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!

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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:

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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.

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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.

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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.

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