When I bite into a York Peppermint Pattie, I get the sensation of driving a team of sled dogs through the Alaskan wilderness in the Iditarod. Do you remember those commercials?

I bought a Hershey York Peppermint Pattie a few weeks ago and was immediately accosted by my family: “Can I have a piece?” “When can we eat that?” What!? This bit of chocolate bliss has a diameter of about 2.5″ and you want us to split it four ways? Alas, when you’re part of a Candy Addict family, you have to share.

The Peppermint Pattie, as you may know, is a disc of peppermint-flavored sugar covered in a thin layer of chocolate. When I finally got to eat my fourth of the Peppermint Pattie in peace, the strong peppermint flavor filled my mouth. It’s a very refreshing flavor, a “zing” if you will. I personally don’t like those hard peppermints that you find in old ladies’ candy bowls, but York has basically perfected soft peppermint.

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(image from Alana Elliott at Flickr)
Last week, we invited some friends over for an evening campfire and s’mores. Everyone knows s’mores: graham crackers (blech), marshmallows (okay, getting better), and Hershey’s chocolate bars (yes! give me some). I bought the biggest, thickest Hershey’s bar I could find. I think it weighed 4.2 pounds (1.91kg).

Hershey’s is a smart company, and they know that anyone who has one of their smooth, delicious chocolate bars will be forced (by arm twisting and occasional use of The Rack) to share. For this reason, they mold their chocolate bars into an interesting collection of “mini bars” joined together by “connective chocolate.” The connective chocolate is an ambiguous gray zone that can never be divided equally. By the strictest rules of chocolate etiquette, the person entrusted with breaking the bar into its mini bar pieces must place uniform pressure on each mini bar and attempt to break them into pieces that differ by no more than .001mm in size. Most people cheat.

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With undoubtedly the strangest name in the candy business, Hershey’s Whatchamacallit is a funny little candy bar. It has a base of peanut butter flavored “crispies” topped by a thin layer of soft caramel, and a coating of rich chocolate encapsulates the whole bar.

The Whatchamacallit and I have a very close relationship, as it was first created only a year before I was born. We practically grew up together. I can’t even remember my first taste of one. Right about the time I learned to ride a bike, the Whatchamacallit was given its tasty layer of caramel. I have a feeling poor Whatchamacallit felt a bit naked before that.

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When I was a kid, my candy preferences consisted of the longest-lasting candies I could afford on my meager candy allowance. But when I felt like splurging, that splurge was often Bridge Mixture.

To my childhood self, there was something sophisticated about Bridge Mixture – the mixture of dark and milk chocolate coatings, the way that you never quite knew which filling you were going to get, just like in a “grown-up” box of chocolates, the fact that it was named after a complicated grown-up card game at a time when I only knew how to play Old Maid and Crazy Eights.

Bridge Mixture seems to evoke a love-it-or-hate-it response in people, so I vowed to track down the elusive candy and see if it lived up to my childhood memories. But first, a little background info. Bridge Mixture, for those of you who don’t know, is nothing more than an assortment of chocolate-coated centers – caramel, a selection of fondants, peanuts and raisins, and two flavors of what the Internet calls “Turkish Delight,” but has always seemed to me like a pretty standard jelly. (Note that they have no relation to the Licorice Bridge Mix we’ve previously reviewed.)

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Wrigley’s recent purchase by Mars is just the most recent instance of a candy company being “congloberrated” by a larger one. Though you might not realize it, many of your favorite candies were once manufactured independently of the big names that now produce them. Jolly Ranchers is just one popular example.

This also helps to explain one of the most annoying naming blunders in the history of candy. I am talking about Hershey’s and Reese’s. To the untrained eye, there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong about this, but Reese’s is owned by Hershey’s. Maybe I am also a grammar addict, but I don’t like having to say Hershey’s Reese’s products.

But there is more to my rant, including a valid point. You see, as Reese’s operated on its own merits for so many years, its original products were not supposed to match Hershey’s line, as they were two different entities. Reese’s was the peanut butter candy company that carved a niche for itself with its unique flavor.

When purchased by Hershey’s in 1957, Hershey’s did not change the brand names because Reese’s was already associated with such a popular product that it would be bad marketing to make people start buying Hershey’s Peanut Cutter Cups or Hershey’s Pieces (it just doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it?).

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We all have our guilty secrets when it comes to candy. Some of us will eat it, even it has fallen to the floor. Some of us will show no hesitation in “sampling” from an opened candy bag in a drugstore aisle. For me, I will eat candy that has long since been removed from the market.

I know, I know… but I can’t help it! With so many limited edition candy products out there, it isn’t always easy to find them all when they’re in season. This past weekend when I was browsing at the Dollar Store, I came across a cornucopia of limited edition candy that had escaped my tasting.

One such product was Hershey’s Special Dark Chocolate: Raspberry Flavored with Macadamia pieces. I scoured Los Angeles when I moved back to the United States a year ago to try these, but they never presented themselves in the California area. You can imagine my joy to see these after all this time in Texas of all places.

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I enjoy the limited edition Hershey’s Kisses so much that I bestowed the silver medal to them on my Top 10 Best Spinoff Candy list. The varieties they release aren’t always amazing, but when they are, they are.

Lately, there haven’t been very many releases since the 100th Anniversary passed, but every now and then I see a new flavor on the market that I eagerly purchase. For Halloween, they have reissued Candy Corn Kisses (no!), Caramel Apple Kisses (I haven’t been able to find these), and Pumpkin Spice Kisses (on sale this week at Target for two dollars a bag).

Oddly enough, the same day I came across the Pumpkin Spice Kisses, I happened to spot Raspberry Special Dark Kisses at Walgreens. There was nothing Halloween or Autumnal about this bag to indicate why it was being released at this time, but one should not question gifts from the candy gods.

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The following guest review was written by a reader named Meredith. Thanks, Meredith!

These Jolly Ranchers are something new altogether. First of all, awesome name - I just know it’s gonna be a party. And then, they’re opaque instead of clear like regular Jolly Ranchers, and they’re way less sticky, and the inside is hollow, filled with a powder of a different flavor from the exterior. They come in four flavors - mangolemin (mango candy and lemon powder), chorange (cherry candy and orange powder), raspilime (blue razzberry candy and lime powder) and strawapple (strawberry candy and sour apple powder). Consider these the Jolly Rancher version of Zotz.

The candy looks solid but as soon as you put it in your mouth, the ends collapse and the second flavor emerges. The powder has an ingredient I’ve learned is called erythritol - it’s a sugar alcohol and so it has a cooling effect inside your mouth. It’s weird but a nice contrast to the hard candy.

Mangolemin - The mango flavor is overpowering, but as soon as the lemon powder comes out, it mixes with the mango and becomes way less strong and more ambiguous - kind of a citrus fruit punch. This is definitely my least favorite upon first putting it into my mouth, but as soon as the second flavor comes out, it gets a lot better. Just wait a few seconds past the icky mango… it will be worth it.

Chorange - The initial cherry flavor is very strong, almost like a candied cherry. As soon as the orange powder comes out, the flavors mix and the cherry takes on a slightly tangy, almost sour taste. You can barely taste the orange flavor, but once it’s mixed with the cherry it is a lot less intense. It again takes on a kind of a cherry punch flavor, and finishes out being much milder than it started.

Raspilime - The blue razzberry has almost no taste at all - the lime powder comes out and immediately overwhelms the blue razzberry… but that’s not a bad thing. The combination of the two ends up tasting like a Lime Rickey. It has a very slight tartness - much like eating a lime with sugar sprinkled on it - and by the end of the candy you can pretty much only taste the blue razzberry. And it’s very subtle - though you do end up with a blue tongue, so not so subtle there.

Strawapple - This is definitely the best one by far. The initial strawberry taste is really delicious - kind of like a Blow Pop (which is the Blow Pop flavor people always steal from me). As the sour apple powder comes out, it gives a slightly sour apple taste in the back of your tongue, but more than anything it now tastes like a tart strawberry. It’s really good - the strawberry is not overly sweet, just nice and subtle, and the sour apple isn’t too sour. And once the sour apple is gone the strawberry taste is the one that emerges victorious.

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These are all really interesting - it’s almost like getting to eat eight different candies - the four initial flavors, and the four flavors that are formed after the powder emerges. The only one that leaves a slightly unpleasant aftertaste is the mango. The strawberry is the best at the end. The textures of the candies change several times, due to the emergence of the powder and the cooling of the tongue and the candy being hollow. It’s not often that eating a piece of candy is interesting all the way through the experience. The flavors of these candies are constantly changing, which created a whole new (awesome) candy eating experience for me.

P.S. It’s funny to give these to somebody without telling them there’s a second flavor inside. I gave one to my co-worker, who was lying on the couch in my office, and all of a sudden she sat up and gasped like something had bitten her. She HAD been bitten… by a Double Blast.

• Hershey’s Jolly Rancher Double Blasts page

Buy Jolly Racher Double Blasts online:

• at Amazon.com

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I’m about to reveal a little-known Candy Addict secret about myself, something that only my three non-judgmental roommates have become privy to over the course of our mulit-year cohabitation. Late at night, to quell a raging chocolate craving, I have been known to whip up a little chocolate concoction of equal parts cocoa powder, sweetener, and soy milk or yogurt. The resulting creation falls somewhere between a glob and a paste that is not in any way intended for your casual chocolate fan. I then add things to this chocolate crack and eat it with a spoon. (Yeah, that’s right.) One of my favorite add-ins is frozen raspberries, and it is because of this that I so eagerly dove in to the latest and greatest from Hershey’s Extra Dark Collection, Hershey’s Extra Dark infused with Raspberry Flavor.

The tasting samples deviate from the traditional Hershey’s Miniatures rectangular block, instead mimicking the thinner squares of the gourmet pre-packaged chocolate sect. A good choice, in my opinion, as it presents a more pleasing oral experience. The squares, stamped with the Hershey’s logo, have a pretty strong, natural, raspberry aroma and while the chocolate didn’t boast a great “snap,” nor did it bite as hard as I’d have liked, I am willing to overlook it as that may be attributable to the fact that I enjoyed it on a sunny July afternoon in Southern California.

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This guest review was written by Laura Kaspick….

Back in December 2007, Candy Addict reviewed the Chocolate Marshmallow Hershey Kisses. While the reviewer had hoped that these were going to have a marshmallow fondant center, she was disappointed to find that the Kisses were actually just solid marshmallow flavored chocolate. A solid Kiss is certainly less interesting than a filled one, but I was still intrigued and hoped to track down the limited edition offering. Unfortunately, months passed without any luck and I was certain I had missed my chance.

Imagine my excitement when half a year later I finally spotted the elusive Chocolate Marshmallow Hershey Kiss! There they were in the candy aisle of Walgreens, with the same poofy marshmallows and chocolate sauce on the packaging and the same silver and brown checkerboard patterned foil wrappers that the Chocolate Marshmallow had. But after a closer look, I realized that there was something much different about these marshmallow Hershey Kisses. These were not the same product that had escaped me for so long - instead, these were Hershey Kisses “filled with marshmallow flavored crème”! While this confirmed that I had indeed failed to find the December marshmallow version, I was stoked to try the new crème-filled variation.

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