In the candy aisle at the 99 Cent Only Store they always seem to have a lot of boxed items filled with sugar and labeled as Snacks.  When I go into Target or a grocery store these same items are shelved with the granola bars, not far from the cereal, as if they’re real food.

I picked up this box of SpongeBob Squarepants Mini Chocolate Peanut Butter Filled Snacks made by Frankford Candy. They also make Disney licensed candy, including a similar set for the Cars characters.

But again, I puzzled over what made these snacks instead of candy.

Inside the box are 6 packets, each are .53 ounces each and hold what must be a child’s portion of teensy little milk chocolate character shapes.

The ingredients are:

Milk Chocolate (sugar, cocoa butter, chocolate, whole milk, soy lecithin, vanillin), sugar, palm kernel oil, partially defatted peanut flour, peanut butter (peanuts, salt, partially hydrogenated palm oil), nonfat milk, partially hydrogenated palm oil, salt, soy lecithin, artificial and natural flavors, TBHQ and citric acid.

It’s not so different from the ingredients for a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. So, let’s just stop calling these snacks, unless all foods designed to be eaten outside of a meal are deemed snacks. They’re candy. Teensy little bags of candy.

They come in three shapes: SpongeBob, Patrick and Mr Krabs. There are about 15-16 pieces in each little pouch. The pouches feature the full ingredients list and calorie count and a large portion of the front of the wrapper is dedicated to the face of SpongeBob.

It’s hard to imagine that something this small is actually filled, but they are. They’re about a half an inch across (except for Patrick’s spiky arms, which give him another eighth of an inch) yet still have a thin reservoir of peanut butter in the center.

The pieces are waxy and smell like Easter. The chocolate doesn’t really melt, but it dissolves well enough and they’re not as greasy as some peanut butter candies can get. They’re sweet and have a strong roasted peanut scent. The but the peanut butter flavor is lacking. The sweet and marginal chocolate is barely smooth and the slightly grainy peanut butter center is rather bitter. There’s a little extra salt in there but for the most part it’s a big old bag of failure.

These have been around for two or three years and Hungry Girl raves about them. My opinion is, if you really need a teensy portion of a snack, buy some really good candy. Even if it’s only a half an ounce, if you’re eating this as a treat, it’d better be good. If you love peanut butter cups, have two of the Reese’s foil wrapped minis - those are 44 calories each or even better, the Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Cups. Or go for something fantastic like a beefy chocolate truffle or a set of very dark chocolate tasting squares. Something that you really pause and enjoy, not this stuff that is only good enough to shovel down your maw without chewing.

What I’m left with when it comes to licensed merchandise is the dismal reality that most of it sucks. My guess is that the candy maker spends a large sum of money securing the branding for the product and they don’t have much left for the actual ingredients and quality. There’s also no indication of the ethical sourcing of any of the ingredients. They’re made in the USA, but for those with allergy issues, it’s made on shared equipment with wheat, eggs, peanuts and tree nuts. At least these sea creatures have no shellfish present.

Related Candies

1. Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups
2. Hershey’s Kisses Air Delight
3. Russell Stover 42 Chocolate Mini Bunnies
4. Trader Joe’s Soft Peanut Brittle
5. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups Minis
6. Jelly Belly Fruit Snacks
7. Dogs versus Cats (fruit snacks that is)
8. Goldenberg’s Peanut Chews

Hershey’s has been chugging along with their Pieces line, the long-overdue expansion of the Reese’s Pieces product into other pelletized versions of popular Hershey’s candy bars.

The new Hershey’s Pieces - Milk Chocolate with Almonds isn’t as innovative as some of the other candies, such as the Almond Joy Pieces or the initial Reese’s Pieces. But they fill a void in Hershey’s offerings and I was looking forward to them.

The first big stumbling block I had, though, was the price. 8 ounces for about four dollars. Other stores sell them for $4.50. I have a hard time paying 8 or 9 dollars a pound for Hershey’s candy in bulk quantities.

They also don’t reinvent the niche with some new quality. They’re not low in allergens, the list on the back says that they may contain soy, wheat, other tree nuts and peanuts. A great selling point would have been a nutty candy that is actually peanut and/or gluten free.

The Pieces look like the package illustrates. They come in three colors: dark brown, brown and cream. They vary widely in size, based on the core of almond. Some are as small as a Peanut M&M, others are huge, sometimes over an inch long.

They’re a standard construction of a well-roasted almond, a milk chocolate coating and then a colored candy shell. The colors are pleasing. I actually enjoyed their muted tones more than the loud and artificial M&Ms Almond. Of course these are also artificial, with Red 40, Yellow 6 and Blue 1 & 2 ... just less bang for the coloring.

The almonds are roasted to a very dark color, roasted in cocoa butter and/or sunflower oil). This is a good choice. I found them all crunchy and fresh tasting, not a single fibery or bitter one in the bag.

The shell is thin enough to crunch easily and provide only a modicum of sweetness. The milk chocolate is only marginally acceptable. It has the Hershey’s sour note to it, which I actually like sometimes, especially when mixed with more savory elements. Here it was such a back seat to the large almonds, it worked.

I prefer this, by far, to the Hershey’s Milk Chocolate with Almonds bar. But I don’t like it better than M&Ms Almond, because of the difference in the chocolate flavor. What I’d really like to see is a Heath Pieces at this point, that’d really set the Pieces line apart from their current iteration as an M&Ms clone.

Related Candies

1. Hershey’s Special Dark Pieces
2. Hershey’s York Pieces
3. Hershey’s Almond Joy Pieces
4. Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Almonds
5. Sconza 70% Dark Chocolate Toffee Almonds
6. Reese’s Pieces
7. M&Ms Line
8. Reese’s Pieces with Peanuts

In the history of candy, I’m pretty confident that some of the earliest boiled candy sweets created were nut and seed brittles. The genre of sesame brittles fit in nicely as one of those candies that I think has been around for a thousands of years. Early versions probably used date sugar and honey instead of refined sugar.

The Joyva Sesame Crunch is a dead simple candy, made well and without much fuss or fanfare. It’s sold in two formats, the large single serving plank (1.125 ounces) and little individually wrapped snaps.

It has only four ingredients: sesame seed, sugar, corn syrup, honey. It’s packaged equally simply, a small paperboard card to keep the slab from breaking and then inserted into a cellophane sleeve. The logo may not be a thousand years old, but certainly looks like it could be from the 1970s.

I’ve been eating these candies for years, and they seem to fall into the genre of healthy, judging by the number of natural food stores that carry them. They’re exceptionally durable too, since there’s no chocolate they don’t melt and the coating of sugary candy over the sesame seals them up so they don’t oxidize (get rancid).

The brittle base is just boiled sugar and some honey, the flavor is mostly from the sesame seeds themselves, which are nicely toasted and have a good oily, nutty balance with a light grassy and bitter note. The sweetness is mild, and the overall crunch and chew is long lasting. I find that when I buy these, I have a hard time not eating whatever quantity I have in one sitting. Still, my ideal version would probably have a little more candy to it, and a little more honey flavor.

Since sesame seeds are the main ingredient, there’s a fair amount of fat in the bar, though I’ve read that sesame oil is quite healthy as far as vegetable oils go. The bar is filling, but not too sweet, so it straddles the line of snack and candy very nicely. It’s filling and even has a little bit of protein, so it will probably keep blood sugar levels from spiking like other pure sugar candies might. The calories on the label say 180 for the bar, but I think that’s steep for a sesame candy that’s only 1.125 ounces. (Tahini is about 160 calories per ounce and has no sugar in it, which is lower in calories per ounce than sesame oil.)

The bar is Kosher, naturally, as well as being marked as gluten free. It may contain traces of almonds or pistachios. The package doesn’t say anything about peanuts. It’s not vegan, unless you’re the kind of vegan who’s okay with honey.

Related Candies

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2. The 110 Essential Candies for Candivores
3. Fard’s Persian Pistachio Nougat
4. De la Rosa Mazapan
5. Joyva Joys
6. Halvah and Turkish Delight
7. Pocky Kurogoma (Black Sesame)

It’s the time of year when I find myself turning to cough drops. Not so much this year because of any particular cold, but it makes me feel like it’s winter. There’s something about the flavors of cough drops that are as essential to the early months of the year as cinnamon and nutmeg is to Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Spice and herbal flavors have all but disappeared from hard candy on the shelves at mass market retailers, so cough drops are a good place to find that. I picked up this classic looking box of Luden’s Honey Licorice Throat Drops just before I found the revived Pine Bros Softish Throat Drops. I was attracted to the name of the flavor, licorice and honey are both soothing and uncommon.

The box is simple and elegant and features a belt & suspenders form of freshness protection. The drops themselves are inside a thick waxed paper sleeve inside the box, which has a tab top closure. Then the whole thing was inside cellophane shrink wrap. I appreciate the inner waxed liner, because the plastic overwrap only protects the drops while they’re in the store, not after I’ve opened them.

There are 14 drops inside and because these are therapeutic items, they’re not considered food and taxable in California. They’re marked as Kosher, but have no weight listed or a full nutritional panel.

The drops are petite, with smooth rounded corners, they are about 3/4 of an inch long. The color is, well, rather dull, but at least it isn’t enhanced with artificial colors (or flavors). The dissolve is smooth and there aren’t any sharp voids in the boiled sugar base. The flavor is strong on the menthol, light on the honey and with only a touch of anise/licorice. It reminds me of a hard candy version of Fisherman’s Friend. The menthol is strong enough to give me that cool feeling in my sinuses, which are pretty clear at the moment.

I finished the box and now I’m inclined to try some other flavors, like Honey Lemon.

As a side note, the cough drop and candy connection really isn’t that surprising. William H. Luden, who made Luden’s Throat Drops, also created the 5th Avenue bar and made various other items like peppermint patties, chocolate covered raisins and peanuts plus hard candies. Though Hershey’s now owns the rights to the Luden’s candy products (though only makes the 5th Avenue now), Luden’s cough drop business is now owned by a company called Prestige Brands which makes products like Cloraseptic, Efferdent and Compound W. (Let’s hope they never combine the attributes of all three of those products.) The package I’ve reviewed, however, still said McNeill Consumer Healthcare, which sold off Luden’s in late 2010. So there may be some differences in packaging and more current products.

UPDATE 3/2/2012: The packaging has changed. I have to say that I’m a little disappointed, because they’ve looked the same as long as I can remember. But then again, the new boxes are quite nice as well.

Related Candies

1. Krauterbonbons from Lubeck Christmas Market
2. Villosa Sallos Licorice
3. Perfetti Van Melle Golia
4. Honees Honey Filled Drops
5. A Bit of Medicine: Cocoa as Cough Suppressant
6. The Apothecary’s Garden: Spices

I know it will seem odd to much of the country on January 3rd for me to say this, but it’s hot today. It’s already 75 degrees this morning and looking to top 85 by mid-day.

While I revel in winter in Southern California, because I can buy, store and enjoy as much chocolate as I want, I turned my attention to an item I bought before Halloween. These Pink Lemonade Airheads.

Airheads were one of those candies that didn’t exist when I was a kid, and by the time they came out, it was past my sour candy phase and I didn’t pay much attention to them until I started Candy Blog. I gave them out for Halloween for the first time this year, and I was really shocked and pleased at how excited the kids were to get them. The one flavor in the mix that caught my attention was the Pink Lemonade, so I went back and purchased more after the holiday.

They’re small bars, a little over a half an ounce per packet. The little plank is about four inches long and a little over an inch wide.

Airheads are a strange candy, in a category really by themselves. They’re a chew, but not a full taffy. They’re a bit grainy, but have a smooth melt in the mouth.

The Pink Lemonade flavor is pink, but more on the salmon side than a light red. It smells like a tub of Country Time Lemonade Mix. The bite is a little tough, but the bar is flexible and easy to rip apart. It tears in a bit of a grainy fashion, instead of pulling smoothly like a taffy would.

The flavor is a straight lemonade - it even has a that slight powdery grain to it in the early part of the chew. The lemon is tart and sweet but not an authentic juice flavor and has only a light zest note to it. It is rather like a chew SweeTart.

I can’t see myself eating these a lot, but I like that the chew is clean, not sticky like a taffy or jelly candy can be. It’s somewhere between a SweeTart and a Starburst. It might be fun if there were smaller bites, so I could get more flavor variety. But then I imagine that all I’d want would be lemon anyway.

If your New Year’s resolution was to slow down on the sweets, they’re a pretty efficient little treat. There are only 60 calories in a bar, though it’s all sugar and no actual nutrition. They’re cheap, nearly indestructible, portable, Kosher and probably vegan if you’re the kind who eats unnatural things (they don’t say the source of the pink coloring). Made in a facility that processes wheat flour. No other statements about tree nuts, soy, dairy or peanuts.

Related Candies

1. Sour Punch Bits - Tangerine-Lemonade
2. Wonka Kazoozles: Cherry Punch & Pink Lemonade
3. Mike and Ike Alex’s Lemonade Stand
4. Kasugai Fruits Lemonade
5. Head to Head: Chewy SweeTarts vs Chewy Tart n Tinys
6. Head to Head: Mentos Sours & SweeTarts Shockers
7. Airheads
8. Airheads Xtreme Sour Belts

I’ve been having a ridiculous time with these Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups. They’re not new, I believe they’ve been around for a few years in the tubs. But for some reason the masterminds of impulse purchases at Trader Joe’s headquarters decided to change the packaging.

For the past two months these little 3.5 ounce bags of the peanut butter cups have been priced at 99 cents and featured in barrels by the registers in all the Trader Joe’s I’ve been in. It’s hard to resist the sub-buck price for something that’s such a good value. About half the price of a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup per ounce.

Not only have I fallen prey, so has everyone else in my office. So once my little supply (I’ll buy two or three bags and put them in a jar on my desk) has dwindled, someone else will come by and plop another bag on my desk to replenish.

Inside the simple packet are eight miniature sized dark chocolate peanut butter cups in foil. Each weighs about 12 grams (.42 ounces) and has 60 calories. The ingredients are decent, no partially hydrogenated fats in there. But there are milk products (milk fat in the chocolate and lactose in the peanut butter filling) so it’s not vegan and no good for those with dairy sensitivities.

The cups are classic, they come in little fluted paper cups and pull away easily from the candy. While some peanut butter cups will have leakage issues around the sides, the peanut butter was always completely enveloped in chocolate with every one I ate.

The chocolate is semi sweet (50% cacao), not terribly dark but still with a strong bitter note to it. It’s smooth and rather fatty, so it stands up well to the fats of the peanut butter center.

The peanut butter center is rather sweet and a bit on the fudgy side. It’s smoother than most, but not silken or whipped. It’s sweet but nutty, the roasting gives the peanuts a bit of a bitter and woodsy note to them that stands up to the dark chocolate. The peanut density though is a little thin, it was more like I was eating a peanut butter frosting than actual peanut butter. There’s a hint of salt in there. They’re Kosher but may contain traces of tree nuts, eggs and wheat (so they’re not gluten free).

It’s a good iteration of the peanut butter cup, though not my favorite treatment for the peanut butter center. I can’t argue with the price or the portioning. I don’t know if I’m going to pick them up in the big tub, even though it’s probably a better price per ounce, but I’ve got to hand it to Trader Joe’s for their inspired stealth marketing on this one.

Related Candies

1. The Joycup Co. Peanut Butter Cups
2. Trader Joe’s Soft Peanut Brittle
3. Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Tahitian Vanilla Caramels
4. Justin’s Organic Peanut Butter Cups
5. Snickers Peanut Butter Squared
6. Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Powerberries
7. Dark Chocolate Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
8. Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate

In the United States we have something called Smarties. They’re little rolls of sweet and sour compressed dextrose in mild flavors. (In Canada they’re called Rockets.) They’ve been around since 1949.

Smarties come in three sizes. The Classic roll is 7 grams (.25 ounces). The Giant roll is 28 grams (.99 ounces). The Mega roll is 63 grams (2.25 ounces). So one Mega Smartie is about 3.3 grams ... basically, two Megas are equal to a whole roll of Classic.  Smarties used to come in one set of flavors, but now there are a few varieties, including Tropical and X-Treme Sour. The rolls for today’s review are the Mega variety, which are the largest that Smarties makes.

The twist for the new Mystery Smarties is that they’re completely mixed up rolls of all three flavor versions.

Not only are they a combination but the colors are completely mixed up and randomized, red is not always cherry, white is not always pineapple. The mystery here is that it’s not a one for one swap. One time I had a cherry green one and another time I think it was a blue one (but that may have been a sour).

The roll contains 19 tablets and two tablets are about 25 calories. They’re considered vegan. (The ingredients were hard to find, they’re on the twisted ends of the wrapper, not with the nutritional panel, so you can’t actually read the ingredients before you buy.)

Ingredients: Dextrose (Contains Maltodextrin and/or Corn Syrup Solids), Citric Acid, Calcium Stearate, Artificial Flavors, Colors (Red 40 Lake, Yellow 5 Lake, Yellow 6 Lake, Blue 2 Lake).

The classic and original size Smarties have always been my favorite. I’ve tried the X-Treme Sour and Tropical (and Bubble Gum) but they’ve messed with the unique quality of the standard, teensy, powdery and barely flavored tablets.

The Mystery Smarties come in yellow, purple, blue, green, pink and orange. The colors hardly matter, as they’re just to mess with you. The large tablets are smooth and soft and fit nicely in the mouth. The flavors vary widely, from intense and burning lemon to a mild and sweet pineapple. The X-Treme sour flavors were a bit too much for me in this size, I think if I were to eat them, I’d prefer the little tablets. The texture is a little crumbly and dissolves easily. They’re not quite cool on the tongue, like some dextrose candies can be, but definitely not as sweet as a pure sucrose tablet would be.

I didn’t enjoy the surprise of a very sour or a very cherry piece. After a while, I wouldn’t even finish the flavors I didn’t want. It made me long for the classics. But kids really dig this sort of thing, so give them what they want - a bit of variety and a few shocks. There are probably good lessons in there for children as well about not judging things by appearance, and maybe a more sobering one about never counting on anything.

It’s a fun experiment that ultimately taught me to treasure consistency and how nice it is when expectations are met. Still, I recognize that I still have a problem with Smarties, I really can’t stop eating them when they’re in front of me.

Smarties are free from most allergens: no milk, egg, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat or soy. They are vegan (calcium stearate is plant based) but do feature many unnatural ingredients including the artificial colorings.

Related Candies

1. Choward’s Guava
2. Swizzels Matlow Parma Violets
3. Tropical and Xtreme Sour Smarties
4. Mega Smarties
5. Smarties Bubble Gum
6. Giant Pixy Stix
7. SweeTarts: Chicks, Ducks & Bunnies (2006)
8. Bottlecaps

Starbucks has been in and out of the chocolate business a few times, the most recent large effort was in conjunction with Hershey’s and lasted less than two years.

These little bars called Starbucks Dark Chocolate with Via Ready Brew are found only at Starbucks cafes (not even on their website) and feature the Starbucks Via Ready Brew instant coffee as a flavor base. The packaging is simple and effective, it’s a tough paper and foil combination. The package says that this little chocolate bar is 100% natural roasted instant and microground coffee blended into rich, dark chocolate.

It’s rather small, at 1.2 ounces, but for such an intense thing, it’s an appropriate size. (And with a calorie count of 160 according to myfitnesspal, it’s not on the Starbucks website or the wrapper.)

The bar shape and size is clever and incredibly portable, like a narrow and thick companion for your iPhone. The bar is in four little sections, the top is molded with some very nice typography.

The color of the bar is exceptionally dark, much darker and blacker than I usually see in just chocolate bars.

Starbuck’s has done an awful lot right with this little bar. The texture is very smooth but still intense. It’s about the coffee for the most part, but the elements of the chocolate are also in a strong supporting role.

The coffee flavors are concentrated. It’s a little acidic, smoky and woodsy. The coffee notes are less intense, but don’t fight. The texture is smooth though the bar has a bit of a dry finish. The powdered coffee isn’t chalky or gritty at all, which is a great bonus over chocolate covered coffee beans.

There’s no indication what the caffeine content was on this bar, and as I’m sensitive to the stuff, I made sure to eat only half of this for breakfast this morning.

It’s a really strong bar, smooth for something with whole coffee beans in it, flavorful and nicely portioned. The price of $1.75 seems steep at first, but as a coffee replacement that you can pull out at any time, it’s a great deal. If you’re traveling, especially driving, and need to have something at the ready, this is a great option.

I’ve never actually tried the Via Ready Brew was a drink. I do, however, buy it for use in baking. I make an incredibly intense triple salty chocolate (cocoa, melted chocolate & chocolate chips) espresso cookies with Via Ready Brew. It makes the recipe ingredients insanely expensive (between the two bags of good Guittard chocolate chips and Via it’s about $11 for a batch, and that doesn’t include the standard ingredients). So if you have the money, I do think it’s much better than espresso powder or ordinary Folger’s crystals for baking.

Starbucks posted a bit about the ethical sourcing of the chocolate on their blog in two parts: part one & part two. One of the posts indicates a relationship with Tcho, but another blog reports that the chocolate bars are made by Santander.

Related Candies

1. Sarotti Scho-Ka-Kola
2. Starbucks Assorted Gum Drops
3. Ginger Chews: Hot Coffee
4. Javaz - Milk & Dark Chocolate Covered Coffee Beans
5. Coffee Nips
6. Starbucks Chocolate
7. Caffe Acapella - Coffee Confections
8. Pocket Coffee
9. No Time & Black Black