In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past year or so, the latest big food fad to hit grocery stores is… No, not bacon. Darn it all, why do you people always want to talk about bacon?

The OTHER big food trend of the past couple of years is the so-called “superfruit.” The theory behind superfruits is that certain fruits like pomegranates and goji berries contain high levels of nutrients such as antioxidants, which just might help to prevent cancer and other diseases.

Though there’s considerable debate about whether superfruits are really the disease-fighting powerhouses the companies marketing them claim they are, I guess any trend that encourages people to eat more fruit can’t be a completely bad thing. (That argument probably doesn’t hold water when applied to fruit-flavored candy, though.)

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World Market sells stuff from, you know, the world. It’s a cool store (formerly called Cost Plus) with food, furniture, housewares, body care, art, and lots of unusual candy, especially stuff from, you know, the world. They now also have house brands of various things, including chocolate.

At $1.99 for a 3oz (85g) bar, they’re quite a good value for genuine chocolate, with dark chocolate of various intensities and flavor combinations. This review covers what they call Milk Chocolate (at a very healthy 42% cacao content), and 72%, 82%, and a tongue-boggling 99% cacao dark chocolate bar. I’ll also try a 64% dark chocolate bar with sea salt, and another 64% bar with pomegranate.

Let’s start with the clear winner.

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I’m fairly certain that I have a condition known as Tootsie Pop Amnesia, where I can go for years forgetting how much I love the chocolaty chew of a Tootsie Pop before someone hands me one at random and all of my happy Tootsie memories come flooding on back.

In college, I ate about 9,009,209 Tootsie Pops. I kept the wrappers tacked to my wall. Whatever it is I thought I’d see, became a Tootsie Roll to me. But alas, after college I moved on to other treats, and left the Tootsie Pop behind. As always, I forgot all about the sweet, sticky, “what flavor is this in the center, I mean, it says chocolaty chew, but really?” delight of eating a Tootsie Pop. So when we hit the Tootsie booth at this year’s All Candy Expo, and I saw an unfamiliar color in the Tootsie Pop dish, I almost had to sit down, as my Tootsie Pop amnesia once again gave way to Tootsie Pop fever, and I was overcome with excitement trying to find out what flavor lay below the new, peach-colored Tootsie Pop wrapper.

On my way to the dish to fish out a pop, I imagined various flavor scenarios: dark chocolate? Cranberry? Tropical? Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the new Tootsie Pop flavor was the oh-so-trendy star of the All Candy Expo: Pomegranate.

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As a Candy Addict I have pretty strong cravings for sweets – specifically, chocolate. This can be seen as a good or bad thing depending on your point of view, or for me, depending on my mood. Some days I crave a lot of it, which can be bad, since my motto is “everything in moderation” and it makes me cranky when I want to eat more than I should. I’m sure you all understand the feeling, right?

This is why, yet again, the chocolates over at Terra Nostra have come to my rescue. Not only do they make ricemilk chocolate that makes my milk-free lifestyle a little easier, they’ve now got a new Pocket Bar line so I can feel like I’m eating more chocolate than I actually am. These new cute and wonderfully flavored Pocket Bars bars weigh in at 42 grams, which is nice since I can eat the whole thing without actually eating a more “normal” sized chocolate bar weighing in at 100g. The small size is also extremely portable which makes satisfying my chocolate cravings that much more convenient.

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(click for more pics)

I used to live in Arizona, about 4 hours from Phoenix, when I was a kid. The only Arizona-specific food memory I have is drinking Sarsaparilla when visiting Tombstone (yeah, I know Sarsparilla isn’t a food, but that’s all I’ve got). I do remember the cacti though, and I don’t ever remember thinking I wanted to eat them. This all leads up to today’s review: Cactus Candy – made in Phoenix, Arizona.

Cactus Candy comes in four flavors: Prickly Pear, Pomegranate, Lemon, and Orange. Only The Prickly Pear flavor actually contains prickly pear cactus juice though.

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