The Funleys are my kind of people. They love candy: they love making it, they love eating it, and lucky for us, they love sharing it with others. Stix in the Mud are the Funley’s specialty: cookie-cluster chocolates that currently come in three different flavors: Original, Caramel, and Peanut Butter.
The Funleys use only the best ingredients to make their Stix in the Mud, including a preservative-free, high quality mixture of dark and milk chocolate; but the best ingredient in Funley’s Stix in the Mud, as corny as it may sound, is fun itself, and the idea that candy should always be, as the Funley’s say, “equal parts delicious and fun to eat.”
Original Stix in the Mud: These are comprised of Funley’s unique, high quality dark/milk chocolate blend and large, crunchy cookie bits. The smooth, semi-sweet chocolate collapses upon the cookie bits as you chew, which leads to a crumbly cookie sensation in the mouth. I loved the milk/dark chocolate blend: it was creamy, but still kept the snap of a good dark chocolate. The lack of a gooey, wet ingredient, such as the peanut butter or the caramel found in the other Stix varieties, make the original a bit dry for a cluster, however, and more like a cookie than a candy. I happen to love cookies, so this was fine by me, but I think some people may be disappointed here, as the normal balance of goo and crunch that usually makes up a traditional cluster is missing.
Peanut Butter Stix in the Mud: These were quite good: the peanut butter and chocolate melt into one another to form a soft bubble above a layer of cookie crunch. They are somewhat reminiscent of Girl Scouts’ Peanut Butter Tagalong cookies (now called Peanut Butter Patties), only a bit smaller and more densely packed with both peanut butter and cookie bits.
The Peanut Butter Stix are delicious on their own, but would also make a great mix-in with ice cream, popcorn, or atop a warm, gooey brownie due to the sweet and delicious way they seem to melt away as you eat them. For some reason, the Peanut Butter Stix are a bit smaller than the other two varieties, which wasn’t a problem for me, as I just popped them two at a time.
Caramel Stix: The Funley’s really hit the mark with the Caramel Stix: here we have the perfect balance of softness and crunch. The caramel really adds to the original cluster, and gives it that depth that the Original seems to be missing. The caramel is sweet, thick, and buttery, and almost has a toffee or butterscotch flavor about it. It reminded me a bit of the type of caramel one would find in a box of Whitman’s or Russell Stover candies, which just happens to be my very favorite type of caramel: ooey, gooey, and delicious.
Stix in the Mud are a neat spin on premium chocolates. I was really impressed by the Funley brand as a whole: their philosophy, silly Funley characters, and colorful, interactive website only contribute to the fun feeling of the candy. Another reason to love the Funley’s: their “Brain Bakery” donates a portion of profits to children’s educational programs. How cool is that?
There are really only two rules in life to live by: Have fun, and eat candy. As for Stix in the Mud, I’ll leave you with the words of the Funley’s themselves, “Eat one, don’t be one.”
I LOVE that ending quote! My philosophy exactly. These sound absolutely incredible and I want some right now, but can’t have them, so thanks a lot, Jamie, for making me drool in the privacy of my living room without any means for quenching my need for some Funley’s stuff!
Great review; very visually sensory and it makes me want to buy all three of these varieties when I do find them. In the meantime, I’ll just have to satisfy myself with a great candy bar I’m addicted to lately that has LOTS of thick, gooey caramel: Milky Way with More Caramel!
Sadly, corporate stupidity has ruined what began as a surprisingly utterly delicious product. What were once generous sized lumps of premium quality chocolatey goodness have recently been “conveniently” individually packeted and seriously downsized, giving us skimpy little “bites”, and a LOT of non-biodegradable litter and air for the same price – and the first-rate BIG flavors and textures that made the Original “Stix” so sensational are now just bland and unsatisfying miniatures. And how much Fun is it to fuss and fiddle with tearing open each disappointing little nugget pouch, instead of reaching into the package and grabbing a big bumpy cluster of mouth-filling cookie/candy delight? I was an enthusiastic fan when I first discovered them last year; intending to always have a ready supply on hand to delight and impress friends with. Since they meddled with the very essence of what made them so terrific in the first place, I won’t be buying them ever again. Why couldn’t they just have left such a great product alone?