Free candy samples are always nice to receive, but the Melville box provided a uniquely fun experience. The Melville pops and spoons were so fun to look at that I was hesitant to try them because I didn’t want to ruin them. Melville gets big points on packaging and creative molding. The handles of the spoons are nice wood, and each candy pop is wrapped in thick cellophane and secured with a gold twist-tie. Definitely an aesthetically pleasing product.
The Old Tyme Barley Pops are very well done. The animal shapes are respectably realistic, and I made sure to tell my friends who shared the candy that the lobsters were not seafood flavored (that sure would be gross, wouldn’t it?). I liked the selection of animals and flavors. Each pop is weighty and dense with only tiny air bubbles in the candy.
I got a pink horse (watermelon); a green rabbit (lime); a yellow cow (lemon); a red horse (cherry), an orange deer (orange), and, my personal mold favorite—a purple turkey (grape). Each fruity pop was true to its flavor, and I liked the lobsters best, which didn’t surprise me since cherry is my favorite hard candy flavor. Technically, the lobsters aren’t Old Tyme Barley Pops, but they’re fruit-flavored, so I put them in the same category. In all honesty, the pops could’ve tasted only marginally good, and I would’ve enjoyed eating them anyway because of their fun, distinctive shapes.
Unfortunately, the Chocolate Caramel Spoons didn’t taste as good as they looked. Part of the problem may have been a matter of personal taste—I prefer soft, chewable chocolate to hard candy chocolate. I found the hardness of the chocolate spoons quite frustrating, because I like to chew chocolate, and am generally not a fan of anything chocolate that I have to slow down to eat.
The Chocolate Caramel Spoons were very hard, like a regular lollipop, not what I was expecting. I could definitely taste the caramel. The chocolate flavor wasn’t particularly good, but not exceptionally bad, either. My overwhelming feeling about the pop is that it’s too hard—a real tooth-breaker. Maybe if I were a coffee drinker, I could better appreciate the spoons by stirring them into a hot mug.
All of the Melville candy is fun to look at, and I think they’d make fun gifts. Who wouldn’t get a kick out of a lollipop in the likeness of a turkey?
Editor’s note: Of all the Melville candy we tried, I actually preferred the Chocolate Caramel Spoons. They are a hard candy (on a stick) that reminded me of a chocolatey Werther’s Original candy. Good stuff, in my opinion.
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