Confessions of a Novelty Confection Fiend

[natasha1270]

I have a major sweet tooth. I love most candy except licorice-flavored ones. I had a big candy day last week. While waiting on my car inspection, I walked across the street to my neighborhood 7-11 hoping to find a Twizzler Slurpee (Drats! They changed the Twizzler flavor to Shrek/Sierra Mist!! What is with these soda-flavored Slurpees?) and I heard the candy aisle calling my name (7-11 and I go wayyyyy back on this candy thing ). I resisted the Twizzlers, Laffy Taffy and Skor bars but my eyes lit up when I saw some new (to me) temptations. I picked up one of the new tropical flavored almond joy bars (gross!) and white chocolate covered reeses cups (not bad). But best of all (not candy, though), I tried some Mediterranean-spiced Terra Chips (yummy delicious!). Then it was on to the grocery. I saw they have started to carry Botan Rice Candy!! Major childhood favorite of mine!! I bought 6 boxes. How could I resist?

Cost Plus/World Markets has an excellent imported candy/chocolate section. It is not located very convenient to me so when I do make it there I stock up on Cadbury Sno-Flake and Whole Nut bars. The imported Cadbury tastes soooo much better than the stuff made in the US.

Last fall/winter I think it was, I had a major addiction to the Ltd Ed mint Kit-Kat bars. Mmmmm…they were a bit like Girl Scout Thin Mints except with the classic Kit-Kat wafers. Kit-Kat also had Ltd Ed orange Kit-Kats. I tried them once but I am just not a fan of orange or any fruit flavored chocolate.

Natasha

[lia]

I went to a movie earlier and for the first time saw these:

Junior Caramels.

Might this be a re-naming and re-packaging of Pom Poms, the movie theater Milk Dud ripoff??

[hillvalley]

Canada (or at least, Vancouver) seems to have all the candy bars that aren't available anymore in the States. We have 3 Musketeers and Charleston Chews.

What is a Clark bar?

Clark Bar: A Delicious, Crunchy, Peanut Butter center with a rich chocolatey coating. Clark Bars have

been produced for over 110 years. Our homemade peanut butter is the difference!

Mr. Clarkbar

I'm pretty sure that 3 Musketeers are distributed nationally in the US.

3 MUSKETEERS® Product Locator - US only

At some point in the 80's the company was going to stop making Clark bars. Students at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. started a PR campaign to save the candy bar that worked.

During the primaries I had a friend who worked for the Clark campaign. When they were doing door to door campaigning on Capital Hill (the residents, not the govt.) they passed out Clark Bars with their campaign literature.

[sladeums]

I'm re-posting this here, from the 'Shrek M&M's' thread...since this is where it belongs.

Also, I wanted to add a new find from tonight: Kit Kat Triple Chocolate ("Crisp Chocolate Wafers and Chocolate Creme in Milk Chocolate").

Plus to reply to Tolliver's post, I thought ALL of the 'Limited Edition' Reese's sucked...horribly - and Reese's is one of my faves, but none of the combos they tried with it worked.

The Milky Way Midnight is a permanent fixture.

It seems that the candy companies are catching on to the fact that candy buyers will try something new, yet familiar, at least once.

The number of 'limited edition' items has really exploded over the last year and I would bet that they are seeing a little uptick in sales from impulse buyers at the very least.

The latest limited edition stuff I've noted at the stores:

Almond Joy Pina Colada (pineapple flavored coconut)

Almond Joy Chocolate Chocolate (chocolate flavored coconut)

York Peppermint Patty Chocolate Truffle Mint Patty

Hershey's White 'Chocolate' with Almonds

Hershey's Cookies and Chocolate (instead of the Cookies and Cream)

Kit Kat Mint

Kit Kat Orange

Pearson's Chocolate Covered Salted Nut Roll

Plus outside of the candy realm they have recently released Hostess Ho-Ho's with Caramel (normal Ho-Ho's with a caramel streak).

I must say, I have bought a few.

Don't forget the Reese's peanut butter cup experiements:

White Chocolate (which seems to be sticking around)

Inside Out (peanut butter outside, chocolate inside)

and Honey sweetened (which I found too sweet...if that's possible for candy!)

And didn't they do a Dark Chocolate version, too?

Milky Way has a Dark Chocolate Bar, too (I think it's called "Midnight Bar")

[tsquare]

It seems that the candy companies are catching on to the fact that candy buyers will try something new, yet familiar, at least once.

The number of 'limited edition' items has really exploded over the last year and I would bet that they are seeing a little uptick in sales from impulse buyers at the very least.

The latest limited edition stuff I've noted at the stores:

Almond Joy Pina Colada (pineapple flavored coconut)

Almond Joy Chocolate Chocolate (chocolate flavored coconut)

York Peppermint Patty Chocolate Truffle Mint Patty

Hershey's White 'Chocolate' with Almonds

Hershey's Cookies and Chocolate (instead of the Cookies and Cream)

Kit Kat Mint

Kit Kat Orange

Pearson's Chocolate Covered Salted Nut Roll

Ran across the Almond Joy Chocolate Chocolate - was excited to see a dark chocolate Almond Joy - but was unpleasantly surprised to find the "chocolate flavored" coconut inside. I like the visual contrast between dark chocolate and white coconut and thought the flavoring detracted from the overall flavor.

Guess it's back to looking for Bounty Bars, or sticking with almondless Mounds Bars - or getting custom ones from better chocolate shops.

What about the new (to me, at least) Jelly Belly brand chocolates? Fun to have M&M type candies that actually have a color / flavor relationship. They were handing out small sample bags onthe street corner last week.

[Mooshmouse]

Lemme see. It isn't often that I indulge in a candy fix, but there are decided favourites when I do. From reading this thread earlier today, I started craving sweets and picked up a Hershey Smores bar from the gas station to try for the first time.

Twix. Kit Kat (haven't tried any of the flavoured ones yet). Skor... but definitely not Butterfinger or Crispy Crunch. Reeses Crunchy Peanut Butter Cups even though I despise crunchy peanut butter itself (not sure if you can get the Inside Out ones here in Canada yet).

And am I the only one who remembers those marshmallow strawberries that leave your tongue pink?

[Chef Shogun]

Cadbury Creme Eggs.

Next question.

[tsquare]

Just saw an ad for caramel filled kisses. Anyone try these yet?

[lia]

Just saw an ad for caramel filled kisses. Anyone try these yet?

OH yeah, and they're good. and i don't even like Hershey's. I'm a caramel fiend though, and the new Werther's caramels are wonderful. Also have a bag of Kraft, but i can't eat them anymore because they're so fake and inferior compared to the Werther's.

i'm intrigued by the Hershey's commercial where the young woman is saying her S'mores are better than her boyfriend's. 'they're like a Hershey's sandwich.' I've never had a S'more. Is the toasted marshmallow supposed to be hot enough to melt the chocolate so that it all adheres to the graham cracker? Are stove top toasted marshmallows edible enough to make a decent s'more?

[jetsie]

Chocolate is like my daily bread, but I love to try foreign candies. I'm also a sucker for anything clove or licorice flavored.

I find a lot of interesting candy at the local Asian grocery stores. I have a soft spot for Japanese candy, having lived there for a few years as a child.

Right now I have an untried bag of "mix candy" sitting in front of me. The flavors are based on the Japanese drinks Dakara, C.C. Lemon, Bikkle, Dekavita, and something without a name that comes in a smiley-face orange can. I've never tried any of these drinks. Some of the ingredients listed include pine juice, ogenge juice (what's that?), and royal jelly.

One of my favorite Japanese candies is melon-flavored white chocolate that looks like miniature half cantaloupes. Cute and tasty!

Recently I noticed that the Botan Rice Candy imported to the U.S. is no longer millet based. The texture and flavor are not as good, somehow.

[jhlurie]

Tried a York Chocolate Truffle Mint Pattie yesterday...

It's not bad, but also not substantially different from the regular York Peppermint Pattie. The Mint taste is a little waeker, the chocolate a bit stronger, that's about it.

I also tried the surprisingly good Z-Carb PB&Z Peanut Butter Cup...

More reactions to that here.

[jetsie]

I also tried the surprisingly good Z-Carb PB&Z Peanut Butter Cup...

Woo Hoo! Zero Laxation!

[jhlurie]

I also tried the surprisingly good Z-Carb PB&Z Peanut Butter Cup...

Woo Hoo! Zero Laxation!

It's because most "low carb" chocolate uses a substance called "Malitol", which is infamous for having a laxative effect. These guys claim to fame is that they use Splenda instead of Malitol, and try and make up the difference from normal sugared candy by using higher quality chocolate.

[skyflyer3]

Favorite candy bar is the Lion Bar. Tried them on a whim in Italy, and promptly bought a dozen to bring back home. You can find them here in Seattle at the Perennial Tea Room (occasionally) or at this English teahouse/food import place in Redmond, of all places. I searched madly for these when I got back home, emailed the company and was told that they wouldn't carry them in the U.S. Looked for them in Canad, where I've heard rumors that you can find them there, but suppsedly there are cocoa butter restrictions in North America, while there are no limits in the UK and so the ones in Europe are better. For those of you who have never experienced a Lion Bar, they are wafers covered in caramel and crispies, then covered in chocolate. Kind of like a Hundred Grand morphed with a Kit Kat.

Nestle makes a similar candy bar called the "Drifter". We found them at Cost Plus - two slim bars covering caramel with chocolate - much like a Twix, but with wafers instead of cookies. Tasty, although the chocolate is a little cloying.

Those Scharffenberger bars you can get at Trader Joes are pretty good. As are the Ritter Joghurt bars (chocolate bars with a tangy yogurt center). Love Toblerone, and Skor. Currently, though, I've got a hankering for Guittard Couverture Wafers. I sampled them at the Gift Show, and now I can't think of anything else. If anyone knows where I can get them locally here in Seattle, please let me know.

[jerobi]

Just to bring this thread back to life, I have always pined for a return of Life Saver Holes. I have fond memories of them from my junior high school days.

Well, it's not Life Savers brand, but they're back! I was checking out at WalMart (Yes, I despise it there too...including the 20-minute checkout lines at all hours) and came across new Jolly Rancher Rocks:

http://www.hersheys.com/products/details/j...sp?id=3271-1765

You get more candy per tube than the old Life Saver Holes, and at around fifty cents a tube I grabbed six of them. They're just like the old LSH, only with the Jolly Rancher brand flavors. Yesterday I went back for another dozen or so, and I look forward to seeing cases of them available in CostCo.

Oh, and the new Take 5 bars are also quite tasty. Thin crunchy pretzel + chocolate is a winner in my book.

[LSiegel]

About six months back I found a new variation on Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups– a king sized version of the standard peanut butter cup. Unlike the usual “king size” packaging commonly seen in stores (which just increases the number of peanut butter cups in the package), this one contained two king sized peanut butter cups, about double the thickness of the standard cups. As discussed elsewhere above, the change in the peanut butter/chocolate ratio can make a big difference, and these were excellent. Haven’t seen them anywhere since. Has anyone else seen them? Any idea if they’re still making them and, if so, where to find them?

[pidge]

new favorite on the counters of nyc bodegas....happy hippos...some sort of hippo shaped (3D) wafer cookie thing filled with gianduja-like cream....

[jhlurie]

This new "Take 5" bar, from, Hershey's is actually fantastic. It's got a much stronger salty quality than sweetness, and that makes it somewhat unique among mass-packaged candy bars.

The list of ingredients (pretzels, caramel, peanuts, peanut butter, milk chocolate) seems ordinary, but it's actually more than the sum of it's parts, due to a fairly interesting texture. It's also MEGA-caloric. 220 for 1.5 ounces. Whooooooo!

[lia]

new favorite on the counters of nyc bodegas....happy hippos...some sort of hippo shaped (3D) wafer cookie thing filled with gianduja-like cream....

hm, I just saw that for the first time last week. and it's Kinder brand right? I love anything from them.

[spaghetttti]

My current favorites are Ritter Sport Chocolates (all flavors ) and Almond Roca. I just had one of these:

which was creamy, a little too sweet, but I like it.

[sladeums]

This new "Take 5" bar, from, Hershey's is actually fantastic.  It's got a much stronger salty quality than sweetness, and that makes it somewhat unique among mass-packaged candy bars.

The list of ingredients (pretzels, caramel, peanuts, peanut butter, milk chocolate) seems ordinary, but it's actually more than the sum of it's parts, due to a fairly interesting texture.  It's also MEGA-caloric.  220 for 1.5 ounces.  Whooooooo!

←

I didn't like this.

Too much going on with nothing playing well with others.

Like a 'Whatchamacallit' (which ain't great) with no focus.

[jhlurie]

I like the whole "Ice Breakers" line of gums and mints, but this one is even a bit better. They're quite strong--much more sour than I'd normally think a sugar free product could achieve. And they are most definitely mints, as opposed to true sucking-candy-like "sours".

[Pam R]

Favorite Candy : Pop Rocks (although, it's now a different brand - I don't know the name) - there is something I enjoy about the pain when they explode in my mouth. Hmm.

Chocolates: anything that combines chocolate and caramel, as long as it is only chocolate and caramel.

Anything that combines chocolate and orange: orange smarties/ those cadbury chocolate oranges that you have to whack / passover Elite orange cream filled chocolate bars (which have not been available in Canada for the last 2 years)

[Bernaise]

Does anyone remember a chocolate called "Bar Six"

[tsquare]

This new "Take 5" bar, from, Hershey's is actually fantastic.  It's got a much stronger salty quality than sweetness, and that makes it somewhat unique among mass-packaged candy bars.

The list of ingredients (pretzels, caramel, peanuts, peanut butter, milk chocolate) seems ordinary, but it's actually more than the sum of it's parts, due to a fairly interesting texture.  It's also MEGA-caloric.  220 for 1.5 ounces.  Whooooooo!

←

I didn't like this.

Too much going on with nothing playing well with others.

Like a 'Whatchamacallit' (which ain't great) with no focus.

←

I've taken two "Take 5". I liked 'em. And I don't generally crave salt or like milk chocolate.