Another guest review from our friend Laura Kaspick.

Like fellow Candy Addicts Caitlin, Robbie, and Laurie, I recently had the pleasure of attending the All Candy Expo. One of the products I was most excited to get my hands on was the Limited Edition Coconut M&M’s. As soon as the show floor opened, I eagerly made my way to the Mars booth to get myself a sample. Imagine my disappointment when I was told they wouldn’t be available at the Expo! Although I did recover (it’s pretty tough to be in a bad mood when surrounded by free candy), I was still thinking about my loss when I attended a Mars press conference later that day.

Midway through the presentation, Mars president Todd Lachman turned his focus to upcoming product releases, including the Coconut M&M’s. I half tuned him out as I wasn’t interested in hearing about Coconut M&M’s, I was interested in eating Coconut M&M’s! But I quickly snapped to attention when I heard “…and actually, here in my pocket, I happen to have a sample…” and then which lucky member of the audience do you think he threw them to??? ME!!!! I couldn’t believe my good fortune, and now I am going to share my good fortune with you by telling you what you have to look forward to when they come out this summer.

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This guest review was written by Vito LaBella.

When the editor of Candy Addict asked me to review the following chocolate bar I was both flattered and a little intimidated. What are my qualifications? Well, I like chocolate. In fact, it is the only real sweet I allow myself. However, I am not a chocolate connoisseur, aficionado or even – dare I say it – Addict.

I am a borderline obsessive compulsive, so in order to complete my requested task I had to research, research, and do more research. What I found was not news: chocolate has health benefits (truer for dark chocolate, defined as having at least 65% cocoa), chocolate tasting can be compared to wine tasting, and there are a lot of pretentious chocolates and chocolate reviews out there.

Rather than talk about “mouth feel” or the “snap” of a particular chocolate bar, I am going to give my overall impressions on this particular bar. The bar that I was asked to review, Choclatique’s Q91, is a 91% cocoa blend purportedly from Central and South America as well as Africa and Asia. It costs about $6.50 per 100 gram bar.

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The following guest review was written by a reader named Meredith. Thanks, Meredith!

These Jolly Ranchers are something new altogether. First of all, awesome name – I just know it’s gonna be a party. And then, they’re opaque instead of clear like regular Jolly Ranchers, and they’re way less sticky, and the inside is hollow, filled with a powder of a different flavor from the exterior. They come in four flavors – mangolemin (mango candy and lemon powder), chorange (cherry candy and orange powder), raspilime (blue razzberry candy and lime powder) and strawapple (strawberry candy and sour apple powder). Consider these the Jolly Rancher version of Zotz.

The candy looks solid but as soon as you put it in your mouth, the ends collapse and the second flavor emerges. The powder has an ingredient I’ve learned is called erythritol – it’s a sugar alcohol and so it has a cooling effect inside your mouth. It’s weird but a nice contrast to the hard candy.

Mangolemin – The mango flavor is overpowering, but as soon as the lemon powder comes out, it mixes with the mango and becomes way less strong and more ambiguous – kind of a citrus fruit punch. This is definitely my least favorite upon first putting it into my mouth, but as soon as the second flavor comes out, it gets a lot better. Just wait a few seconds past the icky mango… it will be worth it.

Chorange – The initial cherry flavor is very strong, almost like a candied cherry. As soon as the orange powder comes out, the flavors mix and the cherry takes on a slightly tangy, almost sour taste. You can barely taste the orange flavor, but once it’s mixed with the cherry it is a lot less intense. It again takes on a kind of a cherry punch flavor, and finishes out being much milder than it started.

Raspilime – The blue razzberry has almost no taste at all – the lime powder comes out and immediately overwhelms the blue razzberry… but that’s not a bad thing. The combination of the two ends up tasting like a Lime Rickey. It has a very slight tartness – much like eating a lime with sugar sprinkled on it – and by the end of the candy you can pretty much only taste the blue razzberry. And it’s very subtle – though you do end up with a blue tongue, so not so subtle there.

Strawapple - This is definitely the best one by far. The initial strawberry taste is really delicious – kind of like a Blow Pop (which is the Blow Pop flavor people always steal from me). As the sour apple powder comes out, it gives a slightly sour apple taste in the back of your tongue, but more than anything it now tastes like a tart strawberry. It’s really good – the strawberry is not overly sweet, just nice and subtle, and the sour apple isn’t too sour. And once the sour apple is gone the strawberry taste is the one that emerges victorious.

These are all really interesting – it’s almost like getting to eat eight different candies – the four initial flavors, and the four flavors that are formed after the powder emerges. The only one that leaves a slightly unpleasant aftertaste is the mango. The strawberry is the best at the end. The textures of the candies change several times, due to the emergence of the powder and the cooling of the tongue and the candy being hollow. It’s not often that eating a piece of candy is interesting all the way through the experience. The flavors of these candies are constantly changing, which created a whole new (awesome) candy eating experience for me.

P.S. It’s funny to give these to somebody without telling them there’s a second flavor inside. I gave one to my co-worker, who was lying on the couch in my office, and all of a sudden she sat up and gasped like something had bitten her. She HAD been bitten… by a Double Blast.

• Hershey’s Jolly Rancher Double Blasts page

Buy Jolly Racher Double Blasts online:

• at Amazon.com

(image from CandyDirect)

This guest review comes from John Klassa…

I first encountered Cry Baby gum after coming in second place in a contest I entered with my young son. First prize was a huge bag of Cry Baby gum. Second prize was, well, nothing at all. Fortunately for us, the first-place winners were kind enough to share a big ol’ handful with us. They came in sleeves of five or six, and I liked them so much that I wound up chewing whole sleeves at a time.

The taste that “had me at hello” was back in spades in the review samples I received recently. This time, though, I got the regular round variety, and some samples of a “Double Bubble” variety.

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This guest review was written by Laura Kaspick….

Back in December 2007, Candy Addict reviewed the Chocolate Marshmallow Hershey Kisses. While the reviewer had hoped that these were going to have a marshmallow fondant center, she was disappointed to find that the Kisses were actually just solid marshmallow flavored chocolate. A solid Kiss is certainly less interesting than a filled one, but I was still intrigued and hoped to track down the limited edition offering. Unfortunately, months passed without any luck and I was certain I had missed my chance.

Imagine my excitement when half a year later I finally spotted the elusive Chocolate Marshmallow Hershey Kiss! There they were in the candy aisle of Walgreens, with the same poofy marshmallows and chocolate sauce on the packaging and the same silver and brown checkerboard patterned foil wrappers that the Chocolate Marshmallow had. But after a closer look, I realized that there was something much different about these marshmallow Hershey Kisses. These were not the same product that had escaped me for so long – instead, these were Hershey Kisses “filled with marshmallow flavored crème”! While this confirmed that I had indeed failed to find the December marshmallow version, I was stoked to try the new crème-filled variation.

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