I grew up spending ten cents a pop on Jolly Rancher candies at my small town news stand. Those hard little rectangles (especially the watermelon flavor) were a favorite among me and my elementary school crowd. I still love a good Jolly Rancher today. When I saw these Jolly Rancher Fruit Chews at the Five Below store near me, I thought I’d give them a shot.

The box is a compact size so it’ll fit easily in your purse or pocket should you desire to bring them with you everywhere. There are only four flavors: blue raspberry, watermelon, green apple and cherry. I had an overabundance of blue raspberry in my box but thankfully I did have at least one of each flavor in there to give a good review.

Each piece is a small rectangle, about ¾ of an inch long. These are a real easy candy to chew. The only other candy I could really compare these too are Starburst, but these are much softer and easier to chew. They’re more of that powdery type of chewy candy rather than a taffy type of chewiness. Jolly Rancher Fruit Chews are a quick easy chew, but they’re packed with flavor.

The blue raspberry pieces are bright blue and have that distinct blue raspberry taste. The candy is not sour but rather a true basic blue raspberry, a little tart mixed with sweet. The watermelon is a deep pink colored candy and is that watermelon flavor I loved as a kid. The green apple is a bright, neon green color and the flavor is a good basic apple flavor, not a green apple in particular. The cherry is a good red color and the flavor is a basic candy cherry flavor. These are not a true fruit flavor but more like what you would expect a fruit flavor candy to be like. It’s that almost “too good to be true” taste. I wish fruit really tasted like these Jolly Ranchers.

I’m always a bit skeptical when a candy company tries to come up with a new product based on an old one. I’m an “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” type of girl. But, these fruit chews are honestly really good. The flavors stay 100% true to the classic Jolly Rancher hard candy I loved as a kid. Each time I ate a piece it took me back to the good old days.

• Buy Jolly Rancher Candy Online
• Jolly Rancher Website

I grew up around just plain black and cherry licorice and usually only the thin laces, so trying this soft eating licorice was very unique. I received 4 flavors of the Darrell Lea Soft Eating Licorice for review: strawberry, mango, green apple and black. The bags are full of thick tubes of licorice, as you can see from my photo of the green apple flavor. We’re talking 2 inch long tubular pieces that are half an inch in diameter. So, if you’re a licorice fan, these definitely are worth it for serving size alone. However, as a Candy Addict, I cannot go by portion size alone.

I have tried each flavor and there are some definite contradictions in each bag. The strawberry and green apple flavors were literally non-existent until I had swallowed the candy. What was really odd is that when I sniffed the open bags, the smell of strawberry and apple was very strong. However, these two flavors only appeared as an aftertaste and not a very strong one. The mango flavor was up front and alive in my mouth, it was an honest and truly good flavor and yet it hardly had any mango aroma in the bag.

The black licorice had a good strong anise aroma in the bag but the flavor was not what I expected. The first flavor that hits you (and hits hard) is molasses. The traditional black licorice flavor (anise) comes out only after you’re done chewing. Only then is it at its strongest, so sorry but you’ve got to wait till you swallow to get it. I know there are die hard black licorice fans out there and I’m not sure if you’re going to like this at all.

As far as the texture goes, it’s good and chewy like you would expect from any licorice, especially pieces this thick. It’s a soft eating licorice but it’s also a stick to your teeth licorice. On the down side, there’s almost a greasy feeling to it that I found unappealing. It’s honestly a strange part of the texture that I didn’t expect and didn’t really like either.

The upside to all this for me is the fact that Darrell Lea makes the licorice all natural. That means all natural colors and flavors (although the spinach they used to color the green apple makes it more of an olive green rather than granny smith apple green). I have a son with ADD and he has a sensitivity to artificial food colorings (to be discussed in a future post) so I’m always looking for candy made with natural colorings.

• Darrell Lea Website

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

Next month, Jelly Belly will be launching a new Peas and Carrot mix designed to look like the ever (NOT) popular vegetable side dish. The candy peas and carrots will not be jellybeans but will be mellocremes in apple and orange sherbet flavors (which is MUCH better than candy that actually tastes like peas or carrots – blech!). Look for these on store shelves in February of 2011.

• more info at DrugStoreNews
• more Jelly Belly candy at Candy Addict
• JellyBelly.com

(image courtesy Cosmo’s Vegan Shoppe)
As far as I’m concerned, marshmallows have four practical applications:

1. Direct snacking (good)
2. Hot chocolate (better)
3. S’mores (best)
4. Rice Krispies Treats (sublime, to be sure, but labor-intensive and, as such, ignored here)

Armed with this intimate understanding of what I like to think of as little sugar pillows, I embarked on a three-part sampling of Dandies Vegan Marshmallows to give you, the Candy Addict reader, the most comprehensive look possible at this exciting product.

Straight Marshmallows

These vanilla-flavored Dandies Marshmallows are air-puffed and both vegan and gluten-free, for all of you with the relevant dietary restrictions and/or preferences. They offer a faint vanilla aroma and are noticeably lacking in that chemically stomach churning scent that I associate with… um… other brands. Size-wise, they fall somewhere between a jumbo and mini marshmallow (making them, perhaps, a regular?) and are more dense/less airy than aforementioned others. They are comparable in stretchability and chalky exterior, but I found the Dandies’ interior to be much stickier. And they taste great. Their delightful chew offers a nice creaminess at the end and the flavor, while not especially vanilla-y, is also not especially chemically, which leads me to believe that I could eat far more of them before feeling utterly sick to my stomach.

In Hot Chocolate

I tend more towards the mini variety of marshmallows for my hot chocolate needs, so I had to cut these up for sampling part two. Quartering them worked well for me. As promised on the Dandies website, these melted in that oozy way that marshmallows do in cocoa (but, happily, not too fast) and provided a sweet, slightly spongy element to my hot chocolate. No complaints here.

S’mores (aka “God’s food”)
Much to my delight, these marshmallows toasted very quickly. And while they browned nicely, I would be remiss not to mention that their surface bubbled maniacally (strictly cosmetic) and they were quick to catch fire (potentially troublesome in a campfire situation, less so over the burner of my gas stove. Bonus Addict tip: chopsticks make for a good at-home marshmallow-toasting tool.). And in a sampling moment that nearly made me weep with joy, the Dandies Marshmallows melted to perfection, coaxing their accompanying chocolate squares with them (yes, there were multiple), whilst never reaching that sticky, stringy, taffy-like state that makes standard s’mores generally unruly. Mmm. S’mores are genius. GENIUS.

As are Dandies Marshmallows.

While I was admittedly too lazy to launch the all-important fourth phase of this sampling, I have it on good authority (namely the Dandies website) that these also “make Rice Krispies Treats just like the real ones,” and I’m inclined to believe it. As a Candy Addict (as well as self-professed almost-vegan), these marshmallows exceeded any hopes I may have had for them and I proclaim that you all should go forth, be vegan, and eat (Dandies) marshmallows!

• Dandies Website

Editor’s Note: I let my Mom try these marshmallows, and she immediately proclaimed “They taste like marshmallows used to taste!” She then proceeded to tell a long, nostalgic story of how campfire marshmallows used to come packaged in little cardboard boxes with cellophane over the top… well, you get the idea. Needless to say, she was quite taken with these yummy little gems. So if you’re looking for marshmallows that taste “like they used to taste,” definitely give these a shot.

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

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

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

Perhaps unusually for a sour-head like myself, I’ve never actually tried Nuclear Warheads. If the name is anything to go by, they should be about the sourest candy you can get in North America, but somehow I’ve just never tried them.

I guess that makes me pretty unsuited to review Warheads’ spin-off candy, Sour QBZ, described unenlighteningly on the package as “chewy fruity cubes.” Still, sour is sour, and I know what I like, so let’s get tasting!

My sample-sized bag of QBZ contained six soft, opaque cubes, each about the size of a dice and with a coating of sour sugar. They didn’t look like gummies, more like the soft pectin jelly of lunchbox fruit snacks. (They have both pectin and gelatin in the ingredients.) I received three red QBZ, and one each of pink, blue and green.

As expected from the ingredients, they have a texture that’s somewhere between a fruit snack and a gummy, with a little crunch from the sour sugar coating – but unfortunately, next to no sourness at all. Red is strawberry, quite mild and not all that sweet or sour. Green is green apple, a flavor that always tastes better in very sour form. Unfortunately, it’s not that sour either. Blue raspberry is the standard blue raspberry flavor, and it’s the least sour so far. Pink is watermelon, and it’s also not sour, though its tanginess is pleasant.

With the jelly texture and the crunch of sour sugar, these are actually a whole lot like cube-shaped Sour Patch Kids. They’re tasty in the way Sour Patch Kids are tasty – chewy, tangy, addicting even, just not sour, darn it!

Once again, my hopes of finding a truly sour candy have been dashed. All the sour candies that are actually sour are either hard or gum, and it seems like that’s not about to change any time soon.

• Nuclear Warheads Website

Buy Warheads Candies Online:

• at Blair Candy
• at Candy Favorites

I love gummi candies so I said “yes please!” when I was asked to try a gummi snake. You should have heard the whoop I let out when this thing arrived: it’s almost THREE FEET long. To put it in perspective, for anyone under 6 feet (like me) that’s, like, half our height in gummi goodness. Now, I love me my gummies, but even I couldn’t eat this thing in one sitting – not that you’re supposed to, the serving size says there’s 4 servings per container. Still, my inner child was giggling with glee at the thought of downing this monster.

The candy offers quite the visual beyond its length. The blue raspberry flavor that I tried was composed of opaque white and yellow patches, and transparent blue patches. You even get green bits where the blue drips onto the yellow. And get this: when you bite into the snake you find out that blue part also runs all the way through the middle of the snake from tip to tail. Since it’s a gummi candy, it wiggles and jiggles, giving it an “ooh” factor… or an “eww” factor, if you’re feeling particularly squeamish. Personally, I loved it and I can see sassy little kids going mental over this.

Ah, but how does it taste? In a word: good. My snake had a good, consistent blue raspberry flavor. It leaned toward the sweet side, but in a good way that didn’t annoy me or overwhelm the blue raspberry flavor. The texture reminded me a bit of a really firm marshmallow – spongier than some gummies I’ve tried, yet still with enough firm chewiness to make it fun.

Since I’m a big kid, I like to play with my food, so I gotta tell you I had a ball pulling and twisting my snake – it’s a bit like taffy in that it’s malleable and the more you play with it, the stickier it gets. Also, I found it extra fun to bite the head off the snake!

Bonus: it turned my tongue blue!

All in all, this is a yummy, fun gummi candy that pays off in taste, texture, and sheer size.

• Taste of Nature Website

With the popularity of yoga and its associated clothing, mats and other accessories, I guess it was only a matter of time until the popular fitness/relaxation stretching regime got its own signature candy – Classy Karma Candy Healthy Yoga Treats. Not that it isn’t a bit illogical – what makes less sense than having a post-workout candy treat to gain back all those lost calories?

Ah, but this is a healthy treat – or so the promotional material I received at the All Candy Expo claims. It’s “12 TIMES MORE POTENT than synthetic vitamin C,” contains “ALL NUTURAL (sic) ANTI AGING properties from powerful antioxidants,” and is made with “all-natural berries and spices with no processed sugar.” (The ingredients, however, say otherwise – the first two ingredients are sugar and glucose, which don’t just pop out of the sugarcane without SOME level of processing.)

These are made by the Classy Candy Company, a new company – as far as I could tell, the candies are only available for sale on Classy Candy’s website (which was clearly written by a non-native English speaker – I found its enthusiastic, if slightly fractured, copy kind of charming).

The star ingredient of these treats is the Indian gooseberry, a fruit used in Ayurvedic medicine. Some research has shown that the Indian gooseberry may have medical benefits for those with rheumatoid arthritis, osteoporosis, diabetes and even cancer. In its raw state, the fruit is very sour and astringent, and it’s usually pickled to make it more palatable. (I guess that’s what all the sugar is for.)

The candies themselves are wax paper-wrapped logs, like elongated pieces of saltwater taffy. They’re a light brown, speckled color. My samples came in a plastic sleeve containing three pinky-length pieces.

Despite containing aromatic spices like cloves, ginger, pepper and cinnamon, they have no smell whatsoever. At first bite, they aren’t terribly sweet and don’t taste like much of anything at all. But after a few chews, I started to get the flavor of the aromatic spices, mainly the cinnamon, and, oddly enough, a tangy taste of raisins. I’m not sure what I was expecting these to taste like, but that definitely wasn’t it. After a few bites, however, they started to grow on me. It’s like eating a cinnamon roll or a good bowl of porridge, only in candy form.

The Karma Candies initially have a firm, taffy-like texture, but if you chew them down to nothing, you get a lot of little gritty bits with a hint of a tea-like tannic flavor – from the gooseberries, I guess. Textural issues aside, I found myself enjoying these more than I thought I would, and if I was (still) in yoga, I would definitely enjoy having one of these tasty and (relatively) guilt-free chews awaiting me at the end of a strenuous session.

• Classy Yoga Candy Website