may remember that the bar is one of Steve Almond’s obsessions mentioned in Candy Freak.

The package isn’t terribly exciting, it’s the same as the milk chocolate variety but instead of a beige swirl that says Crisp Wafers in Milk Chocolate it’s a bolder dark brown that says Dark and then followed by Crisp Wafers in Dark Chocolate. It may be hard to spot on store shelves if you didn’t know it was there.

It smells like sweet cocoa and cereal. The wafers are crisp and rather bland but provide and airiness to the candy. The cream center has a little bit of a greasy grain to it that I like so much that I often pry the planks apart with my teeth and lick it separately. The dark chocolate is quite sweet but has a woodsy and berry note to it that gives the candy a different flavor profile, it’s less about milk and more about cocoa. It wouldn’t call the quality great, but this is candy, not fine chocolate.

The ingredients don’t break out the difference between the chocolate coating and the wafers with cream, so it’s hard to tell what kind of chocolate is in there.

Sugar, chocolate, wheat flour, cocoa butter, palm kernel oil, cocoa processed with alkali, milk fat, contains 2% or less of lactose, soy lecithin, PGPR, yeast, salt, vanillin, sodium bicarbonate, milk.

Hershey’s brings these out as miniatures from time to time, I’ve picked them up around Halloween before (2007 & 2008) but the mini size has different chocolate ratios. For the most part when I want a dark KitKat I was buying this 100 Calorie KitKat Singles Dark version from Canada.

It’s hard to top the Japanese KitKat Bitter I had about three years ago which used actually good chocolate. But this is a nice change of pace if I couldn’t get the Q.bel Double Dark Wafer Bar.

Candy for Dinner has some good photos of all the various domestic KitKat versions including two introductions of the limited edition darks. For reviews of the UK version made by Nestle check out Jim’s Chocolate Mission and Chocablog.

Related Candies

1. Q.Bel Double Dark Chocolate Wafer Bar
2. Hershey’s Special Dark Pieces
3. Fling: Milk Chocolate, Dark Chocolate & Hazelnut
4. Ghirardelli Intense Dark
5. Dark Chocolate Peanut M&Ms
6. Ritter Darks
7. Twix Dark Chocolate

The newest variety of M&Ms is just hitting the stores. Pretzel M&Ms were introduced at last year’s NACS (National Association of Convenience Stores) show. I love the fact that they brought back the skittish and paranoid Orange M&M character for these, he used to be the mascot for the discontinued Crispy M&Ms (which also came in a blue package).

The new product is just what it sounds like: a salty pretzel sphere covered in milk chocolate then the colored M&M candy shell.

The little X-ray of the M&M shows the pretzel inside him. Well, it shows a twisted pretzel, what’s inside here is pretzel nugget.

Though the bulk of the package is similar to the Peanut ones, the weight is not. There were 16 candies in my package but it weighs only 1.14 ounces. (Milk Chocolate M&Ms are 1.69 ounces.) The front of the package has the new “what’s inside” nutritional info: 150 calories. That’s a great tally - a respectable and filling snack but not so many calories to displace a nutritionally balanced diet. The back of the package says that there’s 30% less fat than the average of the leading chocolate brands. This appears true, there are 132 calories per ounce, where most of the chocolate candies I review are between 142 and 160 calories per ounce. The pretzels are a lot of air and of course made of flour, a carbohydrate.

The candies vary in size; they’re about 2/3 to 3/4 of an inch in diameter. They come in five colors: Red, Green, Blue, Brown and Orange. (Milk Chocolate and Peanut M&Ms also come in Yellow.) As near-spheres they’re vexing for snacking at my desk. When I tried to line them up and separate by color they just rolled around ... the Milk Chocolate obloid spheres definitely have the advantage there.

They’re crunchy, a little salty and sweet. The crunches are different - there’s the candy shell which is light and sweet, then the malty and salty pretzel center. The milk chocolate gives a little cocoa and milk flavor along with a creamy note.

I didn’t love them completely, I don’t know what was missing for me, maybe it was that there wasn’t enough chocolate for me. I also prefer dark chocolate on my pretzels to milk chocolate. Still, they’re a great addition to the line and more snack than dessert. They’re an excellent movie candy since they’re not too filling, have a savory and sweet mix and of course the are easy to share. They should be placed in every movie concession stand for the summer season.

Pretzel M&Ms are available at WalMart now, they’ll be in wider distribution starting in June 2010.

Related Candies

1. Limited Edition M&Ms Coconut
2. Candy Tease: All Candy Expo 2009 - Mars
3. Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Covered Pretzel Bites
4. Revisit: Take 5, Sunkist Fruit Gems & Snickers Almond
5. M&Ms Premiums
6. Disneyland Candy Palace - Candy Case Chocolates
7. M&Ms Line

A new addition to the Tootsie line of Dots is Sour Dots.

As with many sour iterations of popular products the package went for yellow and green, the seemingly universal colors of tartness.

The package design is cute. In this case the blue Dots logo dominates to give cohesion with the other boxes on the shelf (currently I’ve been seeing classic Dots, Yogurt Dots and Tropical). The little Dots themselves are depicted in each of the five colors with puckery faces. They’re called The Dot that bites back!

The flavor assortment is middle of the road, though not just a sour dusted version of the regular fruit Dots (which come in Strawberry, Cherry, Lemon, Lime & Orange), these are Grape, Orange, Lemon, Green Apple and Cherry

The Dots are a traditional smooth jelly center with a sour coating that includes citric acid and malic acid. Dots boxes are wrapped in cellophane so they’re soft and fresh.

The sour coating is definitely tart, the kind of sour that makes the back of my jaw tingle.

Grape - very sour and quite artificial but ultimately a chewy gum drop version of Pixy Stix.

Orange - so sour it’s almost salty at first, but the zesty notes of the gum drop give this a flavor depth that few other sour citrus candies have.

Lemon - really more like lemon peel than lemon juice, it’s fresh, bitter and tangy all at once. It really gave the feeling of those shaken lemonades from the fair.

Green Apple - not quite a Jolly Rancher, it’s far too tart. It’s more than just the chemical green apple, there is a hint of apple juice in there.

Cherry - this one was simply caustic. The cherry flavors were artificial and buried beneath the sourness, it was like fruity/woodsy toilet cleaner. I do admit that the cherry notes, once the sour is gone are rather deep, but still not my thing.

The smooth gum drop centers set these apart from other sour dusted jelly candies like Sour Patch Kids. They’re chewy, but kind of a slick smoothness that the others don’t have, there’s no graininess after the sour sanding dissipates. They don’t even stick to the teeth in the quite the same way as regular Dots. They’re a great value for only a dollar and some nice deep flavors. I found myself avoiding the cherry and green apple, but I’m sure that I could find friends (or husbands) to share those with.

Related Candies

1. Halloween Dots: Bat, Candy Corn & Ghost
2. New Flavors: Skittles Sour & Wonka Runts
3. Dots Elements: Earth, Air, Fire & Water
4. Dots
5. Sour Patch Kids
6. Florida’s Natural Sour Fruit Juice String
7. The Lemonhead & Fruit Heads