I thought I was done with the series of Easter candy, but then I remembered that I had these organic treats that I picked up at Show West.

Surf Sweets is a line of organic candies made by Santa Cruz Nutritionals. No artificial colors, no artificial sweeteners, non-GMO and gluten free but they look and taste just like mass-consumer brands.

The treats I’m sampling are their Jelly Beans, Fruity Bears and Gummy Bears. Since their colors are natural, they look a little more muted than many other candies, but still very pleasant and sparkly. Surf Sweets are also fortified with vitamin C (though it takes half a package to get a full day’s supply).

The jelly beans started off with a bang when I picked up the light yellow one and found it to be a tasty grapefruit. The beans are about the size of Jelly Belly, but a little less regular in shape. The shell was a little more grainy than many other jelly beans I’ve had lately, but very fruity with a good balance of sweet and tart. The other flavors, as far as I could tell were: Lemon, Orange, Cherry (no bitter aftertaste!) and Strawberry.

These are marked Vegetarian on the package, using fruit pectin as the gelling agent. They do have beeswax on them so some vegans may find them objectionable.

These are called Fruity Bears but I was just calling them jelly bears. They’re not rubbery like gummis, just soft and chewy with a slight bounce to them. They also use pectin as their gelling agent.

The little sugar sanded bears are very cute. They seem to come in the same flavor set as the jelly beans: Grapefruit, Lemon, Orange, Cherry & Strawberry.

I liked these a lot. I liked them a lot more than the jelly beans because the flavor was in the jelly, not in the sugary coating. The citrus flavors were my favorite.

These are also marked vegetarian but contain beeswax.

The Gummy Bears honestly looked no different than any other gummi. The little bear shapes were rather like the Trolli with their well definted paws and eyes. The gummi texture was bouncy with excellent well rounded flavor - good sweetness, good fruit and good tart. The flavors themselves were a little muddier in their distinctiveness. There was a berry, lemon and orange. There may have been two berry flavors, the colors weren’t that different and neither were the flavors.

These were not vegetarian because of the presence of gelatin and not completely organic.

I found them online for $1.75 a bag, which is about $10 a pound ... a bit more than Jelly Bellies and other gourmet sugar candies. If you’re looking for a slightly more wholesome candy for your kids (especially for their Easter basket) that doesn’t look like a compromise to them (unless they’re reading the packages), this is a great option. The flavor and eating experience is exactly the same - so your kids won’t feel like they’re getting a compromise candy. Let’s face it, part of the appeal of candy to kids is the look of it, and these gummi bears, in the palm of your hand, look like gummi bears. They won’t miss the artificial colors.

Related Candies

1. Super Sour Worms
2. Chocolate Covered Gummi Bears
3. Sour Gummi Bears
4. Pure Fun & Yummy Earth Organic Hard Candies
5. College Farm Organic Naturepops

I don’t know what comes over me at Easter. Candies I wouldn’t normally touch suddenly confuse me in their pretty pastel wrappers.

I know that in my childhood days I’ve spent many a disappointing hour gnawing on what looked like a generous and delectable Palmer faux chocolate bunny in front of the TV (usually with a jar of peanut butter nearby ... yes, I double dipped).

But look at these! They’ve got Polka Dots. Polka Dots are never evil!

Okay, now I’ve eaten three.

The mockolate is a little grainy (in the sugar way, not in the coffee ground way) and kind of has this cooling effect on the tongue. The peanut butter is really roasted and has a dark toasty taste to it, but isn’t terribly sweet, which balances the sweet milk mockolate well. There are little crisped rice in there too, which gives it a little crunch.

As a mockolate product, they’re not bad. They’re a little pricey for fake chocolate goodies (there are 4 ounces in this mesh baggie and it cost a dollar ... so it’s $4 a pound ... you can certainly find Reese’s Eggs at that price on sale).

If you find them on sale and just need something for decoration, you could do worse. But if you’re looking for pretty and tasty, there are plenty of tried and true options on the store shelves.

I think it must be Egg Day here at Candy Blog! Russell Stover makes a lot of different Eggs. I covered some last year and was pleasantly surprised.

This egg wins the award for “color of center that I’d most like to have as a cashmere sweater”. It’s a delicate dusty pearl pink. It’s light and fluffy (the cream, not the imaginary sweater) and the first thing that hits me is a little bit of salt, then the sweet floral flavors of the rapsberry. It’s not tangy ... all sweet and berry. Then it starts to sink in ... it’s really really sweet. Even the mild dark chocolate shell can’t cut through it.

It smells good, but it’s just not quite for me (I’ll gladly swap it for a Strawberry though). There are real raspberry seeds in there.

I reviewed the Organic Pecan Delight last month and found it a decent candy. So I thought I’d give the original a try in the form of the Pecan Delight Egg. It has to be good, there’s gold on the wrapper, right.

Well, color me disappointed. Mostly because one of the major elements promised in the name of the candy is missing ... the pecans. While the Organic Pecan Delight had quite a few, it was as if they used the same amount of pecans for this whole egg as they did in those smaller candies. The caramel is nice and smooth with a light chew to it and the chocolate was okay, without the woodsy crunch of the pecans, this just wasn’t my thing.

Peanut Butter Egg is a milk chocolate egg with a peanut butter crumble filling. It’s dark tasting, smoky and nutty.

It’s rough when I eat candies similar to See’s around the same time, because they suffer by comparison. However, I have to say that this is a rather different peanut butter egg and good in its own right. It’s not a Reese’s, not a See’s, it’s a Russell Stover. More roasty tasting, a little salty and really quite good.

I think my fave of the Russell Stover Eggs is still the dark chocolate coconut (which I picked up in Heart form at Valentine’s), but it was fun to give these a go. They’re often on sale for 50 cents each, perhaps a fun change-up from the drudgery of regular candy bars (and because they’re only an ounce, perhaps a little savings of calories).

While I was at See’s a couple of weeks ago on the prowl for the Scotchmallow Eggs, I decided to try some of their other Easter offerings. Like many boxed chocolate companies, they had the regular boxed chocolates in their spring finery. See’s has always been a bit classic looking, a little retro, perhaps even a little stuffy. But most people who’ve had their products know that most of the effort goes into the chocolates themselves. Most of the designs for the holiday packaging, in fact, haven’t change in years. I know I’ve actually bought some of the boxes ten years ago. I find that comforting, as I have trouble buying the same bra as scant six months ... because you know, a good underwire can go out of fashion.

The tray inside isn’t really that sassy, it’s just a formed piece of thin white plastic, but it does the trick of keeping all the eggs in their place. Note that the Bordeaux, that’s covered in jimmies, was actually wrapped in clear plastic (the only one). I’m guessing that’s to keep the jimmies from going everywhere.

Each Egg weighs about 2 ounces. I ate them by slicing them up, usually into three of four slices. I suppose you could just consider them a big candy bar and eat it all yourself.

Peanut Butter Egg - I’ve never had this before! It’s awesome. It’s not quite like a Reese’s Egg. (Though it is about the same size, but taller.) The center is a very smooth and dense peanut butter, lightly sweet and just a little crumbly. It’s not better or worse than Reese’s (except of course the chocolate is superior), just different. They sell the Peanut Butter Egg separately, and with good reason.

As far as I know, this Egg does not come in a single piece in the mixed boxes. So consider this a seasonal item. (I’ll have to check if they sell regular pieces just at the store, you know, like ordering off the menu.)

Bordeaux Egg - I’ve never been quite sure what the Bordeaux See’s piece was until I looked it up on their website. It comes in a round piece in most boxes of chocolates in either milk or dark chocolate, and has some little jimmies on it. This piece was milk chocolate. The jimmies are actually pretty good, instead of being minute waxy rods made to look like chocolate, they might actually be chocolate. The Bordeaux filling is called a brown sugar buttercream. It’s light and creamy, with a cooling feel on the tongue like powdered sugar but a mild caramel taste comes into play.

The Bordeaux is available in mixed boxes and a pre-wrapped “bar” like the Scotchmallow.

Cocoanut Egg - I love the cocoanut egg. The dark chocolate on the outside, in my opinion, is different from the Scotchmallow. It tastes milder, maybe a little more buttery. The center is a smooth cream with coconut flakes. It’s not super-dense like a Mounds bar; it’s more delicate and has a nuttier flavor and less texture.

This comes in the mixed box, but I think only in milk chocolate. I did pick up a few of the dark chocolate cocoanut pieces while at the store. I think I prefer the ratio of chocolate to coconut cream center in the singles.

Chocolate Walnut Egg ... oops, I didn’t eat this one. You’ll have to ask my husband how it was. It must have been pretty good, he ate it. They make a version of this without walnuts, but it’s sold separately. Batteries not included.

Overall, I thought these were great quality and a tasty assortment. But I probably wouldn’t buy them again (well, for starters 25% of it was off limits), but I think it makes a great gift and all the flavors are winners. Very fresh and generous.

For the $8.40 I spent here, I think I’d be happier with the Nuts & Chews (dark), but that’s just me. Considering that the Peanut Butter isn’t available otherwise, I might opt for one of those in a single large egg.

See’s is running a contest through the beginning of June, giving away a box of candy a month for a year. Enter once, they announce winners every month.

Eek! The end of the week is coming and I still have oodles of Easter candy left to review. Time to double up!

I’ve never heard of Melster before this year, but I have to say that I found their packaging of their Marshmallow Eggs prety appealing. It’s just an egg carton, so call me easily pleased.

The eggs themselves are about half the size of an actual chicken egg (sliced longways), so they don’t sit quite right in the egg carton. In fact, if you don’t carry the carton horizontally, they’ll all roll out of their little pockets. But not with the messy effect of real eggs. At 45 calories per egg and only 1.5 grams of fat they’re not a bad little treat for someone looking for a little chocolate and a bit more interaction satisfaction than 45 calories of straight chocolate can give.

The marshmallow inside is bouncy and light, not terribly moist. The chocolate outside wasn’t eggciting, just a rather unremarkable coating of plain dark sweet chocolate. The first one I ate (the one pictured) tasted rather like the carton they were in ... a little chemical-y. So for my next tasting I took them out of the carton and left them on a little plate for a half an hour. You know, “to breathe.” That little airing out helped. Now they taste sweet and flavorless. Not bad ... not eggstraodinary by any means, but I only paid 99 cents for the carton of twelve ... what could I have been eggspecting?

Rating: 4 out of 10

After I picked up the carton of Marshmallow Eggs, I found more of the Melster marshmallow line at the 99 Cent Only Store. They had the plain eggs in individually wrapped packets like this as well as these Caramel Marshmallow Eggs. There are only 6 eggs in this package and it doesn’t even weigh as much. But I still considered the price more than reasonable.

Where the plain eggs were only 45 calories each, the addition of caramel here makes them 60 calories though still only a gram of fat. I’m guessing the difference is that the caramel eggs are just a little denser (though the same size).

While I wanted to like these, they had a latexy quality ... and I don’t mean the texture. They tasted like someone had just painted my mouth. That fresh paint smell was coupled with the taste of cereal, maybe corn flakes.

So, maybe these needed the same “airing out” ... and that’s what I did. A half an hour out of the package. Ugh, it still tasted like a can of latex wall paint (maybe ceiling paint, my palette isn’t that sophisticated when it comes to interior coatings).

Now, I recognize that I’ve not reviewed candies for fans of paint fumes, so consider this your first whole hearted recommendation.

For those of you who are not fans of sitting around smelling the paint dry, well, I’d advise sticking to the plain eggs or splurge for Russell Stover or even better See’s.

Rating: 2 out of 10

More about the history of the Melster Company which is now owned by Impact Confections (makers of Warheads).

You know what surprised me most about this candy? It recognizes that it’s for Easter. There’s only one other product I’ve reviewed (as far as I can tell) in the past two years that actually mentions the Easter holiday on the wrapper. (The bunny is holding a basket that says “Happy Easter”) Strange, isn’t it? Are we all kidding ourselves that all these egg shaped things could easily be for Passover? (Oddly enough, this is Kosher ... though not for Passover since it has corn syrup in it.)

But I guess I digress.

This is the second Cadbury Royal Dark Raspberry Bunny I’ve bought this year. I lost the first one after I took the photo. (So calling out to it does no good ... it’s missing its ears!) It’s probably in the seat cushions in the car or stuck to the bottom of one of my backpacks.

It’s a very pretty bunny. It’s really well made, nice and shiny and with a pleasant chocolate scent. It’s well formed and looks like a bunny, unlike some candies I’ve purchased for Easter. It’s mostly chocolate with only a small reservoir of “Raspberry Creme Center” in it. It’s not very big, so it’s a good chocolate treat that won’t leave you hating yourself.

The only problem is that Raspberry Creme center ... what is it? At first I thought it was a caramel. It’s almost a syrup and certainly not a creme. It’s sticky and drippy and a little tangy. It even tastes a little salty. It doesn’t taste much like raspberry. Smells a little like it, but doesn’t really taste like it.

The chocolate is that Royal Dark chocolate that Cadbury is pushing now (with the Royal Dark Mini Eggs) which is rather palatable. It’s sweet but also has some nice cocoa notes. It lacks a sort of buttery oomph that good dark chocolate can have.

I’m not really that fond of this. It’s fun and of course it’s not terribly big or expensive, so I can’t be that disappointed.

I found a great new candy store over the weekend. At the suggestion of a reader (thannks Jenny!) I journeyed to City of Commerce to visit Garvey Nut & Candy. It’s a warehouse, mostly wholesale, but they also sell retail. The bulk (and I mean bulk) of their products are sold in full cases, but it’s cash & carry, so no shipping costs incurred.

They had a small selection of items that were sold from open boxes. Just about all of it was from their Easter inventory. At FANTASTIC prices. One of the finds was the Jelly Belly Deluxe Easter Mix ... at $2.35 for a 9 ounce bag, it’s unheard of. The Jelly Belly online sells the same bag for $4.99 (in a prettier store, I’ll admit). If you’re planning a big party or wedding and live in the LA area, this might be just the place for you. High end chocolates and mints to bulk wrapped candies to nuts and nut mixes. For the Easter goodies they had the large packages of Peeps of all kinds for 99 cents, jelly beans (all sorts of Jelly Belly seasonal products), deluxe chocolate eggs (fudge, peanut butter, vanilla), baskets, tins and foil eggs by the kilo (some by Madelaine, which are quite tasty).

You may have to ask them for prices on many items and you may need help finding things. (Their website isn’t very good, so don’t bother.) They have funky hours too: 8AM - 4:30PM on weekdays and Saturday 9-2 (until Easter, then they’re closed on Saturdays until August). I’ll probably head back down there for a look at their Halloween goodies in the fall.

Garvey Nut & Candy
6416 Flotilla Street,
Los Angeles, CA 90040
(323) 890-5890

Okay, enough of that, you came here for some candy, didn’t you?

The Deluxe Easter Mix contains assorted pastel Jelly Bellys, bunny corn, mellocremes, gummi eggs and malted chocolate eggs. (It’s also supposed to contain chocolate eggs, but I picked through the bags to find one that had more malted eggs ... which I promptly ate. If you want a full account of them, check out Sera’s review at Candy Addict.)

The bulk of the mix seemed to be populated by these friendly fellows: Mellocremes. (Click on the photo for the full shape assortment.)

They’re flavored lightly: grape, lemon, lime, strawberry and vanilla. The flavors are light (especially light for a company that built itself on extra flavor). I didn’t care for lime at all, but the lemon and strawberry were quite nice. I don’t know which color was supposed to be vanilla (maybe there are white ones, I didn’t have any in my mix).

This is the Bunny Corn, and it’s pretty much the same recipe as the Mellocreme but a different shape. They tend to be a little firmer and as you might guess, they’re just like Candy Corn. They’re not flavored.

If the Mellocremes in white taste like this, I might be more fond of them. I rather like candy corn, in small doses.

There are only two colors on these, which seemed a little skimpy. Candy Corn usually has three colors (orange,  yellow and white). But I guess Bunnies travel light.

The Jelly Belly website calls these Orange Creme Non-Pareil Eggs, which doesn’t really sound like much fun. So I’m going to call them Crunchy Gummi Eggs. They’re super-cute, with pastel colored crunchy spheres (non-pareils) on the outside and a tangy orange gummi on the inside. They’re larger than a jelly bean, about the size of a foil wrapped chocolate egg that you can often find in Easter baskets.

They’re much like the Crunchy Bears I reviewed a while back, except these only come in orange, which is fine by me. The gummi is super-soft and the crunchy coating gives it some fun ... it’s the crunchiest thing in the bag. Jelly Belly also makes a slightly related product with the Champagne Bubbles and Berries.

There were also some Jelly Belly scattered in, they came in Berry Blue, Cantaloupe, Cotton Candy, Island Punch, Lemon, Lemon Lime, Pi?a Colada, Pink Grapefruit, and looked oh-so-coordinated with everything else. (I picked out all the pink grapefruit while shooting the photos.)

Overall the mix was very pretty, and attractiveness is important with holiday candy. But I wasn’t really that keen on some of the elements (the Mellocremes, especially). It was a good introduction to the whole line of Easter treats, so now I know what to buy in a solo bag - the Orange Creme Non-Pareil Eggs. At normal mortal prices of $4.99 a bag, I’m not that wild about the whole shebang (so they get a 6 out of 10) as a sub-$2.50 find, they’re a 7 out of 10.

I’ve been rather peeved with Lifesavers for a few years. In fact, you might even call my rant about the Five Roll flavors changing my first Candy Blog post.

But if I was complaining before that the five flavor roll changed to accommodate new flavors, I should be pleased that the Lifesavers Jellybeans actually have all my favorite flavors (well, no tangerine, but orange will do nicely). My other pet peeve is that the colors on their logo no longer match the flavors. If you look at the package it lists the flavors on a different color stripe, but the color of the stripe doesn’t match the flavor. Oh well.

The Lifesavers Jelly Beans are about the size of Jelly Belly, but a little fatter around the middle. The colors are bold and appealing and the quality control was very good - the beans were very consistent.

Grape - has tones of both fake grape and a little smidge of concord in there, just like grape soda.
Strawberry - sweet and floral with a tangy bite.
Cherry - tastes like a cherry Lifesavers ... it’s kind of growing on me ... oh wait, it’s bitter now, never mind.
Orange - zesty and tart like it should be.
Peach - surprisingly round in its flavor, still I pick them out (but they look a lot like the orange).
Lemon - like the orange, a good balanced citrus flavor.
Green Apple - artificial tasting, through and through.
Pineapple - sassy and tart with a good flowery note and a touch of cotton candy ... just like it should be.

Overall, with only two flavors I didn’t much care for (cherry & peach), this is an excellent assortment. They’re not quite Jelly Belly (which pack flavor through and through), but for a fraction of the price they’re admirable. I actually liked them much better than the Starburst ones I tried last year. There’s another pastel mix of flavors as well: Red Raspberry, Mango Medley, Cotton Candy, Watermelon, Blueberry, Pina Colada, Strawberry-Kiwi, and Banana which also sounds pretty tasty. (I’ll probably give those a try if they’re sitting around after Easter on sale.)