I have many a fond memory of Baskin-Robbins from childhood: the free birthday cones, the baseball helmet sundaes, the hard, hard scoops that could be shot clear off your sugar cone and onto the lawn with one overzealous lick. Not to mention the choices – oh, the choices! All 31-plus of them! And I reveled in my flavor selection: Rocky Road, Rainbow Sherbet, Cookies ‘N Cream… the world was my hot fudge-covered oyster (notably not one of the aforementioned 31-plus). But I have to admit, in all my ice cream eating moments, never (ever) did I think to myself, “Mmmm, this ice cream is good, but it would be really good if only I could chew it.” So it is with a bit of skepticism that I opened up my box of Baskin-Robbins Soft Candy.

These candies come in two flavors: Mint Chocolate Chip and Very Berry Strawberry, and in both regular and sugar free varieties. They’re quite small – smaller than a Tootsie Roll – and rectangular. And they’re individually wrapped in foil reminiscent of my Viactiv Multi-Vitamin Chew (highly recommended as a vitamin supplement, less so as a sugary treat).

And soft they are. If nothing else, these things deliver in that department. Softer than both a Tootsie Roll and a Starburst chew, it took me a number of squeezes before I finally landed on Play-Doh. That’s about how soft these are, if you can imagine. (The sugar free ones actually were not quite as soft, falling somewhere between Play-Doh and Starburst on the hard/soft continuum.) But this is where the uniformity ends, so here’s how the individual flavors played out for me:

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The purist in me always tended to shy away from fruit-flavored gums, preferring the breath-freshening qualities of mint and cinnamon. But with my previously-held flavorism so completely obliterated by Orbit Citrusmint and then Stride Mandarin, I have found myself in a much more open place regarding gum selection. And it is with this spirit that I agreed to sample and review Trident’s new Passionberry Twist (with Xylitol).

Passion fruit is not one of those flavors I’m all that familiar with: kids didn’t just whip passion fruits out of their lunch boxes when I was growing up (at least not at my grade school) and, if memory serves, it’s one of those heavily seeded, hard-skinned beasts in the produce section that doesn’t exactly seduce neophytes. I have, however, sampled it on a few occasions (in the rain forests of Brazil, or Costa Rica, or Vietnam – I can’t quite remember) and in none of those places have I vomited, so I figured it must have been benign enough. Plus, I love berries, so it seemed like a winning – if mysterious – combo worthy of nothing less than a minute-by-minute review.

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If SweeTarts made a small, nondescript cherry version of its candies (in the shape of an engorged Tic Tac), they’d taste just like the Tic Tac Chill Exotic Cherry. Not bad. Not great. I like the tartness, but there’s not much “cherry” going on here. Surely nothing exotic.

The Tic Tac Chill series of sugarfree flavors (Exotic Cherry and Paradise Mint) come in a plastic box substantially larger than regular Tic Tacs – probably because the candies inside are about double the size of the standard ones. (Box note: in addition to the regular flip-top opening, the Tic Tac Chill containers have a front slide panel opening – where you see the name – that’s kind of cool and pretty straightforward to use, I thought. But Tic Tac seems to think it’s so complicated to operate that they’ve got video instructions online… go figure.)

Now, I haven’t tried the Paradise Mint, but there’s no mention of breath-freshening on the Exotic Cherry, so I consider these straight candy. Except that candy and sugarfree sound like Punch and Judy to me: they don’t tend to get along in my puppet theater.

But at least these Tic Tacs aren’t sweetened with aspartame; they have the much better-tasting xylitol. This sugar substitute also reduces dental plaque, supposedly, by attracting bad microorganisms to itself – then starving them to death because it’s not a real sugar they can use. Tell me about it.

But hey, if you want to trick your mouth and get a fairly weak cherry Sweetart-esque experience in a small package, Tic Tac Chill Exotic Cherry might be just the ticket. Don’t expect any high cherry drama, though.

The new Chill varieties of Tic Tac will be hitting shelves soon.

• Tic Tac Website

When I opened a package addressed to me at Candy Addict, I expected the usual assortment of sugary treats sent by most candy manufacturers. Instead, a bright blue box with the words “Cavity-Free Kit” shone up at me. I wondered if the delivery was my dentist’s idea of a joke. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t want rotten teeth, and have only had one cavity in my entire life (in a baby tooth!) – but as a lover of sugar, I was hoping for a box of sweet stuff.

Curiosity was definitely beginning to overtake disappointment, so I opened the box to find out exactly what a Cavity-Free Kit really is. Inside, I found boxes of gum and mints, a tube of toothpaste, and a bottle of mouthwash. Directions were included with the kit, and after poking through all the boxes to check out the gum and mint flavors, I read about Epic’s ideas for a healthy mouth. Apparently, the sweetener xylitol is key.

Problem number one that I have with Epic is that the directions for obtaining a healthy mouth include using Epic products six times per day. Yes, six. The manufacturer stresses that you can choose the combination of products to add up to six, but I don’t like requirements on my gum and candy. I do, however, love sugar-free gum, especially in pellet form, and was quite excited to give the four flavors a try.

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I’m an easy target for the impulse buys at the grocery store checkout counters. I think it’s a good time to scan the candies and see if there’s anything new, and then of course if something catches my eye, I have to try it. Take, for example, these Ice Breakers in Iced Tea Lemon flavor. I have long been a fan of Ice Breakers candies, and I usually have a container of the Ice Breakers sours in my car. I am also a fan of black tea, so these Ice Breakers sure seemed like a winning combination!

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