Candy Review: Melville Lollipops

Thursday, March 26, 2009 - by Caitlin

There are real perks to being the editor of a site like Candy Addict. One of them is getting the chance to read all of our fabulous reviews and articles before the rest of the world. Another is getting to sample most of the candy that our writers receive to review. Unfortunately, sometimes something comes up and our writers can’t complete the review. Then it falls to me to do the honors.

Of course, it helps if I don’t come to this realization only after a marathon apartment-cleaning/box-recycling session. Somewhere amid my giant pyramid of boxes I discovered a medium-size box chock-full of fruit shaped lollipops from Melville Candy Company. A quick mental inventory revealed that these hadn’t been reviewed and were desperately overdue. D’oh! Time for me to buckle down and do some licking!

These were interesting, to say the least. The assortment consisted of seven different shapes and flavors of lollipops, each much larger than your average lollipop (at least 12 inches tall) and beautifully designed. At first glance I thought each one was hand painted or somehow made to be different colors. However, closer examination revealed that the lollipops themselves are only one color, with other colors being printed on the clear wrappers. Still, they look darn nice and very similar to their real-life fruit counterparts. But, the real question is, how do they taste?

Watermelon: This had a very mild watermelon flavor. However, the smell it emits is incredibly strong – the entire box smelled of watermelon as soon as I opened it! The flavor is a lot more mild than the smell; I would have preferred a little more flavor, but it wasn’t bad in any way.

Orange: Unlike watermelon, orange had a very faint smell. It was very cute, and had a generic orange lollipop flavor. Kind of similar to the flavor you’d get on one of those lollipops you got at the doctor’s office when you were a kid.

Butter Popcorn: I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what flavor this gigantic corn-shaped lollipop could be. That’s when I figured out that the flavors are printed in fairly small print on the back of the lollipops. Hehe. Duh. Anyway, this one turned out to be butter popcorn, which was imminently clear when I tasted it. In fact, it’s very similar to the flavor of Jelly Belly’s Buttered Popcorn jellybeans. So if that’s your kind of thing, you should check these out.

Peach: When I first saw these, my immediate reaction was “Oooh, peach!” I freaking love peach-flavored stuff (but not actual peaches – go figure). My first taste revealed a very faint peach flavor, but it was definitely identifiable. Yum! My favorite out of the whole bunch.

Pumpkin Spice: This is a cute little pumpkin shape. It’s faintly spicy, kind of like a pumpkin pie, but with some strangeness thrown in. I really can’t explain it. It’s OK, but not one of my favorites. I’d say it’s more “spice” than “pumpkin.”

Apple: Despite its color, this has more of a green apple-type flavor. It reminds me a lot of a mild Jolly Rancher flavor. Just, you know, a heck of a lot bigger. And on a stick. But anyway, yeah, it’s yummy!

Strawberry: Unlike the rest of the flavors, strawberry didn’t really taste like its real-life counterpart. In fact, it tasted more like cotton candy than anything else. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, of course, so I didn’t mind it at all.

These have a definite cute factor that, for the most part, outshines their flavor. I probably won’t finish all the duplicates I have, but they’d be awfully cute in any number of decorative roles. Heck, they’re so big they could even be used as a weapon for beating off intruders; they’re nearly a deadly weapon!

• Melville Candy Company Website