Just in time for Halloween, the Twilight film franchise has released New Moon themed Halloween candies. The folks at the National Confectioners’ Association sent me three flavors to try.

Do you remember Sky Bars? For those of you who have never had the pleasure, a Sky Bar is a chocolate bar made of different sections, each of which contain a different filling. So in one chocolate bar, you got caramel, vanilla, peanut butter, and fudge fillings. Awesome.

Well this classic candy is getting a modern makeover. Instead of putting all the fillings in one bar, now some of the segments have their own, individually-wrapped candy bar with different Twilight New Moon characters on different flavors. I tried the Edward caramel and the Bella creme. Edward’s chocolate is etched with a family crest and says “Cullen.” Bella’s is shaped like a heart and says “Bella.” Both are good-sized chocolates.

It’s been a while since I’ve had a Sky Bar, so I can’t compare these to the originals. But I can say: yummy! The caramel flavor is loaded with a soft, sweet caramel that’s more liquid than chewy. The creme has almost the same consistency and the flavor reminds me of a Cadbury creme egg – really sweet but I somehow love it anyway.

Between the packaging, the cool shapes of the candies, the generous size of the chocolates, and the taste, I’d say these would be a huge hit with Twilight-loving Trick-or-Treaters.

I also tried the Twilight Sweethearts “Forbidden Fruits” conversation hearts. My box said “2 of 3″ and featured Edward. They are a bit glittery, and say things like “Soul Mate,” “With You,” “Live 4 Ever,” and my personal favorite, “Bite Me.”

For me, conversation hearts have always been more about having fun with what they say than how they taste, and this box was no exception. These still have the same chalky consistency I remember, but the flavors are much stronger. Flavors include orange obsession, tempting apple, passion fruit, and secret strawberry. They all tasted very sweet, very artificial, and, oddly enough, vaguely medicinal to me. I can’t say I enjoyed how these tasted. Fun to play with, yes. Fun to eat, not so much.

Since these come in a big box, they are not really suitable for handing out at the door on Halloween. But they’d be a lot of fun in a candy dish at work or at a party.

Given a choice, I definitely would choose the Sky Bars over the Sweethearts. Either way, enjoy your Twilight New Moon Halloween goodies!

Necco makes both the Sky Bar treats and the Sweethearts.

Candy Addict received this product as a sample. No payment was received for this review and all opinions represent an unbiased view of the product.

• Necco’s Website

It’s almost time for Halloween again and that means yummy treats for everyone.

The folks at the National Confectioners’ Association were kind enough to send me some treats to try, so I’m sharing them with you. I figured we’d start with the healthier treats, in case any of you want to add something healthy to your Halloween splurge.

First up,the bag of Florida Natural Au’Some Fruit Healthy Treats, which contain a mix of sour strings, nuggets, and stiks. I actually enjoy them all. All three styles come in orange, strawberry, and grape flavors and I like the strawberry the best. Since I love sour stuff, I particularly enjoy the sour strings, although I should warn you that they aren’t terribly sour. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the stiks – they are really tangy and nicely chewy without sticking to your teeth. The nuggets are fun, too, but I thought the orange flavor, in particular, could have a wee bit of vitamin taste to it.

Given that the nuggets and strings are only 50 calories a pack, and the sticks are only 35, these are a guilt-free treat, surprisingly tasty and satisfying. As a bonus, each candy has vitamin C and other vitamins and minerals, so these actually have a health benefit! Since these come in nifty little packets, you can hand them out to your Trick-or-Treaters, or take ‘em to work yourself.

While I was delving into the fruity, chewy goodness, I decided to try Welch’s Island Flavor Fruit Snacks. One serving boasts 100% of your vitamin C DV, and 25% of your A and E. And, at 130 calories per serving, this definitely qualifies for my “healthier Halloween” motif. I’m sorry to say I didn’t enjoy these nearly as much as the Au’some Fruit treats. The flavors were much more bland and had a weird, waxy taste to them. And the texture was odd: not very chewy and kind of powdery. Plus, my sample came in a bag that was too big to share with Trick-or-Treaters, although you could just eat ‘em yourself. If you’re into tropical punch flavors, maybe you’ll dig this, but it wasn’t really my thing.

Last on the list, Candy Coated Sunny Seed Drops by the Sunflower Food & Spice Co, Ltd. Back in June, Nico reviewed the regular Sunny Seed Drops Chocolate Sunflower Seeds, but mine came in Halloween colors with a Halloween-themed tube. Same flavor, but seasonal packaging. How do these stand up to other Halloween treats? Well, I love chocolate and I love sunflower seeds so these made me do the happy dance. The only bad thing I can say about these is that I had a hard time not eating the entire tube. The brightly colored candy shells are incredibly inviting, just begging you to have another handful. These are a little like sunflower M&Ms. I will say the chocolate is quite sweet, but somehow it works with the sunflower seeds. Oh yum! How did I go my whole life so far without having these?

According to the package, sunflower seeds are an excellent source of a number of vitamins, minerals, protein, and fiber – healthy! There are 130 calories per serving – if you can manage to stop at the serving size, which is 2 tablespoons. Since this came in a good-sized tube, I’m not sure if you’d want to get enough tubes to share with Trick-or-Treaters or not. But I sure do recommend treating yourself because these rocked.

Overall, if you’re looking for a healthier Halloween but don’t want to make your Trick-or-Treaters or yourself feel deprived, I recommend you try either the Au’some Fruits or the Sunny Seed Drops. Yum!

• Au’some Treats Website
• Welch’s Website
• Sunflower Food & Spice Company’s Website

Did you know that houses with black shutters are 77 percent more likely to hand out Kit Kats than other houses? Yeah, me neither. Weird. If I had a black shutters (or even a house, for that matter), I’d be compelled now to ensure that I didn’t hand out Kit Kats. That’s just how I roll. But that and other rather odd facts can be found in a press release issued by Hershey’s.

They’re also happy to announce that this year will also see a variety of new snack sized candies (including Hershey’s Kisses) for trick-or-treaters. Apparently nobody bothered to read my scientific (ahem) study of smaller sized candies. But I will admit those Reese’s pumpkins are really darn cute.

• Hershey’s Dresses up Halloween with Frightfully Delicious Treats Press Release

Well, you know how it goes – I bought a stack of Easter items to review right after Easter, but then I got lazy. So now I’m stuck writing about Easter candy while everyone else has moved on to bigger and better things, like the fast-approaching All Candy Expo. But I swear this is my last Easter candy review until next year – unless something interesting comes up at the ACE, of course.

Anyway, Canadian chocolatier Laura Secord is another one of those middle-to-high-end chocolate companies like Purdy’s, and it’s known mainly for its chain of mall chocolate shops, but its products are also available in other stores, especially around the big candy holidays. The Secord Egg is Laura Secord’s answer to the Cadbury Creme Egg : a chocolate egg filled with a yellow and white fondant center. (The Secord Egg calls it “butter cream,” despite there being neither butter nor cream in the ingredients.) A higher-end Creme Egg? Sign me up!

Inside the cheery yellow and lavender box, the egg is wrapped loosely in waxed paper printed with Laura Secord logos. For some reason, there’s a crumpled little ball of shredded paper in there too – to keep the egg from rattling around and getting all broken, I guess.

This is one hefty egg – I estimate it’s at least twice the size of a Cadbury Creme Egg, and heavy to boot. (The Secord Egg comes in at least two sizes, of which this is actually the smaller.) The chocolate is a very thin, crisp layer over an enormous amount of dense, heavy fondant, and it’s not really very good chocolate – it tastes a little stale to boot.

Inside, the fondant is very white, shading to yellow in the center. It’s stringy like caramel and shiny like a very stiff meringue, which is oddly appropriate, except that there are no actual eggs in the ingredients. Like a Creme Egg, the fondant is really, really sweet, but doesn’t really have much flavor of its own, not even vanilla. It just kind of tastes like “sweet,” like cake frosting, though the texture’s not the same. Creme Eggs have a good balance of chocolate and creme, but here the massive amount of filling dominates, overpowering the small amount of chocolate with its sweet, gooey blandness.

If you think Creme Eggs are too sweet, stay far, far away from this. It’s an awkward candy to eat – Creme Eggs are gooey little sugar bombs, but they’re small enough that it’s a manageable feat to eat one all at once. The Secord Egg is way too sweet to eat in one sitting, but too messy to easily save some of it for later.

And definitely don’t eat this thing before breakfast, like I did (curse my early-morning candy habit!). Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to put some real food in my stomach before the sugar crash hits.

• Laura Secord Website

I’ll be honest with y’all – when I think of high-end chocolate, Russell Stover isn’t exactly the first brand that springs to mind. It’s grouped in my mind with companies like Palmer and Allen as lower-end chocolate companies that probably aren’t doing much worthy of a serious Candy Addict’s notice. But then I started to read reviews of their chocolate-covered Easter egg lineup – really good reviews.

So, this post-Easter sale season, I decided to pick up a couple to review. Although the eggs are available in several varieties, including the ever-popular caramel egg, being the mallow junkie that I am, I went for the marshmallow and marshmallow caramel varieties.

These aren’t the 3-D Creme Egg-type eggs (though Russell Stover makes those too), but the larger flattish kind (like Reese’s Easter eggs). About three inches long, they’re wrapped in brightly-colored (some might say gaudy) metallic wrappers. Here’s how my chosen flavors stacked up:

Marshmallow Egg:

My favorite part of a chocolate-coated marshmallow candy is the texture – that crisp, yet melty chocolate shell over a light, sweet, fluffy marshmallow filling. If the chocolate’s a little on the dark side, so much the better. The chocolate’s milk in this case, but it definitely delivered on the texture – it has a nice snap, though it’s a bit waxy in your mouth. The chocolate is just a very thin, crisp layer over a thick layer of marshmallow. The cynic in me wants to say that’s because chocolate is more expensive than a candy that’s mostly air – but I can’t complain since the marshmallow is really the main attraction here.

The marshmallow center is firm, and ever so slightly gooey – not a really fluffy marshmallow, but not quite flowy either. It has a dense, substantial feel, without a lot of bubbles or air pockets. Unlike some marshmallow candies, it’s really not all that sweet, even though I scarfed the whole thing down at once. (Hey, it’s only 110 calories!)

Marshmallow and Caramel Egg:

Unsurprisingly, this is identical in appearance to the regular mallow egg – on the outside, anyway. Underneath the chocolate, there’s a thick layer of caramel over the marshmallow layer. The caramel adds a tasty, toasty flavor and a dense, chewy texture to the relatively insubstantial marshmallow layer. (I think this might be a different marshmallow than the regular Marshmallow Egg – it seems lighter and more foamy and doesn’t add as much texture-wise.)

The crisp chocolate, dense caramel and fluffy marshmallow combine for a treat that’s pretty substantial, despite its small size and low calorie count (only 10 calories more than the Marshmallow Egg). If you have to break your diet with Easter candy, you could do a lot worse.

Overall, I found both eggs quite tasty, if nothing utterly spectacular. At the very least, they’re enough to put Russell Stover back on my list of candy companies to keep an eye on.

• Russell Stover Website

Buy Russell Stover Products Online:

• at Amazon.com

One of the all-time favorite Easter candies is also one of the simplest: a solid chocolate egg, coated, M&M’s-style, in a crisp candy coating. And, as is so often the case, it’s that deceptive simplicity that makes the Mini Egg so hard to duplicate: the subtle, yet unique flavors of the chocolate and shell are so integral to the Mini Egg experience that no other brand can quite capture it. Not that that’s stopped them from trying, though. In addition to Hershey’s Eggies and various no-name brands, Mini Eggs now have yet another imitator: M&M’s Speck-tacular Eggs.

In addition to that not-so “speck-tacular” pun in the name, there’s definitely something ironic about M&M’s competing with a product that is, in a roundabout way, a rip-off of M&M’s. It’s like when The Simpsons got more raunchy in order to compete with Family Guy, which itself started as a rip-off of The Simpsons… anyhoo, moving along….

The bag design is a little odd, with its tiny M&M’s logo and the name of the product printed even smaller than that. The yellow banner advertising M&M’s “Join the Hunt” contest is bigger and more eye-catching than the logo. What’s more important here? And I had to look at Red and Yellow there for a few minutes before I realized that they were coming out of an Easter bunny suit, and Yellow wasn’t just randomly carrying around a severed Easter bunny head. At least the eggs on the bag are printed nice and big, so there’s no doubt about the package contents.

When you open the bag, you get that instantly familiar M&M’s scent. The eggs themselves are pretty hefty, bigger than a Mini Egg, with a glossy M&M’s-style coat rather than a Mini Egg’s matte finish. The promised speckles are there, as well as the familiar “m,” if in blue rather than white. Other than their bright Easter colors, they look suspiciously like peanut or almond M&M’s, only minus the nut. (I wonder who the genius was who realized that if you make peanut M&M’s without the peanuts, you get an instant Easter egg?)

They taste, unsurprisingly, like giant M&M’s – bigger, more chocolate, and a thicker, crunchier candy shell. A single one is as filling as eating a bunch of the little ones. But in the end, these are still just M&M’s, no matter what shape they are, and you can buy M&M’s all year round. I like these well enough, but when it’s July and I’m jonesing for Easter chocolates, it’ll still be Mini Eggs I’m craving.

• M&M’s Website

Buy M&M’s Online:

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

Every year, on beaches throughout the world, female green sea turtles haul themselves up out of the sea and perform the laborious task of laying their eggs and burying them in the sand. After about 60 days, the eggs will hatch and the young turtles must scramble across the dangerous beaches in an attempt to reach the sea.

These are not those turtle eggs.

Instead, Nestle Turtles Eggs are based on the pecan and caramel-filled chocolate candies popular at dinner parties everywhere. Now, caramel eggs are a dime a dozen around Easter time (almost literally if you wait for the after-Easter sales to do your candy shopping). But add one of my most favorite nuts, pecans, to the mix, and you have yourself a winning combination. Turtles are one of the few mainstream candies that contain pecans, but their relative expense means I don’t buy them that often, so I was pleased to be able to score one of these puppies at post-Easter sale prices.

The egg itself is in the same style as Cadbury Creme Eggs and the like – a foil-wrapped egg a couple of inches long and relatively hefty for its size. When eaten alone, the outer chocolate shell has a toasty cereal sort of taste. The filling contains big chunks of crunchy pecans suspended in an unusual caramel – it’s got sort of a thick, custardy texture rather than being gooey or stringy. Its color and texture remind me of pecan pie filling, which is A-OK with me.

Unfortunately, though, the caramel doesn’t add very much to the mix – it doesn’t have any of that saltiness or burnt sugar intensity that makes a really good caramel, and its softness doesn’t match the denser texture of the caramel inside a regular Turtles candy. The softer-textured filling doesn’t go badly with the crunchy pecans and melty chocolate, but it’s definitely not the same effect as the original.

Unlike most filled-chocolate eggs and a lot of caramel candies, it’s not overwhelmingly sweet – most of the sweetness comes from the chocolate shell rather than the filling. The pecan crunch is great, but the lack of caramel flavor, not so much. The pecan flavor predominates, but that mellow harmony of caramel, chocolate and pecan from a regular Turtle is missing. It’s certainly not a bad candy (it definitely gets bonus points for not skimping on the pecans), but don’t expect it to taste too much like the original.

So sit back and enjoy a Turtle egg in this post-Easter candy season – and imagine how awesome it would be if turtles really did lay chocolate eggs. (Hey, it makes way more sense than egg-laying rabbits.)

• Nestle Turtles Website

Buy Nestle Turtles Online:

• at Amazon.com

This Easter, a new chocolate rabbit has hit the scene. Packed with milk chocolate and peanut butter goodness, he is no ordinary Easter Bunny. He is, in fact… the Reester Bunny. And though the market is already well-saturated with rabbit-shaped treats, he’s ready to kick butt and take names – all three of him.

That’s right – Reese’s new Easter treat comes in not one, but three sizes: a big heavyweight bruiser, a middleweight sold in packages of four, and these little guys, only a couple of inches long. The design of all three is basically the same – a flat milk chocolate rabbit filled with – you guessed it – peanut butter. Each bunny is individually wrapped in silver foil stamped with the image of the bright orange, overall-wearing Reester Bunny.

The Bunny himself is a little generic, like the Easter Bunny from a random low-budget Easter special. Actually, his orange color and yellow cheeks make him look like a rabbit version of Garfield. He’s smiling, but there’s something vaguely startled or worried-looking about his eyes, as if he’s just realized it’s Monday or he’s out of lasagna.

As unremarkable as his design is, Hershey’s certainly has done an excellent job of capturing it in chocolate form – under the foil, the molding on these is excellent. Rather than being a generic chocolate rabbit shape or even a nondescript chocolate blob, they’re definitely recognizable as the Reester Bunny.

Taste-wise, these are definitely a Reese’s product – their peanut-butter centers are that same grainy, slightly salty PB we all know and love from Reese’s peanut butter cups. There’s definitely a higher ratio of chocolate to peanut butter than in other favorites like the Reese’s peanut butter cup and the Reese’s Easter egg – it seems like they need a thicker layer of chocolate for the detailed molding job. They’re certainly not skimpy on the peanut butter, but seeing as Reese’s products are usually all about the peanuts, I think this is the least amount of peanut content I’ve ever seen in a Reese’s product. The chocolate is quite firm and a little snappy, unlike the soft, thin layer of chocolate around the original peanut butter cups.

Overall, I can’t find too much to complain about here – once again, Reese’s has demonstrated the variety of completely different-tasting candies that can result from simply adjusting the ratio of two different ingredients. So squeeze over, boring plain chocolate rabbits – the Reester Bunny’s coming to town.

• Reese’s Website

Buy Reese’s Products Online:

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

Walgreens Easter Caramel Egg: I actually had to search really hard to find out who made this little guy. If you unwrap the foil really carefully, you’ll find that Walgreens claims credit in the teeniest tiniest print possible, way down at the very edge of the foil. That was my first clue that this was maybe not gonna be a great egg.

When I bit into the egg, I found it had a really thick chocolate shell. You’d think with such a whomping amount of chocolate in the shell I’d be doing the happy dance. But it turned out that the chocolate wasn’t particularly chocolaty and its texture was pasty. Bummer.

Inside, I found a small amount of caramel hanging out in the very center. The caramel wasn’t very thick but had a light liquid consistency. The buttery flavor was nice, but it needed more of that.

Overall, my impression here was SWEET. I’d have preferred more flavor with the sugar.

Snickers Creme Sports Egg: Actually, it’s half an egg. It’s not fully rounded like the Walgreens egg – the bottom is flat. If you have trouble fitting a whole egg in your mouth, a half-egg might be easier to eat. You can get these babies in various sport-themed wrappers. I picked tennis balls because the cheery yellow reminded me of Easter, but you can go for footballs or baseballs if that blows your skirt up more.

When I opened the wrapper, I got a whiff and thought “Peanuts! Yay!” And that’s the theme with this egg. I thought I’d be getting an egg-shaped Snickers but really this is egg is way sweeter and much heavier on the peanuts and peanut butter than a regular Snickers. I really liked all the peanuty goodness, I just wished they’d tone down the sugar a little.

Cadbury Caramel Egg: If you’ve read any of my other articles, you know by now that I LOVE Cadbury. I expected my Cadbury egg to be something along the lines of Cadbury’s Caramello. I’m so sorry to tell you that this is not the case.

On the plus side, the caramel in this egg rocks. As soon as you start to uncrinkle the foil, a rich caramel smell starts wafting out. And when you bite into the egg, you find it’s loaded with rich, luscious caramel. It’s sort of liquid, like the Walgreens egg, and just loaded with butterscotch flavor. Really yummy.

The downside to this egg is that you don’t get the usual rich Cadbury chocolate flavor for the shell. The shell is pretty thin – the better to make room for that awesome caramel – but it doesn’t taste like regular Cadbury chocolate. It’s much sweeter and they’ve somehow lost the earthy richness I love in Cadbury chocolate.

Russell Stover Caramel Egg: People, I gotta tell you this one good egg. Like the Snickers, it’s a half egg. Like the Cadbury, the second you unwrap it, the caramel scent reaches out to greet you. And it only gets better.

Russell Stover got both the chocolate and the caramel right. The chocolate is more along the lines of what I expect from Cadbury. It’s still on the sweet side, but the quality of the chocolate balances the extra sweetness.

Oooh, and the caramel… it’s thick! And there’s tons of it! It’s like they painted a light layer of scrumptious chocolate on top of an egg made of butterscotchy, rich caramel yummy goodness.

This was definitely my favorite egg! If you use these in an Easter egg hunt, they are worth the effort of finding them.

Visit the Websites:

• Walgreens
• Snickers
• Cadbury
• Russell Stover

Buy Caramel Eggs Online:

• Candy Direct

As we discovered in our recent review of Popping Mini Eggs, Cadbury seems willing to go to some pretty darn strange places in order to “improve” a candy that many would argue is already the pinnacle of Easter candy perfection. I like to imagine the conversation went kind of like this:

Cadbury Executive 1: Yeah, Mini Eggs are pretty darn popular.

Cadbury Executive 2: No kidding – they’re our top-selling Easter candy. But you know what’s wrong with them?

Cadbury Executive 1: No, Bob – what’s wrong with them?

Cadbury Executive 2: They’re just not MINI enough!

Cadbury Executive 1: By George… I think you’re on to something!

And thus, Micro Mini Eggs were born.

Unsurprisingly, they look just like mini versions of the regular ones, with their pale pastel colors speckled with brown. (In the picture below, the bigger eggs are regular-sized Popping Eggs.) However, they do only come in four colors – purple, yellow, blue and white. If you want to believe the bag, Purple is the chick, Blue’s the cool dude, and Yellow’s a dead ringer for my Aunt Marge. Maybe White’s the pasty nerd who never leaves his basement, thus explaining why he didn’t show up for the photo shoot.

Like the Popping Mini Eggs, the package size is mini too – I’m sure they’re lighter than the bags I’ve had in previous years. (The standard Mini Eggs also come in the smaller package size these days.)

But after eating one of these right after eating a Popping Mini Egg, something about it seemed… off. While the Popping Mini Eggs displayed that distinctive Mini Egg flavor that everyone knows and loves, the Micros just tasted… different. Was it just the non-standard ratio of candy coating to chocolate? Or was it… something else? A quick check of the ingredient list confirmed my suspicions – while the Popping Eggs proudly display milk chocolate as the first ingredient, the Micros contain sugar, cocoa butter and milk ingredients – but also an assortment of suspicious vegetable fats, making them, if not totally mockolate, then definitely heading down those lines.

The new chocolate combines with the vanilla flavor of the shell for a taste that, well, doesn’t taste like Mini Eggs. It’s definitely missing that distinctive milky tang that’s common to most of the chocolate bars Cadbury makes. Actually, they really remind me of Smarties (the chocolate version, not the powdery version, for you Americans), and while there’s nothing really wrong with the way Smarties taste, they’re just not Mini Eggs, damn it!

You can’t really blame Cadbury for trying to cut costs in the current economy – but reducing the package size and cutting corners on the chocolate? That’s cold, Cadbury. Cold. I really hope this isn’t a taste of things to come – if this mockolate special edition sells, I wouldn’t put it past Cadbury to do a Hershey’s and start implementing the same changes to their regular lineup of Mini Eggs – thus ruining what is, for many people, the best part of Easter.

• Cadbury’s Website

Buy Cadbury Mini Eggs Online:

• at Candy Crate
• at Amazon.com