Candy Review: Taste of Nature Snake Bitez Gummi Snake

Snake Bitez Gummi Snake

photo courtesy of Anthemic Tangle

I love gummi candies so I said “yes please!” when I was asked to try a gummi snake. You should have heard the whoop I let out when this thing arrived: it’s almost THREE FEET long. To put it in perspective, for anyone under 6 feet (like me) that’s, like, half our height in gummi goodness. Now, I love me my gummies, but even I couldn’t eat this thing in one sitting – not that you’re supposed to, the serving size says there’s 4 servings per container. Still, my inner child was giggling with glee at the thought of downing this monster.

The candy offers quite the visual beyond its length. The blue raspberry flavor that I tried was composed of opaque white and yellow patches, and transparent blue patches. You even get green bits where the blue drips onto the yellow. And get this: when you bite into the snake you find out that blue part also runs all the way through the middle of the snake from tip to tail. Since it’s a gummi candy, it wiggles and jiggles, giving it an “ooh” factor… or an “eww” factor, if you’re feeling particularly squeamish. Personally, I loved it and I can see sassy little kids going mental over this.

Ah, but how does it taste? In a word: good. My snake had a good, consistent blue raspberry flavor. It leaned toward the sweet side, but in a good way that didn’t annoy me or overwhelm the blue raspberry flavor. The texture reminded me a bit of a really firm marshmallow – spongier than some gummies I’ve tried, yet still with enough firm chewiness to make it fun.

Since I’m a big kid, I like to play with my food, so I gotta tell you I had a ball pulling and twisting my snake – it’s a bit like taffy in that it’s malleable and the more you play with it, the stickier it gets. Also, I found it extra fun to bite the head off the snake!

Bonus: it turned my tongue blue!

All in all, this is a yummy, fun gummi candy that pays off in taste, texture, and sheer size.

Candy Review: Mango Altoids

Mango Altoids
I don’t know about you, but when I think Altoids, I don’t think fruit. They’ve done a good job promoting themselves as a mint company. When I saw these I thought, aren’t they just making trouble for themselves by branching out? You do one thing well – why not stick to it?

On the other hand, as I am sure I have mentioned a million times, I’m a sucker for mango. The idea of Curiously Strong Mango was something I couldn’t resist.

These are little bumpy round things, kind of like little sugar flowers, in a pale orange color. They don’t look like mangoes, and I am not absolutely sure they taste like mangoes. It’s clearly an artificial flavor, at most one that tastes more like mango than it tastes like another fruit. They’re not like the mango Hi-Chew I reviewed recently, for instance, where you taste them and aren’t surprised to read in the ingredients that there’s real mango in there somehow. They are more “Curiously Fruity,” like it says on the tin, than they are in-your-face MANGO.

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Candy Fun: Tic Tac Toe

We always like it when candy companies help out good causes, and this is no exception. For every game of Tic Tac Toe that is played, Tic Tac will donate $1 to CancerCare, up to $5000, in addition to the $100,000 donation they’re already making. I have no doubt we can reach that $5000 limit pretty quickly!

Plus, if you happen to be in Times Square on August 19, Tic Tac will be attempting to set the world record for the most Tic Tac Toe games played at one time. It’s all part of a larger partnership with CancerCare to raise awareness of the effect cancer can have on everyone, including friends and loved ones, those fighting the disease, and health care providers.

So what are you waiting for? Go play some Tic Tac Toe already!

Candy Review: Pucker Pieces Gourmet Candy Tarts

Pucker Pieces

The compressed dextrose candy has long been a staple item of childhood candy diets. Never heard of it? You probably know it better as SweeTarts, Runts, and dozens more – that hard, yet powdery, melt-in-your mouth candy with the tangy flavor and slight cooling effect.

With Pucker Pieces Gourmet Candy Tarts, Creative Concepts Inc. (best known for its Pucker Powder powdered candy dispensers) seems to be trying to do for the compressed dextrose candy what Jelly Belly did for the jelly bean: use unique flavors and creative marketing to “gourmet-ify” it, transforming it into something that will appeal to adults as well as kids. Like Jelly Bellies, Pucker Pieces are displayed in bulk dispensers, allowing for the creation of custom flavor mixes.

If you know how compressed dextrose candies are made, it seems like a total no-brainer for a company that specializes in a powdered dextrose candy like Pucker Powder to move to hard tabs: just like the name implies, a powder made from dextrose (a type of sugar) and other ingredients is pressed into molds at super-high pressure, forming it into hard, yet still powdery, candy treats. (Pills are made the same way.) It seems like it would be a very simple matter to press straight-up Pucker Powder (or something very similar) into a more portable, less messy version of Creative Concepts’ flagship product.

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Candy Review: Classy Karma Candy

Classy Karma Candy

With the popularity of yoga and its associated clothing, mats and other accessories, I guess it was only a matter of time until the popular fitness/relaxation stretching regime got its own signature candy – Classy Karma Candy Healthy Yoga Treats. Not that it isn’t a bit illogical – what makes less sense than having a post-workout candy treat to gain back all those lost calories?

Ah, but this is a healthy treat – or so the promotional material I received at the All Candy Expo claims. It’s “12 TIMES MORE POTENT than synthetic vitamin C,” contains “ALL NUTURAL (sic) ANTI AGING properties from powerful antioxidants,” and is made with “all-natural berries and spices with no processed sugar.” (The ingredients, however, say otherwise – the first two ingredients are sugar and glucose, which don’t just pop out of the sugarcane without SOME level of processing.)

These are made by the Classy Candy Company, a new company – as far as I could tell, the candies are only available for sale on Classy Candy’s website (which was clearly written by a non-native English speaker – I found its enthusiastic, if slightly fractured, copy kind of charming).

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