One of the treats I got from the All Candy Expo was this pack of VE2 energy gum. It’s candy with a conscience - the packaging is very minimalist and it says, “To save trees & make less trash this package avoids using a paper sleeve wrap.” I love the idea that a medium which traditionally relies on packaging for impact can be promoted in a environmentally friendly way.

Developed over a period of 2 years by an ER doc, one packet of VE2 is equal to five cups of coffee. The press about VE2 claims that you can absorb caffeine through your oral membranes faster than via digestion - so in theory VE2 gives you a quicker energy hit than your usual energy drinks. I’m one of those people who can drink a can of coke or a espresso before bed and still fall asleep with no problem, so I viewed this gum review as a bit of an experiment.

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Q: What do you get when you cross one sour-loving Candy Addict with a whole sleeve of sour power gumballs?

A: One very happy customer with a very sore jaw.

I wasn’t all that excited to get these gumballs, since I’ve had a particularly long run of not-really-sour sour candies to eat lately. The package also said “made in Mexico” and we all know how I felt about those Mexican candies. Gum is one of those things which is difficult to get a good sour flavor with, unless of course you fill it with some sort of lethal mix of citric acid and scary chemicals. Even then I find that sour gum products are sour for about 2.35 milliseconds before they just end up being a chewy, grainy, sweet mess. There was a definite audible sigh as I busted open this sleeve.

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Rocky road is one of those candies whose parts I love individually. Marshmallows, chocolate, a jelly of some kind, nuts… these elements on their own are delicious. Put them together and voila! instant candy (or ice cream) hit. Rocky road, to me, is a bit like pizza… even when it’s bad, it’s good!

Holding this candy in such high esteem really only means that one day, I was bound to fall off my candy high horse, wasn’t I? Well, dear readers, that day has come. I initially picked up this box of David Medlow Rocky Road because it not only had all the right elements, it also had a bit of innovation. The whole delicious sounding combination of passion fruit, white chocolate and roasted almonds had me drooling just by thinking about it. There was also a dark chocolate and orange version, but this one’s flavor combinations seemed more purchase-worthy.

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“To share or not to share, there is no question” declares the side of my chocolate truffle Nestle Heaven bar… and I have to say no truer words were spoken. These three flavors - chocolate caramel, chocolate truffle, mint truffle - are among the most delicious, addicting, totally fabulous chocolate bars I have ever tasted. It took precisely one bite for me to come to the conclusion that this range of chocolate bars qualified for the CandyAddict.com Awesomely Addictive Candy Award.

Every single part of these bars is lovable, and awesomely addictive - from the funny yet elegant packaging, to the feel of the chocolate, to the taste of each piece. Each of these is gold foil wrapped and then completely contained by a cardboard box. The box opens at one short end, so you can slide out your chocolate bar and then slide it back in if you manage to stop yourself from eating the whole thing. The boxes are covered in funny sayings, like “If I have to choose between you and my chocolate, you won’t like the answer.” The descriptions on the back are edible enough without even getting to the chocolate, with brilliant copy like this: “…the delightful mint truffle center oozes through your mouth…” Oozes, people. It oozes!

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When Candy Addict last went to the All Candy Expo, the writers came back raving about the Medlow fruit pectin jellies they sampled, and lamented how hard it was to source them locally. Of course I had to laugh - being the only Australia-based writer, I could get these all the time! It made a nice change from all the candies reviewed here that I can’t get my hands on.

I offered to send them some Medlow jellies, and began hunting around for them. They’re readily available, I’ve seen them in several stores here… but sadly, a search of a half dozen stores left me empty handed. Since then, I’ve been searching high and low and they are nowhere to be found. A recent shopping expedition to Sweet As netted me a box of interesting sounding fruit jellies. It was only once I had the box in hand that I realized I’d found the Holy Grail!

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The people at Taffy Town have been making these candies for 89 years, so it stands to reason they would have gotten it right by now. A bag of assorted flavors of Taffy Town Taffy arrived at my doorstep, so I had a nice selection of them to try. I was struck by the sheer array of flavors they offer - everything from the traditional peppermint to the more en vogue flavors like chocolate chip cookie and raspberry lemonade.

These taffy has a beautiful homemade look about it, with each piece individually wrapped in a small square of waxed paper. The colors are bright and the variations in terms of stripes, swirls and dots make these as nice to look at as they are to eat. A perusal of the website showed loads more taffy innovation - flavors like pomegranate and strawberry cheesecake, sugar free versions, versions with images in them (flowers, etc). Who knew that taffy was such a serious business?

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You know how there are some candies which remind you of certain types of people? Charms Blow Pops remind me of snarky teenage girls, Mentos reminds me of Europeans riding bikes, Werther’s Originals remind me of dirty old men, Tic Tacs of skinny people… you get the idea. For some reason Toblerone is one of those candies which I associate with two types of people: middle aged men and backpackers in Europe. The former because my Dad always ate Toblerone, and the latter because I can recall seeing many a backpacker in Europe carting around those enormous 10 pound size Toblerone bars to take home as a souvenir.

I should say up front that I actually love Toberlone bars - the quality of the chocolate is great, the nougat gives a lovely texture and the unique shape appeals to me. When I saw bars of Toblerone Fruit & Nut on sale, I was intrigued - mostly because I also think Fruit & Nut combos in chocolate are another thing only older men eat. Toblerone + dried fruit = candy bar for the geriatric market?

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The whole energy food and drink phenomenon is a total anomaly to me. On the one hand we’ve got jillions of kids out there being diagnosed with ADHD, and we do everything we can to calm them down. Then once all these hyperactive kids grow up, we dose them up with No-Doze, cans of Red Bull, and candy like the Maxxed Energy Pop. Is it only me who sees the problem with this? I seem to recall getting high enough on the amount of sugar in candy like Blow Pops, without the lovely people from Charms feeling like they needed to add more stuff.

These enormous lollipops are packed with loads of somewhat questionable stuff - taurine, ginseng, guarana, b-vitamins, caffeine. Sadly, they forgot one essential thing on that list - flavor! These lollipops taste hideous! I actually kept it in my mouth for quite a while, hoping that somehow the taste would improve. It didn’t, and I have no problem with saying that this lollipop is so nasty, it verges on the inedible. The texture is incredibly like sandpaper and the size is so huge as to appear almost obscene.

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PEZ is sorta like the razor blades of the candy world - Mr Gillette gave the razors away as long as you bought the blades, and it’s kind of like that with PEZ, too. It’s really more about the dispenser than it is about the candy, isn’t it? The official PEZ website is almost entirely dedicated to the dispersers, with the candy very nearly an afterthought.

Until now I’ve found most of the PEZ flavors to be pretty okay - nothing to jump up and down about (and definitely not with a razor in your hand). This year’s contribution to the PEZ flavor roundup is… drum roll… chocolate! Chocolate is not normally a flavor I would associate with chalk-type candies, although it can work fairly well in boiled or hard candies. When I first opened the sample packet, I was surprised to find it had quite a nice smell - while not overwhelmingly chocolaty, it was nicely sweet without being sickening. The color is a very pale brown with darker brown speckles in it, not surprising given that most PEZ colors are fairly muted.

I really liked these, actually. The taste reminds me very much of Nestle Quick - my brain registers a very slight cinnamon-y edge to these as well, even though I can’t say for sure if there is any cinnamon in the ingredients. It might be the chalky texture which reminds me of the drink mix - it’s what I imagine it would be if it were compressed into a tablet.

All in all, I think the chocolate isn’t going to satisfy the hardcore chocoholic, but it makes a nice change from the other options (cola, various fruit flavors, and Sourz) currently available.

• The Official Pez Website

Buy Pez Online:

• at Candy Crate
• at Candy Direct
• at Old Time Candy
• at Amazon.com

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One of the advantages to being the only Candy Addict writer outside of North America is that people send me cool stuff to try - stuff which I would never find here in Australia. In this case an Arizona-based Candy Addict sent me a bunch of weird and wonderful Mexican candy to taste test. Having grown up in Southern California, I’m no stranger to the common flavors of Mexico - tamarind, chili, mango and so on - but this is my first experience with those flavors from a confectionery perspective.

Made by de la Rosa, Pulparindo is described as a “hot and salted tamarind pulp candy” and, to my palette, it was only mildly hot and not really salty. It’s basically a pressed rectangle of tamarind, mixed with some sugar and chili. The first listed ingredient is sugar, which is pretty obvious from a textural point of view. It’s a pretty sandy thing to eat - you can hear it grinding against your teeth as you chew. Flavor-wise it’s pretty nice - but you would definitely need to be a tamarind fan in the first place! Appearance wise it’s not all that appealing, but if you’ve eaten raw tamarind before then you’re no stranger to brown patties!

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