Nintendo continues to cash in on its classic video game character, the Italian plumber – Mario!. This time they’ve come up with sour and non-sour gummy candies called Super Mario 3-Dees. I tried the sour version because I love sour candy! The gimmick here is the fact that the gummy candies are actually three dimensional figures, like gummi bears. They come in four flavors and four shapes. The flavors are: orange, watermelon, strawberry and mixed berry. The shapes are: Mario, Yoshi, Diddy Kong and Donkey Kong. The shapes do not denote the flavor as some candies do, but rather you could get say 3 Mario shapes in your bag but they can be all different flavors.

The candies are all brightly colored with pretty much standard colors denoting the flavors (ie: blue for the mixed berry, orange for orange, etc.) The texture is that of a pretty standard gummy and of course they have the nice sour coating on top that gives a little crunch if you bite into it right away. As for the flavors, they are pretty much standard fruit flavors, there is nothing really outstanding about them.

It’s pretty obvious that these Nintendo candies will appeal more to kids who just love Nintendo games or the Nintendo collectors out there. The Super Mario 3-Dees really have two things going for them: one is the fact that these are three dimensional candies, not flat like Sour Patch Kids, and two that they are Super Mario characters. Otherwise, they don’t stand out as any better than other similar candies on the market today. If you’re buying them for the flavors, I think you’ll be disappointed but if you love Nintendo stuff or have kids that love Mario, these are great!

• 3-Dees Website
• Buy Nintendo Candy Online
• Huge list of Nintendo candy

I’m just going to come out and say it, Gimbal’s Sour Lovers Mix is the absolute BEST sour candy I have ever had! I’ve never had any Gimbal’s candy before and honestly I had never heard of them before I got this bag of goodness. I sure do know about Gimbal’s Candy now! They are so good that I let my husband have a few and from his reaction, I had to hide the bag in order to have enough for me to write this review. It was tough.

These sour gummy candies are shaped like hearts and come in 12 flavors: Meyer Lemon, Grapefruit, Pomegranate, Fuji Apple, Watermelon, Tangerine, Margarita, Blueberry, Mango, Strawberry Daiquiri, Mango, Bing cherry and Georgia Peach.

The best thing about these is not only the flavors (which are phenomenal), but the fact that they aren’t just sour on the outside; they are also sour on the inside. I noticed this when I sucked off the outer sour coating and figured out that the gummy in my mouth was still sour. It was confirmed when I visited the Gimbal’s website. They actually put the sour making ingredients into the gummy mixture and then coat the gummies in the sour mixture too.

The gummy is that good, tooth-sticking kind of gummy that makes the flavors linger for so long. You get such a good long chew with these and in combination with the incredible flavors and the double sour whammy… these are a phenomenal candy that is not to be missed. I hereby award them the coveted Candy Addict Awesomely Addictive Candy Award!

• Gimbal’s Candy Website
• Buy Gimbal’s Sour Candy Online

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.

I was excited review the Brach’s Sugar Free Lemon Drops. Lemon drops aren’t really a sexy candy to review. But it’s a hard and sour candy – both of which are right up my alley.

I liked that the candies are individually wrapped. That’s helpful for grabbing a few and dropping them into your purse/pocket/lunchbox.

In the end, it’s a good lemon drop. It’s not as good as a full-fledged made-with-real-sugar lemon drop. But it’s got quite a bit of flavor. I missed the sparkly sugar coating that you get on some lemon drops. But I guess an isomalt coating wouldn’t have been a hit either.

Wait, what’s that? Isomalt? Yeah, the first ingredient of the drops is isomalt with a little asterisk. The asterisk says, “Excessive comsumption may have a laxative effect” which promptly sent me on a bit of research. According to wikipedia, “Isomalt is a sugar substitute, a type of sugar alcohol, used primarily for its sugar-like physical properties. It has only a small impact on blood sugar levels and does not promote tooth decay. It has… half the calories of sugars. However, like most sugar alcohols, it carries a risk of gastric distress, including flatulence and diarrhea, when consumed in large quantities.”

So my point is, the stuff that makes it sweet without the sugar and low-cal can upset your tummy. Eat these guys in moderation to avoid gastro-issues.

Since I had a whole bag of these goodies, I spread the wealth around to a few family members for more input. My 8-year-old said,“It’s not too sour. I like it.” My husband says “Wow. Immediately lemony. Sour, but not face-pinching sour.” Good reviews all around!

And it might be a “just me” thing, but you know how some hard candies cut your mouth? I hate that. But that wasn’t a problem at all with these drops. They melted evenly and didn’t leave any rough edges.

According to the Brach’s website, their Sugar Free Lemon Drops are “Tangy lemon goodness made with Splenda®. And not a drop of guilt. Only half the calories of our regular Lemon Drops.” This reviewer believes they have met their claim. These candies are definitely a great option if you want or need a sugar free or reduced calorie candy. Just beware the isomalt.

• Brach’s Sugar Free Lemon Drops
• Buy Lemon Drops online

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.

I like a good sour candy and all the weirdness that accompanies eating it…. the lip-puckering, the eye-watering, the body-twitching. Now’s your chance to share your involuntary, sour candy-eating reflexes with the world!

Sour Punch candy announced a contest called “How Far Would You Go?” The winner of the contest gets 5000 big ones, and there are some weekly prizes too. Get all the details on the Sour Punch Facebook page.

“We designed this contest … to give our fans the opportunity to show us what great lengths they’re willing to go to for their favorite sour candy,” explained Kristi Shafer, Brand Manager of Sour Confections for American Licorice Company. “We have been blown away with the creative submissions that Sour Punch® fans have submitted in our past video contests and can’t wait to see what they’ll come up with this year.”

So, Candy Addicts, let’s give Ms. Shafer her money’s worth! Get your cameras and record yourself shoving your piehole full of those sour straws, or doing the Lady and the Tramp with your sweetheart, or the cherry stem-in-a-knot trick with one, or… wait! That’s a good one! I’m outta here to record it!

Meanwhile, leave your big idea in the comments or link to your video after it’s uploaded. Contest ends July 10th, 2011

• Press Release announcing contest
• Sour Punch Facebook page.
• Sour Punch website
• Buy Sour Punch candy online

I find that any Dollar Tree store is a plethora of unknown candies that I never find in the big box stores. I just love the variety of candies they offer. So, when shopping there recently, my youngest son, who is CRAZY into sharks right now, says “MAMA!!!! Look, shark candy!! Please!!” How could I say no? Especially when it’s only $1? You can tell I said yes by the fact that they are now on my kitchen counter in the photo.

The tub is packed to the top with the gummy sharks, so right off the bat I’ve gotten my money’s worth. They come in three flavors/colors: yellow, which tastes like lemon; red, which resembles a cherry flavor; and blue, which tastes like blue raspberry. Now, for the diehard sour Candy Addict, these are going to be disappointing. They are just a little bit sour. Me, I like my sour. If it doesn’t get me to make my Popeye face, it’s not sour enough (yes, when eating anything extremely sour, my face scrunches up and my right eye closes involuntarily, giving me a Popeye-like appearance). However, for those who prefer to dabble in the slightly sour, then these are for you.

They have a nice gummy texture, not too chewy and not too soft and they have a good sugary coating on top and a white layer on the bottom. Each piece measures a little under 2 inches long. Flavor-wise, they don’t provide any “flavor explosion” or anything, just nice subtle hints of each flavor. The packaging touts that they are “bursting with natural fruit juice”, but that juice is apple and is the 4th ingredient in the list. Not exactly “bursting” when you bite into one, but it doesn’t take anything away from the flavor of the gummy.

All in all, if you’ve got a dollar to spend and just want something decently fruity, then these are a good choice. If you’re looking for seriously sour gummies, then these are not the candy for you. I personally don’t think these are the greatest sour gummies out there but if I’m in the mood for something fruity and I’ve got $1 to blow, I’d buy these again.

• Yupi Gummy Candy Website
• Buy Gummi Sharks online

Skittles Fizzl’d Fruits, like the Sour Skittles before them, are regular-old Skittles covered in a thin coat of sugar-dust. When placed on your tongue, the dust is supposed to start fizzing. Well folks, I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that the fizz-powder works. As soon as I placed a Skittles Fizzl’d Fruits on my tongue, it started to tingle. It felt like my tongue was holding an electric charge or something, and that’s not a bad thing. Unfortunately, the thing that makes this candy so interesting also responsible for making it taste TERRIBLE.

Skittles Fizzl’d Fruits come in five flavors: Wild Cherry, Strawberry, Raspberry, Melon Berry, and Berry Punch. That should sound familiar because these are the exact same flavors  found in a pack of Wild Berry Skittles. As I mentioned before, I’m not a HUGE fan of Wild Berry Skittles, but even if thought Wild Berry Skittles were delicious, it wouldn’t matter. Whatever makes Skittles Fizzl’d Fruits fizzle also does really terrible things to your taste buds. Once the tingling phase ends, the candy immediately tastes salty. I don’t know about you, but I like to keep my fruit-flavored snacks as far away from salt as possible. Following the saltiness is a refreshing blast of fruit flavor. Unfortunately, the flavor fades instantly, and I was left chewing on a flavorless mound of wax for the rest of the time. I wish I was making this up. I keep eating this awful candy because I want to be wrong, but it’s getting worse as I continue. I even tried skipping the fizzle part of the process by eating the candy quickly, but that didn’t help either. Something about the fizzing makes this candy taste awful.

So, there you go. It seems like whenever Mars throws that sugar-dust on their Skittles, I don’t like them. On the bright side, Skittles Fizzl’d Fruits do exactly what they advertise. They tingle on your tongue, no question about it. I recommend buying some Skittles Fizzl’d Fruits if you want to pass a bag around with your friends so you can look at each other and say “They really do tingle on your tongue!” Otherwise, you’re better off just buying a regular old bag of Wild Berry Skittles. Sure, you’re missing out on the “fun,” but at least you have something that taste like fruit-flavored candy and not like salty wax.

Editor’s note: I actually quite enjoyed the Fizzl’d Fruits and didn’t think they were bad at all. Yes, the coating is a bit salty but I enjoyed the overall experience and would (and have) get them again.

What’s better than eating candy? Eating candy and supporting the fight to end kid’s cancer! It looks like WARHEADS® has teamed up with St. Baldrick’s Foundation and is sponsoring the organization’s second annual t-shirt design contest. In case you’re not familiar with the organization, St. Baldrick’s Foundation raises tons of money during its fund-raising events and donates it for childhood cancer research. Brave folks who shave their heads bald stand in solidarity with kids fighting cancer.

As if supporting a worthy cause wasn’t enough, the winner of the t-shirt design contest will have his or her design on some 60,000 people donning the shirts for head-shaving events. To, ahem, sweeten the pot more, WARHEADS® is giving the winner a 25 oz bag of WARHEADS® Extreme Sour Hard Candy, a WARHEADS® t-shirt, bandana, beanie and water-bottle. Oh, and there a super sweet $250 cashola prize for the winning designer and a $250 donation will be made to the Foundation in the designer’s name. WARHEADS® thinks we’re all winners so the second and third place submissions will also receive the WARHEADS® prize pack and their designs will be sold in the St. Baldrick’s CafePress store. So, check out St. Baldrick’s Foundation and thank WARHEADS® by buying their candy because we should encourage the positive things corporations do, too.

• WARHEADS
• St. Baldrick’s Foundation

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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

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

On the other hand, as I am sure I have mentioned a million times, I’m a sucker for mango. The idea of Curiously Strong Mango was something I couldn’t resist.

These are little bumpy round things, kind of like little sugar flowers, in a pale orange color. They don’t look like mangoes, and I am not absolutely sure they taste like mangoes. It’s clearly an artificial flavor, at most one that tastes more like mango than it tastes like another fruit. They’re not like the mango Hi-Chew I reviewed recently, for instance, where you taste them and aren’t surprised to read in the ingredients that there’s real mango in there somehow. They are more “Curiously Fruity,” like it says on the tin, than they are in-your-face MANGO.

But, they’re really good. They are more sour on the outside and get a little less interesting as you suck down to the inside, but that’s OK. As it is, the roof of my mouth hurts after eating a few, so I don’t think I need even more sour. Also, I might warn those of you who live in similar humid climates to mine – apparently the tin doesn’t seal tightly enough to keep them from getting sticky in August.

But, those are nitpicks. Taking these as a curiously sour fruity thing, I’m totally happy with them. I’m glad to see from their extremely annoying animated website that they offer other fruit flavors – the passionfruit sounds intriguing. There is a place in my life for a sour hard candy that has been sadly empty lately, and I would gladly buy these again.

• Altoids Website

Buy Mango Altoids Online:

• at Candy Favorites