Author Archives: MichelleG

Candy Review: Peckton’s Taste of the Orient Fruit Jellies

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Peckton’s Taste of the Orient Jellies

When Candy Addict last went to the All Candy Expo, the writers came back raving about the Medlow fruit pectin jellies they sampled, and lamented how hard it was to source them locally. Of course I had to laugh – being the only Australia-based writer, I could get these all the time! It made a nice change from all the candies reviewed here that I can’t get my hands on.

I offered to send them some Medlow jellies, and began hunting around for them. They’re readily available, I’ve seen them in several stores here… but sadly, a search of a half dozen stores left me empty handed. Since then, I’ve been searching high and low and they are nowhere to be found. A recent shopping expedition to Sweet As netted me a box of interesting sounding fruit jellies. It was only once I had the box in hand that I realized I’d found the Holy Grail!

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Candy Review: Taffy Town Taffy

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Taffy Town Taffy

The people at Taffy Town have been making these candies for 89 years, so it stands to reason they would have gotten it right by now. A bag of assorted flavors of Taffy Town Taffy arrived at my doorstep, so I had a nice selection of them to try. I was struck by the sheer array of flavors they offer – everything from the traditional peppermint to the more en vogue flavors like chocolate chip cookie and raspberry lemonade.

These taffy has a beautiful homemade look about it, with each piece individually wrapped in a small square of waxed paper. The colors are bright and the variations in terms of stripes, swirls and dots make these as nice to look at as they are to eat. A perusal of the website showed loads more taffy innovation – flavors like pomegranate and strawberry cheesecake, sugar free versions, versions with images in them (flowers, etc). Who knew that taffy was such a serious business?

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Candy Review: Toblerone Fruit & Nut

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Toblerone Fruit & Nut

You know how there are some candies which remind you of certain types of people? Charms Blow Pops remind me of snarky teenage girls, Mentos reminds me of Europeans riding bikes, Werther’s Originals remind me of dirty old men, Tic Tacs of skinny people… you get the idea. For some reason Toblerone is one of those candies which I associate with two types of people: middle aged men and backpackers in Europe. The former because my Dad always ate Toblerone, and the latter because I can recall seeing many a backpacker in Europe carting around those enormous 10 pound size Toblerone bars to take home as a souvenir.

I should say up front that I actually love Toberlone bars – the quality of the chocolate is great, the nougat gives a lovely texture and the unique shape appeals to me. When I saw bars of Toblerone Fruit & Nut on sale, I was intrigued – mostly because I also think Fruit & Nut combos in chocolate are another thing only older men eat. Toblerone + dried fruit = candy bar for the geriatric market?

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Candy Review: Maxxed Energy Pop

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Maxxed Energy Pop

The whole energy food and drink phenomenon is a total anomaly to me. On the one hand we’ve got jillions of kids out there being diagnosed with ADHD, and we do everything we can to calm them down. Then once all these hyperactive kids grow up, we dose them up with No-Doze, cans of Red Bull, and candy like the Maxxed Energy Pop. Is it only me who sees the problem with this? I seem to recall getting high enough on the amount of sugar in candy like Blow Pops, without the lovely people from Charms feeling like they needed to add more stuff.

These enormous lollipops are packed with loads of somewhat questionable stuff – taurine, ginseng, guarana, b-vitamins, caffeine. Sadly, they forgot one essential thing on that list – flavor! These lollipops taste hideous! I actually kept it in my mouth for quite a while, hoping that somehow the taste would improve. It didn’t, and I have no problem with saying that this lollipop is so nasty, it verges on the inedible. The texture is incredibly like sandpaper and the size is so huge as to appear almost obscene.

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Candy Review: Chocolate PEZ

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Chocolate PEZ

PEZ is sorta like the razor blades of the candy world – Mr Gillette gave the razors away as long as you bought the blades, and it’s kind of like that with PEZ, too. It’s really more about the dispenser than it is about the candy, isn’t it? The official PEZ website is almost entirely dedicated to the dispersers, with the candy very nearly an afterthought.

Until now I’ve found most of the PEZ flavors to be pretty okay – nothing to jump up and down about (and definitely not with a razor in your hand). This year’s contribution to the PEZ flavor roundup is… drum roll… chocolate! Chocolate is not normally a flavor I would associate with chalk-type candies, although it can work fairly well in boiled or hard candies. When I first opened the sample packet, I was surprised to find it had quite a nice smell – while not overwhelmingly chocolaty, it was nicely sweet without being sickening. The color is a very pale brown with darker brown speckles in it, not surprising given that most PEZ colors are fairly muted.

I really liked these, actually. The taste reminds me very much of Nestle Quick – my brain registers a very slight cinnamon-y edge to these as well, even though I can’t say for sure if there is any cinnamon in the ingredients. It might be the chalky texture which reminds me of the drink mix – it’s what I imagine it would be if it were compressed into a tablet.

All in all, I think the chocolate isn’t going to satisfy the hardcore chocoholic, but it makes a nice change from the other options (cola, various fruit flavors, and Sourz) currently available.

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