Tag Archives: lemon

Japanese Candy Review: Morinaga Hi-Chew

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Strawberry Hi-Chews

My home province of Alberta is pretty much the Canadian version of Texas – it’s full of oil, cattle and guys in cowboy boots who say “Y’all” a lot (well OK, the last one’s mainly just in Calgary). But my hometown of Edmonton, a stereotypically white-bread, conservative, redneck city, has an ethnic diversity that may surprise you. I can eat at restaurants from a couple dozen different cultures and shop at specialty grocery stores from four or five more – and that’s just within a 10-minute drive of my office, which, by the way, is located not in a vibrant ethnic center, but in the blandest suburban warehouse/industrial district imaginable.

I guess where I’m going with this is that even your own town is probably home to all kinds of unlikely and unexpected food and candy treasures – you just have to know where to go to find the good stuff. Take these Hi-Chews, for example. I snagged a couple of packs of this popular Japanese candy from a Korean grocery store located just a few minutes from my office (woo!).

Hi-Chews are known for their intriguingly bouncy, pillowy texture, almost more like gum than North American fruit chews like Starburst. The coolest thing about them is that they don’t stick in your teeth at all, so you’re not picking bits of candy out of your molars for the next half hour.

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Candy Review: Brach’s Mini Review Roundup, Part II

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Brach’s Fruit Chews

Continuing from where I left off, here is my next tasting of Brach’s penny candy products. This review focuses on the the fruit-flavored items they manufacture.

Brach’s Fruit Chews
Made with real juice for a fun, fruity flavor.

These are similar to a Tootsie Roll Midgee, in terms of size and shape.

Orange is reminiscent of sherbet. It has an incredibly soft chew, like biting into a marshmallow. The piece isn’t sticky, but the flavor is muted, missing the zest a true orange flavor packs.

Strawberry aims for the smell of ripe strawberries – it hits the mark spot on. The piece is chewier than the orange, but sill soft. Unfortunately, the strawberry flavor is not as evocative as the smell, further exacerbated by a waxy aftertaste.

Grape makes my nose think of grape Bubble Tape when I unwrap it. The piece is the chewiest of them all, but still soft comparatively to other chews, like a really soft Starburst. The grape flavor is artificial, tasting exactly like the grape Bubble Tape. In fact, I completely forgot these were fruit chews and not gum until I noticed the pieces had dissolved in my mouth.

My overall impression of these is that they are harmless, but avoiding providing any real substance; if there were a dish of these at a waiting room, people would only take a few.

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Retro Candy Flashback: Judson-Atkinson Assorted Sours

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Atkinson Assorted Sours

My love for Atkinson candy is well documented. But until now, I have only sampled products that encompass ingredients they are known for. What I mean by this is that Atkinson primarily centers its products on coconut, peanuts/peanut butter, and various nuts. Of course other candy companies use these ingredients, but few do so to the extent that Atkinson does.

But there is more to the Atkinson family than those staple ingredients. You see, the full name of Atkinson is Judson-Atkinson. That is because Atkinson has acquired many candies companies over the years, including fellow Texan confectionery Judson Candies, in 1983.

Judson Candies has the distinct honor of being able to claim that it pioneered the sour ball. Creator J.W. Judson was attempting to create a tart jellybean, and in the process he developed cherry sours in 1910.

There are several varieties of sours out there, but I decided the best to sample was Judson-Atkinson Assorted Sours mix because it included cherry, the original sour, as well as four other flavors.

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Candy Review: Theo Filled Chocolates

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Theo Chocolates box

Theo is so environmentally-politically-correct that one of their bars has a picture of Jane Goodall with a chimp on it. Their products are made with fair trade and organic ingredients. That’s all very nice, but what you want to know is: How do they taste?

SPOILER ALERT: Wow.

These are a little larger than most company’s bonbons – large enough that a person like me, who usually cuts a really good, expensive filled chocolate in half to save some for later, can cut these in quarters and still enjoy them. Other good qualities of the presentation: They are all rectangular or square, further aiding the cutting-up process, and they are decorated differently and come with a flyer identifying and describing them.

The fillings are all described as ganaches. Ganache is basically cream and melted chocolate whipped together, but not for so long that it turns into whipped cream. Some of these don’t have chocolate in them, but they are nearly all that kind of very soft, melty texture. No hard work chewing caramels or crunchy nuts, here.

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Candy Review: Starburst Baja California Fruit Chews

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Starburst Baja California Fruit Chews As much as I enjoy trying new candy, the oddest things can put me off from doing so. Sometimes I don’t like the packaging or the description appears unappetizing. For Starburst Baja California Fruit Chews, it was the flavor selection that disappointed me.

In theory, the idea of a set of flavors indigenous to Baja California sounds interesting, but I never considered any of the flavors on the packet that representative of the region. However, I have always been partial to one of the four flavors, so when a coworker offered me some pieces that she bought from the CVS across the street, I thought it was finally time to give these a try.

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