Category Archives: Foreign (non-US) Candy

Candy not from the USA

Candy Review: Laura Secord Easter Egg

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Laura Secord Egg

Well, you know how it goes – I bought a stack of Easter items to review right after Easter, but then I got lazy. So now I’m stuck writing about Easter candy while everyone else has moved on to bigger and better things, like the fast-approaching All Candy Expo. But I swear this is my last Easter candy review until next year – unless something interesting comes up at the ACE, of course.

Anyway, Canadian chocolatier Laura Secord is another one of those middle-to-high-end chocolate companies like Purdy’s, and it’s known mainly for its chain of mall chocolate shops, but its products are also available in other stores, especially around the big candy holidays. The Secord Egg is Laura Secord’s answer to the Cadbury Creme Egg : a chocolate egg filled with a yellow and white fondant center. (The Secord Egg calls it “butter cream,” despite there being neither butter nor cream in the ingredients.) A higher-end Creme Egg? Sign me up!

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Candy Review: Tiliko Mix

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Tiliko Mix

Certain candy flavor combinations seem to go well together. Peanut butter and chocolate. Kiwi fruit and strawberry. But the one that caught my attention at my local H.E.B. was a melding of watermelon and tamarind.

For all you Candy Addicts up to date with your regional candy flavor geography, this mixture should only spell out one origin: Mexico. Tamarind, though originally a Middle Eastern fruit, is typically used as a confectionery flavor in Mexican candy.

This particular candy is called Tiliko Mix, manufactured by the Zumba Pica company. Aside from an awesome name, I can’t really tell you much more about the history of the company, as their whole website is in Spanish, and, well… the Spanish words for “one” through “ten” don’t form complete sentences.

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Candy Review: Strawberry Cheesecake and Mango Hi-chew

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Cheesecake and Mango Hi-chew

Today I admit that I have learned an important lesson: Weird is not always better.

When our friends at J-List offered me my first chance to try the intriguing Japanese candy Hi-chew, I figured, why not go for the most exotic? So custard pudding flavor and Strawberry Cheesecake seemed like the obvious candidates. I mean, when have you looked at a display of American candy and seen something in cheesecake flavor? Never. There you go.

As you can read in my previous review, the custard pudding flavor was fun and interesting. But I felt fine giving the rest of the package away. And the strawberry cheesecake….

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Candy Review: Fini Candies

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Fini Logo

When your apartment is routinely inundated with candy samples from various companies, it really means something when you consistently return to one box in search of your daily sugar fix. In the past few weeks, that box has been from Fini.

When I first got an email from Fini, I wasn’t sure what to expect from them. They’re a Spanish company and I had no idea what they made or how well they made it. They asked what we’d like to review, and I just asked for whatever they could spare. And boy, did they come through! I got a giant box full of various kinds of candy – gum, filled licorice, gummies, and more. I barely knew where to start! Luckily, that didn’t stop me for long.

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Candy Review: Yogen Früz Smoothies

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Yogen Fruz Smoothies

When it comes to candy packaging, I am a shallow, shallow person – particularly around mint-type candies. If it comes in an awesome tin, I am all over it, to the point where I have a pretty impressive collection of mint tins accumulating in my desk drawer at work. I am never in my entire life going to have enough tiny widgets and gewgaws to fill all those tins – and yet, again and again I find myself buying candy of questionable quality because it came in awesome and potentially reusable packaging.

Like the other day, when I was skimming the shelves at London Drugs looking for discounted Easter candy… and something else caught my eye: a rack of Yogen Früz Smoothies tins. The clean, modern design of the tin, its colors just evoking the blue and pink of the Yogen Früz logo… its use of the ü, which doubles as a happy face, as a design element… its paltry price of $1.79. Half-price chocolate bunnies aside, I knew I had to have one… quite possibly in every flavor they came in. I managed to settle for just Strawberry Banana.

Once I got home, the doubts started to set in. I enjoy a good frozen yogurt, but yogurt-flavored hard candy? It’s not like there isn’t decent yogurt-flavored candy in the world, but in my experience, all of it is soft. This product appears to be YF’s attempt to join Baskin Robbins and Cold Stone Creamery in the frozen-treats-with-spin-off-candies department. (Can I call them YF? Those umlauts are a bear to insert.) But while those other candies mimic the decadence of a full-fat ice cream cone, YF is going for the same market as its healthy, yet indulgent frozen treats with fruit and yogurt flavors, and even a healthy-sounding title of “Smoothies.”

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