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.
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.
The first thing I noticed about these jelly beans was the texture. They’re a lot softer than other jelly beans I’ve tried and they aren’t as chewy. Not that this is bad, it’s just different. Overall, the flavors reminded me of regular SweeTarts, but with some variation in the intensity of either the sweetness or tartness.
There are real perks to being the editor of a site like Candy Addict. One of them is getting the chance to read all of our fabulous reviews and articles before the rest of the world. Another is getting to sample most of the candy that our writers receive to review. Unfortunately, sometimes something comes up and our writers can’t complete the review. Then it falls to me to do the honors.
Of course, it helps if I don’t come to this realization only after a marathon apartment-cleaning/box-recycling session. Somewhere amid my giant pyramid of boxes I discovered a medium-size box chock-full of fruit shaped lollipops from Melville Candy Company. A quick mental inventory revealed that these hadn’t been reviewed and were desperately overdue. D’oh! Time for me to buckle down and do some licking!
These were interesting, to say the least. The assortment consisted of seven different shapes and flavors of lollipops, each much larger than your average lollipop (at least 12 inches tall) and beautifully designed. At first glance I thought each one was hand painted or somehow made to be different colors. However, closer examination revealed that the lollipops themselves are only one color, with other colors being printed on the clear wrappers. Still, they look darn nice and very similar to their real-life fruit counterparts. But, the real question is, how do they taste?
Watermelon: This had a very mild watermelon flavor. However, the smell it emits is incredibly strong – the entire box smelled of watermelon as soon as I opened it! The flavor is a lot more mild than the smell; I would have preferred a little more flavor, but it wasn’t bad in any way.
Yesterday I heard words I’ve never heard another human being speak. Ever. Not even Andrew Zimmern. “Mmmm, these maggots are delicious!” Maybe Zimmern has said this, but I’ve never made it more than five minutes into his show before changing channels. I’m more of an Anthony Bourdain guy. But I digress.
From the wacky folks at Archie McPhee I got a package containing Commie Mints, Green Buddha Mints, and Gummy Maggots. Of all the hundreds of items they sell, these are probably among the least interesting, i.e., safest.
The tins each contained roughly 100 chalky white mints the size of baby aspirins. Both the Commies and Buddhas had identical ingredients and were so mild that eating less than six at a time elicited very little minty flavor. I’ll keep the tins and maybe fill ‘em with Altoids or Fisherman’s Friend mints.
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