Candy Blog

There was a satirical article yesterday on Brainsnap about banning Mentos and Diet Coke on airplanes because they can be combined to create a limited albeit powerful improvised explosive device.

Of course this ties in beautifully with the TSA’s overall “war on moisture” and it wouldn’t surprise me that even though that story is a joke, that something could come to pass that would mean that you can’t bring Mentos onto a plane.

But let’s face it, there are a lot of things that can be combined to “explosive” effect when you seal them in a bottle. Vinegar and baking soda comes to mind and that’s not that hard to get together on a plane with salad dressing and Arm & Hammer. Of course Diet Coke isn’t the only carbonated drink that can cause problems and it’s not just Mentos either. There are a lot of mints that can cause this same effect, just try it with other breathmints. But these videos on YouTube do show that you can do something powerful, though uncontrollable, using process of “nucleation.” See, just that word is gonna freak out the TSA.

It’s kind of sad too, since I’ve had so much trouble finding Chicklets, I’ve been using Mentos to relieve my ear pressure problems on takeoff and landing.

I always figured it would be the food police keeping me from my sweets, who knew that the TSA may be the biggest threat to candy at high altitudes?

Here’s a list of what brought folks to Candy Blog through search engines during the month of August:

1. m&ms
2. kissables
3. razzles
4. butterfinger
5. rockaleta
6. turkish delight
7. max brenner
8. reese’s
9. choxie
10. maya gold

I don’t know if the folks searching for Maya Gold were disappointed to find chocolate or not. Things that I don’t put on the list are searches for things like sweet, candy, sugar and blog.

There are a lot of candies that are not unique, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s good to have choices. But usually there are similar products on the market becaue they’re made by different companies. I ran across these recently: Chewy Mini SweeTarts and Chewy Tart n Tinys. SweeTarts and Tart n Tinys used to be nearly identical products, except for the shape of the little pieces. And that was fine because one was made by Sunline (SweeTarts) and the other was made by Wonka (Tart n Tinys). Then Tart n Tiny’s were glazed in a bright candy shell and they were suddenly a vastly different product and coincidentally now owned by the same company (Nestle).

But here we are again with the same thing?

Chewy Mini SweeTarts are little spherical versions of the larger Chewy SweeTarts which, in turn, are like the original SweeTarts. They come in five flavors: grape (purple), cherry (red), orange (orange), lemon (yellow) and apple (green). There are also Giant Chewy SweeTarts, which have been around since I was a kid.

They have a little glaze on them to keep them from sticking together and their colors are a little mottled, but not unattractively so. The chew is soft but grainy, with a nice cool feeling to it and a quick dissolve. The flavor is about what you’d expect from a SweeTart - a lot of tart at the beginning with a round, chemical flavor and then it finishes sweet and grainy.

Somewhere back in the distant past Tart n Tinys were not colorful - they were plain and chalky, like SweeTarts only pellet shaped. Then someone gave them a shiny color coating. They have little character versions of the candies on the package, but I’ve never paid much attention to them, but I guess that’s what sets them apart from SweeTarts.

The Chewy Tart n Tinys are little chewy pellets of tartness, a bit of flavor and a grainy chew all coated in a thin, crunchy shell. They come in five flavors: grape (blue), cherry (red), orange (orange), lemon (yellow) and apple (green). Sound familiar?

Besides the colorful coating and the difference in the color of the grape flavor, and the slight difference in size (the Tart n Tinys are 11% smaller than the Chewy SweeTarts Minis) they’re the same candy.

SweeTarts come in a handy dispenser tube (but I’ve seen them in the bags before, too), which is kind of fun for sharing and saving for later. There’s a little more in the Tart n Tinys package (1.6 ounces vs 1.75 ounces) but I guess it all comes down to how you want your candy to look. Chewy SweeTarts Minis look kind of like tiny Trix and Chewy Tart n Tinys look like little beads. Chewy Tart n Tinys have fewer calories per ounce, I can only guess this is because the tartness ingredients are higher on the list and perhaps there are more colorings in the Tart n Tinys, which take up mass but have no calories. Both deliver a lot of variety and a consistent product. Why they both exist from the same company is beyond me, but then again they stopped making Wacky Wafers because they said they were too similar to Bottle Caps, and I really miss Wacky Wafers.

In the end, the Chewy Tart n Tinys win out by a very slight margin. I’m not sure why, I think it’s just that I like the look of them better, and when the taste is the same, that’s just about all it comes down to.

I know a lot of folks have seen the happy news that the angsty painting, The Scream, was recovered in good condition in Norway. But what about the reward that M&Ms pledged as part of their kickoff of the new M&Ms Dark product?

Mars is still coordinating with the police in Oslo and are waiting for verification of the authenticity of the painting and how the sizable reward of 40,000 packages of Dark M&Ms can be delivered.

There was no word if the actual painting had been defaced with a hopscotching M&M in the background ... my guess is not.

Full article here.

I’m glad to see that M&Ms plans to honor their word in the contest, unlike these folks who promised a years supply of Kissables and have never announced a winner. (Or maybe the competition is still open, so feel free to submit an answer.)

Green Tea (Matcha) KitKats from Japan have been around for a while, but it took me this long to get my hands on some. I couldn’t even find a single-serving bar so I had to buy this bag of miniatures. At over $6, it’s not something I’m likely to repeat for a mass produced consumer candy.

These little wafer sticks are covered in a white mockolate flavored with real green tea. The color of the coating is real, it’s a pretty shade of creamy green. It smells of sugar and the delicate scent of matcha. The layers are flaky and crisp, just like a KitKat ought to be. The mockolate coating is very sweet though, so the matcha nuances are lost until you reach a saturation point ... at about the second stick.

A little about matcha. Matcha is a style of preparing green tea that starts with preparing the tea leaves before harvest, where they are covered from the sun for a few weeks before they are picked. After drying they are ground into a fine powder to create the matcha. This powder is used to prepare the tea and unlike regular brewed teas, the hot water is added to the powder and it is not strained out. Think of it as the difference between coffee and cocoa. With coffee we brew the beans by passing hot water through the grounds. With cocoa we grind the beans very finely and add them to hot milk. You get more complex flavors when you consume the whole leaf.

While I found these enjoyable, they were a tad sweet, which covered up much of the green tea flavors. The white mockolate had more of a greasy consistency, since the ingredients go: sugar, vegetable oil, lactose, wheat flour, milk powder and the cocoa butter. The American label on the package may or may not be correct, as I found a huge discrepancy in the reported calories for them and I had to puzzle my way through the Japanese listing. Luckily numbers are universal.

I think these are limited edition, as they’re no longer on the Breaktown.com site, maybe someone can read that label and let me know. (Dont’ worry, these weren’t expired candies or anything, the freshness date said 01/2007 on it.)