The new M&M’s Premiums line has arrived, and as soon as you see a box you’ll realize that these are no ordinary M&M’s. These M&M’s are something special. From presentation to taste, M&M’s Premiums are quite impressive, hitting the mark in both style and substance.

The presentation is fantastic, starting with the outer packaging. The typical M&M’s bag has been swapped out for a sleek, upscale-looking box that is resealable on the outside as well as on the inside, as both the outer carton and the plastic inner pack of M&M’s come with resealable tabs to keep the candy locked in and fresh.

It’s a small but wonderful innovation, as it allows buyers to carry, share, and store the M&M’s without worrying that they’ll spill. You can also pour out a handful for a friend and then save the rest for later without having to resort to the old school M&M’s pack method of rolling the bag as tight as you can and shoving it in your pocket, which is nice.

The M&M’s themselves are also quite striking: with pearly shells of soft mint green, royal blue, shimmering copper, raspberry red, and a dazzling lavender, the M&M’s provide a lovely visual that I’m sure will be quite popular for parties, gifts, and holidays. Their decorative quality is fancier than your typical holiday-themed M&M, which makes them appropriate candy decor for weddings and other formal events as well. They really are quite lovely. Almost too pretty to eat.

Almost. But come on, now. A pretty candy shell isn’t going to stop me from shoveling M&M’s into my mouth in the least dainty way possible. I can’t help it, man! I’m a Candy Addict!

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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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My friends often wonder how I can consume so many sweets and not weigh a million pounds. Well, I run. But here’s something they might not know - I eat candy when I run! Back when I trained with some ultrarunners, I learned to eat while running. Typical endurance foods such as PowerBars just didn’t taste that great to a Candy Addict like me, so I started taking more appealing yet equally energy-boosting treats, such as Snickers bars, red licorice, M&Ms, gummi bears, and ooh, Jelly Belly jellybeans!

Well, manufacturers of energy foods have gotten smarter, and they’ve started producing endurance treats that actually taste good (that means they taste like candy). Clif, the makers of Clif Bar, have developed a carbohydrate and electrolyte replacement product called Shot Bloks that are rather like gummi candies. Offered in a number of flavors, including strawberry, cola, orange, lemon lime, and cran razz, these little cubes are designed to give the athlete a boost of energy. Some of them contain caffeine, but all boast organic brown rice syrup and are sweetened with organic evaporated cane juice.

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Whilst on a run-of-the-mill Target trip today, I came across an exciting assortment of Endangered Species Chocolates: dark chocolate with delicious, antioxidant packed flavors and a generous spirit (10% of their net profits are donated to “support species, habitat and humanity”). What’s not to like, right? Plus, they were all natural, ethically traded, on sale, and had pictures of cute animals all over the packaging. How could I not grab every variety available and be inspired in a third grade, let’s-describe-ourselves-using-words-that-begin-with-each-letter-in-our-name kind of way? (Hey, chocolate does that to me sometimes.)

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In my Candy Addict staff profile, I joke that I adhere to a strict organic, vegan diet to balance my rabid candy consumption. Though that’s not entirely true, if it were I could find sweet organic, vegan refuge in Zootons. What are Zootons, you ask? Well Zootons are beings hailing from Zootopia, of course! And they are here to save Earthling children and adults alike from bad candy.

And how do they do that, you ask? Why, by generously sharing their homeland’s chemical-free, fertilizer-free, gelatin-free, organic, vegan candy with “out of this world taste” of the same name. Naturally! And in the spirit of promoting healthy habits and practicing what they preach, Zootons also donate a percentage of their profits to Healthy Child, Healthy World, a non-profit organization campaigning for healthy environments for children.

And while these are all excellent reasons for both vegan and omnivorous Addicts to give Zootons a try, we all know that when it comes to candy it really just comes down to taste (I mean, if it tastes like organic dirt it still tastes like dirt, right?), so let’s get to the important stuff. Zootons come in four varieties: Gummies, Colas, Jellies, and Sours. And here’s my breakdown:

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The Jolly Rancher Passion Mix bag is going to make some of you very, very happy - because while it does not contain the Holy Grail of Jolly Rancherness (that would be the lemon flavor), it does contain the second best flavor: peach! In my earlier post about the Classic Mix of Jolly Rancher flavors, several comments lamented the demise of the peach flavor. Good news, Candy Addicts, it’s here in all its artificial peachy delicious goodness!

The Passion Mix bag is comprised of five flavors:

Fruit Punch: A strong, delicious flavor of the fruit punch drinks we had as a kid and wish we could justify as an adult. The color is exactly right, too - not as red as a cherry flavor nor as pink as a strawberry, it’s got that beautiful dark pink color we’ve all grown to associate with fruit punch.

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Since I adore them so much, the flavors of Jolly Rancher candies often act as a benchmark for when I taste other fruit flavored candy. As a group they make no excuses for not tasting at all like the actual fruits they represent. Jolly Ranchers are fabulous in that they are so fantastically, gorgeously artificial and yummy. The advertising tag line is “bursting with BOLD fruit flavor” and when it comes to hard candies, no truer words were spoken. Here’s a quick review of the five classic flavors:

Apple: This is far and away my favorite Jolly Rancher flavor. Sweet and tart, green apple is a classic for which there is no substitute. It sits on the knife edge of being too sweet, but balances nicely with the amount of tartness in it. Added bonuses are the bright green it turns your tongue and the fact that you can use it to make Jolly Rancher beer.

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The amount of limited edition candy being released these days seems to be increasing and all the major candy names have jumped on the bandwagon. One of the most recent victims of this is 3 Musketeers with the 3 Musketeers mint variety as well as the strawberry, vanilla and mocha cappuccino flavors that were released in the late last year. Now in 2008 we get three new flavors: Cherry, Raspberry and Orange. I missed the Valentine’s Day cherry release but luckily I caught the Raspberry and Orange varieties.

3 Musketeers seems like the perfect candy bar for limited editions. It’s fairly simple in concept: flavored nougat enrobed in chocolate, and one would imagine that the flavor combinations could be endless. However, looking back on all the varieties they’ve released so far, I’ve felt that something has gone awry. With these two new releases, I was hoping the flavors kinks would finally be worked out.

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When I went to the All Candy Expo I saw all sorts of candy, from the simplest hard candies to the newest, most progressive gourmet chocolate bars. Out of all the candy I saw and tasted while I was there, some of best were the Medlow Fine Fruit Gels.

I have something to confess: I have a special soft spot for Pate de Fruit. Yes, I love chocolate with all my heart, as well as retro candies and other sweets that I have no need to mention. I swooned over the Pate de Fruit samples sent for my Charles Chocolates review, and some may remember my love for the Whole Food’s variety. There’s something about the simplicity and sophistication of this classic candy that just makes me go weak in the knees. So my discovery of the Medlow Fine Fruit Gels at the Expo was one of the many high points of the trip.

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This month, I’ve decided to combine two months’ worth of Licorice of the Month Club fare into one big happy post. The reason for this is twofold - first of all, with the holidays I’ve been absurdly busy, and second, the two candies I’m profiling are red versions of black licorice I absolutely love.

First up is Black Opal Real Australian Raspberry Licorice. As I’ve mentioned before, I love Black Opal’s black licorice. The raspberry, however, is a different beast all together. Like its black brethren, this candy is very soft and not at all sticky, but there the similarities end. Where the black licorice has a fairly mild yet intriguing taste, the red seems to scream “I am raspberry, hear me roar!”

To be entirely honest, I’m not sure how true to an actual raspberry taste it is; I’ve avoided the fresh berry ever since I was a kid and had a mild allergic reaction to them. However, I can tell you it’s very sweet, almost to the point of overpowering. It doesn’t have that icky waxiness so endemic to Twizzlers and other such candy, though, so if you really like red licorice, this would probably be right up your alley.

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