Chews Better has the following motto appearing on its packages and website: “The candy healthy people chews!” What? Aside from the hopeful claim about which candy healthy people chew, it sure looks like a grammatical boner. But have I misread the motto? Perhaps the motto’s last word isn’t a mis-conjugated verb, but a plural noun? If that’s so, then we’d have to read “candy healthy people” as an adjectival phrase to modify those “chews.” Does that work? What kind of chews would “candy healthy people” chews be? Beats the hell out of me. Thus I return to grammar police hypothesis number one: Chews Better has a screwed up motto. If they can’t edit, can they make candy?

Chews Better sent me two flavors: Pomegranate Blueberry Acai, and Strawberry Lemonade. And as the motto tried to communicate, these candies are meant to be healthy for you. They’re described as “All-Natural Chewy Candies with Vitamins and Fiber.” Surely this is making you nervous about the taste, right? Well, keep your beanie on straight.

Chews Better Pomegranate Blueberry Acai is a small, 26g (.9 oz) package. Each has five individually wrapped candies, and this flavor has 100% Vitamin C, 50% Vitamins B3, B5, B6, and B12, 3g of Fiber, and only 100 calories. Each chew is wrapped in silver and looks from the outside like a beef bullion cube. But it smells like a strong fruit medley upon unwrapping, and my nose finds this promising. Time for a bite.

Read More »

When I think of lollipops, I think of, well… lollipops. I try not to read too much into the whole adult humor and related connotations that can be associated with such a candy. Apparently, the folks at Das Foods think differently than I do.

I was supposed to receive a shipment from them, but for some reason it never arrived at my doorstep, but as luck would have it, they were attending the All Candy Expo, which provided me an opportunity to pick up some samples on site.

It was hard to miss to the Das Foods booth; they hired four dancers from UIUC to perform a Das Lolli dance routine and socialize with the attending clientele. Since most of the people attending the convention were males, I suppose their ploy worked, as there was always a crowd at their booth.

Even the packaging (think something circular within a square, plastic wrapper that isn’t candy) or the taglines of “What’s your flava?” and “Shamefully delicious lollipops” are begging for an adult audience, which is odd given the premise that these are all natural lollipops made without preservatives, HFC, and chemical additives. Seems like a good thing to give your kids, but I’m not sure how you explain what exactly “Man Bait” is supposed to mean…

Read More »

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past year or so, the latest big food fad to hit grocery stores is… No, not bacon. Darn it all, why do you people always want to talk about bacon?

The OTHER big food trend of the past couple of years is the so-called “superfruit.” The theory behind superfruits is that certain fruits like pomegranates and goji berries contain high levels of nutrients such as antioxidants, which just might help to prevent cancer and other diseases.

Though there’s considerable debate about whether superfruits are really the disease-fighting powerhouses the companies marketing them claim they are, I guess any trend that encourages people to eat more fruit can’t be a completely bad thing. (That argument probably doesn’t hold water when applied to fruit-flavored candy, though.)

Read More »

World Market sells stuff from, you know, the world. It’s a cool store (formerly called Cost Plus) with food, furniture, housewares, body care, art, and lots of unusual candy, especially stuff from, you know, the world. They now also have house brands of various things, including chocolate.

At $1.99 for a 3oz (85g) bar, they’re quite a good value for genuine chocolate, with dark chocolate of various intensities and flavor combinations. This review covers what they call Milk Chocolate (at a very healthy 42% cacao content), and 72%, 82%, and a tongue-boggling 99% cacao dark chocolate bar. I’ll also try a 64% dark chocolate bar with sea salt, and another 64% bar with pomegranate.

Let’s start with the clear winner.

Read More »

I’m fairly certain that I have a condition known as Tootsie Pop Amnesia, where I can go for years forgetting how much I love the chocolaty chew of a Tootsie Pop before someone hands me one at random and all of my happy Tootsie memories come flooding on back.

In college, I ate about 9,009,209 Tootsie Pops. I kept the wrappers tacked to my wall. Whatever it is I thought I’d see, became a Tootsie Roll to me. But alas, after college I moved on to other treats, and left the Tootsie Pop behind. As always, I forgot all about the sweet, sticky, “what flavor is this in the center, I mean, it says chocolaty chew, but really?” delight of eating a Tootsie Pop. So when we hit the Tootsie booth at this year’s All Candy Expo, and I saw an unfamiliar color in the Tootsie Pop dish, I almost had to sit down, as my Tootsie Pop amnesia once again gave way to Tootsie Pop fever, and I was overcome with excitement trying to find out what flavor lay below the new, peach-colored Tootsie Pop wrapper.

On my way to the dish to fish out a pop, I imagined various flavor scenarios: dark chocolate? Cranberry? Tropical? Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the new Tootsie Pop flavor was the oh-so-trendy star of the All Candy Expo: Pomegranate.

Read More »