I bought this Margarita Manatee chocolate for all the wrong reasons: because I like manatees, and I like margaritas, and I like good white chocolate.

The manatees are irrelevant, because of course, this product is not manatee flavored. Setting aside the question of whether this would be a tasty idea (NO), manatees, being endangered, and adorable, should never be used to make candy.

The margarita, on the other hand, is extremely relevant, but possibly a reason to NOT buy this. See, what I did not stop to ask myself was the obvious: is it actually a good idea to combine that flavor with chocolate?

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I buy candy with the intention to eat it, but might not get to it for months, at times more than a year. It’s simply because I have so much of the stuff, and I typically consume what will go bad the fastest first, i.e. chocolate and marshmallows, leaving gummi products and hard candy for last.

In the spring of this past year, I was browsing through a 76 gas station’s candy section in Los Angeles (located on Santa Monica Blvd. and Beverly Glenn). Gas stations are normally hit-or-miss for candy, but this one was a nirvana like I had never seen. It stocked over fifty Cadbury and other British confection items. Run/drive to it if you live in L.A.!

I voraciously whipped out my debit card and purchased a ridiculous amount of overpriced candy (when you factor shipping costs if you were to buy them from Europe, it’s actually not so bad). Most were chocolate bars, something the British excel at, but I did make sure to pick up Rowntree Fruit Pastilles and Rowntree Fruit Gums.

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Back-to-school season is here once more. Yes, it’s the season for pencils, books, teachers’ dirty looks… and school lunches. Whether homemade or bought, lunch is the highlight of every student’s (and working adult’s) day, and keeping those lunches fresh, interesting and tasty can be a real challenge.

Fortunately, there’s an easy shortcut that many parents (and Candy Addicts) are already aware of: even the most boring of bologna sandwiches and pallid of PBJs can be made more exciting by adding a side of candy.

Not just any candy though, but a special lunchbox-sanctioned candy, packed into tiny single-serving pouches and transformed with a token amount of fruit juice into something viewed as a nutritionally acceptable complement to your carrot sticks and ham-and-cheese-on-white. A small source of candy joy in an otherwise boring day, for kids and adults alike. I’m talking, of course, about the fruit snack.

But not all fruit snacks are created equal, and that’s where we come in. Aided by my Assistant Taster (otherwise known as my sister Angela), I taste-tested four popular options to determine which brand will give you the most bang for your buck, considering such factors as nutrition, taste and fun. Will a store-brand snack stand up to pricier treats licensed with cartoon characters or jazzed up with gimmicks like liquid centers? And just how much fruit is actually in these things, anyway? Read on to find out.

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My dad introduced me to the majority of candies I have ever tried. One of his favorites which still exists today is Dots. First established in 1890 by Mason, they were all black licorice-flavored as Crows. In 1945, the original fruit-flavored Dots – which boast the title of most popular gumdrop in the world – debuted in small yellow boxes found in Tootsie’s Fun Size mix. My dad had me sample both of these versions and I didn’t care for either, not being a fan of black licorice and finding the fruit-flavored too sticky and stale.

When I was a teenager, Tropical Dots debuted, which I bought not so much because I thought they would be any good, but rather because it was like seeing the first two installments of a bad horror film; you feel obligated to watch the next one so you’ll be able to claim to have seen them all. To my surprise, I actually loved the tropical version and it has since become a staple candy in my cabinets.

All these years later, I was shopping in a Walgreens in Los Angeles and a purple, movie-sized box of Yogurt Dots tempted me from the checkout line, and for only a dollar too. Having reasoned that Dots have progressively improved with each new version (black licorice = yuck, fruit = eh, tropical = yum), I was excited to taste the newest spinoff.

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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.

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