Remember when Godzilla first stomps his way into Tokyo? Picking up buses, throwing them down, weaving through the buildings toward the center of town? Well, that’s what we have today: the giant monster of the gummy bear forest. Your average gummy bear would be stunned in wide wonder to behold this thing, then run far, far away. The Big Bite Gummy Bear is 12 oz (most entire bags with dozens of gummy bears don’t weigh that much), and stands a mammoth three inches high.

And doesn’t this huge gummy bear kinda look monstrous? Glowing orange from some molten undersea origin, perhaps? Well… time to bite its face off.

After removing a band of plastic wrap, you need to pry away the two halves of a form-fitting, hard plastic mold that encase the beast. (Oddly, the mold has a lanyard loop; you could actually wear this thing as a necklace, I guess. Wow, that would hurt.)

Gnawing away at Big Bite’s head, I can report that this candy tastes like… an orange gummy bear. It’s your standard artificial orange flavor, not bad, not good. The texture is maybe a little stiffer than your average Lilliputian gummi bears.

Two things I don’t like about this huge gummy bear: 1) it has a film-like residue on its surface (maybe to assure it won’t stick in the mold) and 2) it’s too big! Unless you lost a bet, there’s no way you’d put this whole thing in your mouth at once (even if you could), so after each bite, you have to put the slightly slimy bear back in the mold. Then you have to handle the gelatinous mass some more the next time you want a bite. It’s just really not a pleasant eating process, and the taste isn’t good enough to make me want to continue.

After eating most of the Big Bite Gummy Bear’s orange face, I’m tossing this thing away. Let’s just hope he doesn’t come back to terrorize the citizenry. The Bear in the Iron Mask would not be a happy encounter in gummy bear forest.

So, if you want a novelty joke gummy bear or a strange and unique necklace, the Big Bite Gummy is perfect. For eating, not so much.

• Novelty Specialties Website

Tung Toos – an interesting concept in the candy world. I remember how popular the temporary tattoos were when I was in junior high. A tattoo for your tongue – a candy tattoo for your tongue? Okay, sounds good! Or so I thought when the makers of Tung Toos offered to send me a sample for review. Unfortunately, I’ve gone down a series of disappointing steps since receiving the package.

First let me point out the positives of Tung Toos. They are visually appealing with bright colors and fun pictures that will draw any kid’s attention. I received three packages – one decidedly meant for girls and two that would be preferred by the boys. The girls’ pack has castles, crowns, magic wands, and the word Princess. The boys’ packs have sports balls – soccer, basketball, baseball, and football – and military vehicles – helicopters, jeeps, tanks, and ships. Since I have three boys and no girls, this was a good mix of Tung Toos for my family.

The idea of having a picture on your tongue – to stick out at all your friends – is, presumably, attractive to the younger set. Personally, I don’t feel the need to stick my tongue out at anyone and don’t want to see other people with their tongues wagging around either. Call me a dud, if you wish….

Now on to my actual experience with Tung Toos. I found the packages themselves extremely hard to get open. Each sheet of Tung Toos is sealed within a plastic envelope – an envelope that has not a single ‘tab’ to facilitate opening. After jerking and pulling at every potential spot, I finally had to cut the pack open. The first set we tried (the sports balls) was actually adhered to the bottom of the envelope. I had to literally rip them free, but this seems to have been a unique mistake in the packaging. The other sheets slid out easily once I cut the envelopes open.

The battle to try the Tung Toos didn’t stop once I freed the sheet of ‘ttoos. The sheet is perforated with two Tung Toos squares per section – each section is sealed in yet another plastic envelope. Oh, the agony! Fortunately, these small envelopes do have a tab that you can rather simply pull to tear open. For some reason, though, the backside of the Tung Toos (where the directions are printed) is actually attached via a light adhesive to the plastic envelope. After more tearing and dropping a very large amount of plastic waste paper onto my carpet, we could at last try the Tung Toos.

Using them isn’t hard at all. You simply lay the ‘ttoo face down on your tongue for a couple seconds and then lift off. The picture left behind is decent and looks reasonably like the picture that was on the paper. If you apply a second Tung Too, however, (and who wouldn’t?) the image is distorted and you end up with a bluish-black blob that looks exactly like you just ate a Charms Blow Pop or a handful of SweeTarts.

Okay, taste. Isn’t that the most important part of candy? Isn’t taste the entire reason we eat candy?

When I laid a Tung Too on my tongue, there was a mild tangy flavor. After I lifted the tattoo paper off and kinda licked around in my mouth, I detected a slightly sweet flavor. Within ten seconds, any hint of flavor was completely gone. Flavor is obviously not the intended drawing point of Tung Toos.

I offered Tung Toos to a 22-year-old friend of mine, who is much more hip & happ’nin’ and up-to-date with fads and being popular than I am. I figured if Tung Toos was appealing in a “youth culture” sort of way (boy, do I feel old talking like this!), he would find the appeal in it. After using one, he said (of the flavor), “That’s just a tease.”

My eight- and five-year-old sons did keep using them (would it make sense to say “eating them”?) for a couple days, but I can’t say they were ever thoroughly enamored. If you were throwing a kid’s birthday party, these would probably make good party favors. But I can’t personally imagine any kid wanting to request them on a regular basis. I figure they’d rather have Fun Dip or Smarties.

• Tung Toos Website

Chocorooms do not contain mushrooms of any kind. Let’s be clear about that. Not Red Belted Polypore, not Queen Boleti, not Morel. No mushrooms at all. Instead, these are “sweet and crispy” Japanese candies that happen to look like rather small mushrooms. They have cookie-like stems, with chocolate tops.

Okay, so what do these fake fungi taste like? Let’s start at the bottom. The stems are not tasty in the least. They’re very bland, like a really boring biscuit. They remind me of fortune cookies a little bit, too. They also leave a slight film in your mouth.

The chocolate of the mushroom tops tastes cheap. Like, Nestle Quick in mushroom-shaped chocolate form. It’s okay, but very flat and rather waxy. A look at the ingredients shows lots of extraneous junk that never improves the taste of chocolate, but lessens the cost with filler.

Now, the cookie stems do allow you to chomp on the chocolate tops without getting your fingers chocolaty, but lots of candies have figured out that trick.

Bottom line: if you think candies that look like mushrooms are irresistibly cute, then Chocorooms are for you. Otherwise, I’d resist.

Really, these mushrooms should be left in the candy forest.

• Meiji Chocorooms Website
• Linda’s Review of Kinoko no Yama at Snackerrific

I find Jelly Belly jelly beans really fun to eat so I was delighted to try the Sunkist Citrus Mix. As an added bonus, these jelly beans have added Vitamin C, so you can justify your sugar fix with the knowledge that you’re actually getting some nutrition.

Sunkist Lime: I only had one of these in the bag. The lime flavor was sweet with a little bit of bitterness and a little bit of tartness to it. Even though I only had one to try, the flavor really lingered.

Sunkist Orange: This jelly bean had an artificial orange candy flavor that faded quickly. It was also very sweet. There were lots of these in the bag, but eating more than one didn’t help the flavor to last.

Sunkist Grapefruit: I only had two of this flavor in the bag to try. Still, these jelly beans had a tangy grapefruit flavor with a very brief burst of tartness. There was just a bit of bitterness, but not as much as the lime. Like the orange flavor, the grapefruit flavor started strong but then faded out.

Sunkist Lemon: Unlike the other jelly beans, the lemon flavor grew stronger as I chewed. A bit of tanginess added some interesting notes to the flavor, as did a hint of bitterness on the finish.

Sunkist Tangerine: I wish I could tell you how these tangerine jelly beans were, but there didn’t seem to be any in my bag!

I didn’t have enough of any flavors to try together except for the lemon and orange. When I ate these two together, they had a sweet, general citrus taste at first, but then the orange gave out, and I wound up tasting just the lemon by finish.

Overall, the mix of flavors in the bag was very uneven – I was even missing a flavor. Still, you do get the Vitamin C regardless of what the flavors are, and that’s a good thing. This was a fun mix to try, but not my favorite in the Jelly Belly family.

• Jelly Belly Website

Buy Jelly Belly Candy Online at:

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

While frolicking away inside the candy store, I came across these little boxes of candy. Of course I was drawn in by the pictures of board games on the outside, as Monopoly was and is my favorite board game of all time.

I also noticed there were others as well as Monopoly: Clue, Sorry and Life. So I grabbed these off the shelf and decided to take them home. Doing a little research online about them, I found out they are licensed by Hasbro and are generally sold in a four-pack called Game Night Candy.

Each box of candy shows a picture of the board game it represents and each box is about two inches long, containing a bag of candy inside.

Inside each bag are candy game pieces, specific to each board game. For Clue, there were blue candy wrenches and green candlesticks. Monopoly had pink dogs and green race cars. Life had blue spinners and pink cars, while Sorry had blue and yellow pawns. While some of the pieces looked like obscene adult candies, they could all probably be collectibles someday.

There were about 10-20 pieces of candy in each bag. More than enough to give a proper review, right?

The first thing I noticed was that it was hard candy and it tasted like U.S. Smarties. They had a tart taste to them and the same consistency as Smarties, too. My mom seemed to think they tasted like Pez candy. She didn’t buy me much Pez as a kid, so I can’t say whether I agree or disagree.

Overall, since I love Smarties, I really liked these little candies. Although, I’d probably much rather buy a pack of Smarties instead of searching around for these. Cute idea, though.

Has anyone ever seen or tried this candy? Have you ever used them in place of game pieces you may have lost? How did that work out for you?

Buy Game Night Candy Online:

• at Candy Warehouse

When I think of lollipops, I think of, well… lollipops. I try not to read too much into the whole adult humor and related connotations that can be associated with such a candy. Apparently, the folks at Das Foods think differently than I do.

I was supposed to receive a shipment from them, but for some reason it never arrived at my doorstep, but as luck would have it, they were attending the All Candy Expo, which provided me an opportunity to pick up some samples on site.

It was hard to miss to the Das Foods booth; they hired four dancers from UIUC to perform a Das Lolli dance routine and socialize with the attending clientele. Since most of the people attending the convention were males, I suppose their ploy worked, as there was always a crowd at their booth.

Even the packaging (think something circular within a square, plastic wrapper that isn’t candy) or the taglines of “What’s your flava?” and “Shamefully delicious lollipops” are begging for an adult audience, which is odd given the premise that these are all natural lollipops made without preservatives, HFC, and chemical additives. Seems like a good thing to give your kids, but I’m not sure how you explain what exactly “Man Bait” is supposed to mean…

The Das Lolli assortment is comprised of four flavors:

Fab-O-Pom: This translucent pink lollipop has no fragrance to it, but the taste is strong right off the bat. It isn’t too sweet, with a slight zest factor that gives it a nice rounded quality on the palate. Neither orange nor pomegranate is present flavor-wise, and for some reason I taste hibiscus in mine. On the plus side, they’re not sticky, but there’s an odd herbal quality instead of fruit.

Naughty Ginger: This dark yellow sucker has a nice ginger flavor that intensifies into a slight burn. The ginger quality and taste borders on the crystallized variety. Unlike the last one, I can easily detect the lemon zest overtones in this piece. These reminded me of cinnamon in the way cinnamon can create that spicy quality on your tongue. I enjoyed the duality of the tart and spicy, but found myself wanting more of a savory presence like rosemary or thyme to fully balance out the different flavors. This was still my favorite.

Caramel Me Happy: This piece is dark brown. I was looking forward to this piece in particular because Das Foods already carved a niche for itself in caramels, and felt this would be an obvious transition in flavor for them. Unfortunately, the flavor in these takes a long time to develop, and isn’t ever fully realized. I enjoyed the salty quality, but I found that minimal too.

I don’t eat bacon, something I found put me in the minority at ACE considering the other non-Candy Addict bloggers spent a good ten minutes professing their love of bacon to each other during a luncheon; however, Cadence, who isn’t a fan of bacon per se, will eat it, and she thankfully gave me her response to this one.

Man Bait: As soon as I opened the package, I could smell the smoky, slightly acrid aroma of bacon. The first taste was very sweet, with a nice maple flavor that surprised me because it wasn’t that artificial maple taste. Then the flavor changes to a salty, sweet mix and the smoky bacon kicks in. The bacon flavor reminded me of the bacon bits you add to salad – artificial and strong. The bacon flavor sort of hijacks the maple, so what you end up with is a salty, sweet, slightly maple-y, bacon-flavored lollipop. The texture is a bit odd: it gets progressively bumpier as you uncover the bacon bits embedded in the sugar. I have to say that the mixture of the salt and the sweet was surprisingly good. A very interesting, unusual lolli.

Personally, I wouldn’t crave any of these aside from the ginger ones, but none are bad by any means. Try them if you get a chance to. You might like them more than I did, and I doubt you’ll hate them. If nothing else, it’s nice to see folks approaching candy with a sense of humor, albeit an adult-rated one, and crafting a series of adult flavors as opposed to the traditional.

• Das Lolli Website

I am not what most people would call fashionable. From my short stature to my complete disdain for makeup to a wardrobe described by former neighbors as “like a cartoon character,” I’m probably one of the least chic people you’ll ever meet. But I’m a complete Candy Addict, and am intrigued by pretty much anything new and different that happens in the world of sugary goodness. So when I was given the opportunity to review a lollipop that serves double-duty as a fashion accessory, I wasn’t about to say no.

Judging from its website, the Sugar Company looks to be one of those brands that’s more about style than substance. Most of the products on offer are cleverly packaged, overpriced versions of old standbys easily found in your nearest mall. Chocolate-covered gummi bears, saltwater taffy, licorice mix… solid, dependable candies to be sure, but nothing really unique to the company.

The Sugar Factory’s Couture Pops, though, are their real claim to fame. Comprised of interchangeable, bejeweled sticks and color-coordinated candy heads, these just might be the coolest candy fashion statements on the market right now. They even come with ringing celebrity endorsements. Yep! Britney Spears, the Pussycat Dolls, and Kim Kardashian are all big fans of the customizable lollipops.

Even I had to admit that the concept’s pretty cute. When I was twelve, I probably would have loved to carry around a Couture Pop. At $25 apiece, while the lollipop may be expensive for a candy, you have to admit – it’s pretty cheap for an accessory!

My Couture Pop was blue raspberry, with a coordinated scepter adorned with crystals in turquoise and green. Its candy head comes enclosed in a plastic snapcase, the better for storing your half-eaten lollipop while on the go. Useful for anyone; extremely so for club-savvy hotties who need to keep their pops fresh and juicy between flirtations with one guy and the next.

As far as I was concerned, if the lollipop was as tasty as it was pretty, there’d be no need for the plastic snapcase. I’d suck it happily until nothing remained but the bejeweled stick and attached “screw” at the Pop’s center. In the end, my lollipop’s taste didn’t rival its presentation, but it wasn’t half bad, either.

As the Pop made its way over my tongue, I realized this is pretty high-quality candy. It’s very thick, without being too syrupy, and tastes enough like blue raspberry that fans of the flavor won’t feel too ripped off. I don’t know if this is the case with all of Sugar Factory’s flavors, but the brand’s candymakers seem to know what they’re doing in this case, so I wouldn’t doubt it. The pop is amply sized; about the size of a large super-ball or a standard clown nose. It took me over an hour of licking to reach the lollipop’s base. I can see how that snapcase comes in handy! If you need a solid sugar fix over a lengthy period, this might just be the lollipop for you.

So, if you appreciate the taste of a well-made, suckable ball of flavored sugar, you’ll probably find one for a far better price at your local novelty shop or candy store. But, if you like your candy to come with fashion sense and a dose of Hollywood glamor, you just might want to visit The Sugar Factory today and buy a Couture Pop. Make sure to buy a few different sticks and different colored candy heads while you’re at it – the better to coordinate with different outfits!

• Sugar Factory Website

In case you hadn’t heard, the new Star Trek movie is coming out today, and I am one Candy Addict who just can’t wait to see it. I’m not only a Candy Addict, but a geek too! Star Trek is a huge licensing/merchandising opportunity for products (like Star Trek t-shirts) and candy is even joining the fray too.

We wrote about some Star Trek gummies a little while back and the Limited Edition Star Trek Pez is already out and now we find out about more Star Trek candy: Star Trek USS Enterprise Gummi Candy.

We don’t have too much information about them other than they are $5 for a bag (they better taste good at that price) and the extremely cheesy copy on their website:

Delicious Star Trek Enterprise Gummi Candy. The U.S.S. ENTERPRISE has searched the Galaxy for only the finest ingredients and natural flavors to make these flagship miniatures. These Gummi treats are sure to create a galactic explosion of fruity flavors in the mouths of big and little aliens everywhere!

We’ll get a review posted on Candy Addict if we can get our hands on some.

• U.S.S. Enterprise Star Trek Gummies
• Previous Star Trek Gummies
• Limited Edition Star Trek Pez
• Star Trek T-Shirts

One of my favorite meals is a plain old hamburger and fries. So when I saw that the Giant Size Mallow Burger was reviewed, I had to go out and try the Mallow Fries. Because what’s a marshmallow burger without any marshmallow fries, right?

At first look, I like the way they are packaged in a typical fry container. Surprisingly, they even look like fast food french fries – wrinkly ones that have been sitting out for a while that we all seem to have the misfortune of getting in our drive-thru bag.

The fry container holds about ten nice-sized marshmallow fries. It also comes with a packet of sour strawberry candy gel that’s supposed to look like – yep, you guessed it – a packet of ketchup.

As for the Mallow Fries, they have a chewy texture as well as a faint marshmallow taste. They don’t really have that much flavor, which is probably why they included sour strawberry gel. The strawberry gel smelled like sweet candy and was certainly sour. When dipping the Mallow Fries in the gel, it got kind of messy because the gel is sticky and gooey. However, the fries tasted better when eaten with the gel.

The Mallow Fries are fat free, so I guess they are healthier than the real thing. Overall, the Mallow Fries were not that bad. I wasn’t expecting to like them, but I would probably eat them again – if McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s and Arbys all went out of business.

Buy Mallow Fries Online:

• at Candy Direct
• at Amazon.com

You may have heard some hysterical stories about Easter, but let’s stick to the one involving a chocolate-loving rabbit. While mundane rabbits enjoy eating carrots, have you every wondered what sustains the Easter Bunny? How about a chocolate rabbit, you say? What? What kind of psycho rabbit would cannibalize itself by eating chocolate in the shape of its own species? Not one that I want hiding chicken embryos in colored shells around the yard, I’ll tell you that.

Luckily, Swiss chocolatier Lindt has come to the famous rabbit’s rescue. The answer to what the Easter Bunny would eat is obvious once you think about it. Chocolate carrots – duh.

Now my question: are there carrots in this candy? Well… no. But it does have hazelnut paste. And each of the four chocolate candies are nicely wrapped to look like baby carrots (complete with stalks), plus little green curved handles that make the candy look like a vegetable umbrella. These handles are for holding your treat as you chomp away.

So let’s hop like a bunny and try these fun-looking chocolates.

I’ve unwrapped the foil and see a cone of good-looking milk chocolate molded to sit on top of a green plastic disc attached to the handle. I bite off the pointy tip and get some flavor going. Hey, this is pretty good. If you’ve had Lindt chocolate, you know it’s good. Not crazy good, in my opinion, but a notch or two above most mass-produced chocolates. Here, the milk chocolate is smoothly combined with a hazelnut paste. This flavor is fairly mild, but I like it. The chocolate’s not too sweet, and it’s got pretty decent mouthfeel. On the other hand, aside from the very nice hazelnut notes, the milk chocolate itself has a kind of one-dimensional flavor.

For a quasi-novelty candy, these are much tastier than most. And yes, they certainly pass the cute test. But at $4 for only four little carrots (total weight 52g, 1.8 oz), you wouldn’t want to be a huge holiday rabbit looking for sustenance.

• Lindt Chocolate Website

Buy Lindt Chocolate Online:

• at Amazon.com