Recent candy roundup

Oh, hi there.

Snickers Fudge: I'm not overly taken with Snickers in the first place; their chocolate has an oddly sharp taste, almost acrid, at least to my palate. This might also be the contribution of the peanuts, and so switching to peanut butter nougat in the Fudge variety doesn't really help matters. This might be good for a lark if you like Snickers but wish they were more chocolatey, but you'll probably be disappointed - the fudge is present but at least partially masked by the inferior chocolate coating of the whole bar. On the other hand, if you like that chocolate coating in the first place you can probably make it work.

Bat Dots: Dots have kind of gotten the big head over the last few years. First they released Tropical Dots, which were not very good, and then Yogurt Dots, which were terrible. (Somehow both products remain on the market.) Now they just keep putting out strange seasonal varieties which all seem to have one thing in common: they don't contain a mix of flavors. Would you buy a bag of Skittles that was all reds? What makes Dots good in the first place is the variety; an entire box of black-colored but "blood orange"-flavored Dots is asking too much of the consumer, in my opinion. These taste all right but I just got sick of them after a while, which wouldn't have been as much of a problem with a mixture. How hard could that possibly be? Anyway, you won't likely have to worry about whether or not to pick these up now that Halloween is over, so whatever.

Tropical Chewy Lemonhead and Friends: Has tropical ever not been candy code for "awful"? The problem with these things goes to two sources: one, the flavor mix, and two, the complete lack of tartness. For a product that contains real lemon juice according to the ingredients, there is a stunning absence of even a hint of pucker in this candy, a problem that might be more forgivable if the flavors weren't so utterly mediocre. The lemon/pink lemonade is the most tolerable, and cherry/watermelon can pass, but kiwi/strawberry is forgettable, peach/mango somewhat dire, and I wouldn't touch berry/banana with a ten-foot clown pole. Isn't the whole gimmick of Lemonheads being tart? Aren't regular Chewy Lemonhead and Friends at least mildly tart? Did I just get a reject box? Regardless, I can't be unequivocal enough: do not ever buy these. The regular stuff is a million times better. (The Ferrara Pan website says of these, "You asked for it, you got it!" Ferrara Pan, what did we ever do to you?)

Strawberried Peanut Butter M&Ms

Mars apparently has a thing for hooking itself to summer blockbusters these days. Last year there were Mint Crisp M&Ms and the Snickers Adventure Bar, both discussed in the June 16, 2008 podcast, which tied into Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Not content with one questionable summer sequel, Mars has joined up with the second Michael Bay Transformers movie. They've also continued their trend of adding berry flavors to M&Ms (which have gone one good, one bad for me so far). This time, though, it's strawberries, and the M&Ms in question are actually peanut butter. Presumably the idea is that these two flavors go together in a PB&J (unless you're a grape jelly person), so surely they'll go together in an M&M.

It's an intriguing thought, but things never quite work that way. When you're making a candy product and trying to impersonate something that isn't candy, you usually end up with a curiously ersatz version, and it's really no different here. In isolation, the peanut butter tastes like peanut butter, and I guess the strawberry flavor tastes enough like a real strawberry - but neither tastes quite enough like the real thing for anyone to be fooled by the combination. Not that M&Ms is trying to fool anyone into thinking they're eating a sandwich, of course, but the way peanut butter and strawberry jam might mesh between two slices of bread is not sufficiently aped by the way peanut butter and strawberry flavor mesh here. I had a similar problem with the raspberry M&Ms - I might like eating raspberries covered in chocolate, but taking raspberry flavoring and grafting it onto an M&M just isn't the same experience, and it's never going to be.

And so it is here. I can taste the peanut butter, and I can taste the strawberry, but I never found that the two of them mixed all that well. It probably doesn't help that M&Ms peanut butter is so sweet - not only does the inherent sweetness overwhelm some of the strawberry taste, but without a richer peanut taste, there simply isn't the mix of flavors that might result from a well-made PB&J.

Strawberried Peanut Butter M&Ms are far from the worst things in the world, but their reason to exist is pretty small. Peanut Butter M&Ms don't really need modification, but if they're going to have one, it really needs to be more impactful.

Life Savers Gummies: Island Fruits

Life Savers Gummies tend to be among the better gummy spinoffs; they're usually quite flavorful and the flavors themselves are chosen well. Island Fruits, the latest iteration, follows well in the footsteps of its predecessors. There are four flavors - strawberry kiwi, mango melon, fruit punch and pineapple - and all four manage to be at least solid. One thing I find with tropical flavors is that there's almost always one (at least) that I don't care for in the bunch, but here that's not really the case.

Mango melon isn't spectacular - melon is always a pretty weak flavor, and mango is rarely done well. In this case, though, the melon isn't too overwhelming and the mango isn't terrible. It's probably the least of the four flavors, but it's rare when the worst flavor in a tropical bag is still decent.

Candy flavors of pineapple tend not to do the actual fruit justice. That doesn't really change here, but on the other hand it does a pretty good job of tasting like the actual pineapple Life Saver. So it's plenty edible.

Strawberry kiwi frequently just means "strawberry." Not that that's a terrible thing. In this flavor, there actually is a hint of tartness, perhaps the presence of the kiwi. That makes it slightly better, but a standard strawberry candy would already be pretty good.

Finally, there's fruit punch, which is almost always the best flavor in any mixture. The cover of the bag has raspberry and orange on it, and that tastes about right. And who can complain about that? Certainly not me.

Overall it's a decent mix. It's not really crazy tropical, but it gets there, and candy so rarely does a good job of tasting like tropical fruits that I'm not going to complain if the replacement flavors are done well. Thumbs up from me.

Skittles Crazy Cores

Skittles may be overrating the "craziness" of their new variety just slightly. The premise, as you can probably tell from the front of the bag, is one flavor inside of another. The five are Mango Peach, Cherry Lemonade, Strawberry Watermelon, Melon Berry and Blue Raspberry Lemon. Just two of these (strawberry and lemon) have any kind of counterpart in the regular Skittles bag, so this is a relatively novel mixture even without the pairing of the flavors. But the real question, of course, is: how do they taste?

Melon Berry, for my money, is the worst of the lot. I've never really understood the obsession with either melon or the generic "berry" flavor. Melon is a fairly bland flavor even at its best and just doesn't work well in candy form; "berry" does nothing for me, especially when multiple legit berry flavors are available in the same bag. I would just pitch these pretty much right away.

Strawberry Watermelon is fourth-best, or second-worst, depending on your prerogative. You can taste both flavors, but watermelon is such a fake candy flavor that it's a little weird in combination. The strawberry is fine.

Cherry Lemonade is pretty good, with both flavors making appreciable impacts and combining well. I'd rank it #3, but only because I enjoyed the two ahead of it so much.

Peach Mango is #2. The peach taste is heavier, but the mango can be found, and it's a more creative combination than most of these and deserves applause for that. It also tastes really good, however, so I'm not just giving it points for creativity.

#1 is Blue Raspberry Lemon. Both flavors have a great zing and combine near-perfectly. I would have done just fine with a bag composed entirely of these.

I don't think anyone's going to forget regular Skittles over these, but the top three flavors all have a decent tang to them which you don't normally get in Skittles (aside from the sour variety, though it can be too tangy for one's mouth at times). The bag as a whole is weighed down by the mediocre-to-bad bottom two flavors, but if you like Skittles the top three flavors make it worth a go.

Orange Creme Hershey's Kisses

Perhaps the oddest variations on the recent blitz of alternate-flavor Hershey's Kisses are the ones that, well, aren't chocolate. The orange creme variety has apparently been around for a couple years, but it only seems to pop up at Easter time, so this year was the first time I noticed its existence.

Last Halloween's "candy corn" flavor and the orange creme flavor have a lot in common. They taste fine, if more than a little ersatz, but their raison d'être is confusing if not entirely nonexistent. Why would you eat candy corn-flavored Hershey's Kisses when you could just eat candy corn? And why would you really want to eat Hershey's Kisses that taste like a Creamsicle when you could just eat a Creamsicle?

I don't have an answer to either question other than "You wouldn't, really." It doesn't help matters that these Kisses aren't made out of chocolate. (Technically I guess they're made out of white chocolate. But even speaking as someone who likes white chocolate well enough, it's about as much "chocolate" as soy milk is "milk.") Chocolate is the only ingredient of the standard Hershey's Kiss, which is easily one of the five most famous candy products in America. Can you really brand something with the same name when it doesn't contain that ingredient? Isn't this like Coca-Cola rebranding Sprite as "Coke Citrus"?

Anyway. I won't say these aren't edible, but I really don't see the point in buying them unless you're looking to bulk up someone's Easter basket. The lack of any true chocolate will prove unsatisfying for most people, and I'm not sure even fans of orange will like the flavor, always hanging just on the acceptable side of the "vaguely unpleasant" border. If this is the taste you want, do yourself a favor and just eat a Creamsicle.

Battle Royale: Heath vs. Skor

Heath and Skor are the two major toffee-based candy bars on the market today. As a result, you might think that they're competitors. At one time that was true - Skor was introduced by Hershey's in 1983 to compete with the much older Heath - but Hershey's actually acquired Heath in 1996, meaning it's been almost 15 years since they were really in competition with each other. You might have thought Hershey's would phase one or the other out, but evidently they decided that both brands had sufficient admirers and that it was therefore easier to keep both on the market. The question is, how much difference is there between them, really? And which one is better?

Heath's toffee is light in color and bits of almonds can be seen on the inside. The taste is primarily that of almonds, with the chocolate coating providing additional flavor. The toffee snaps fairly easily under the teeth upon biting into the bar. Heath contains palm oil (the only ingredient it contains which does not also appear in Skor), which might help explain its slightly softer texture.

Skor's toffee has a rich, buttery taste which dominates the product. The outer layer of chocolate is barely even noticeable from a flavor standpoint. The toffee is also much darker in color and while it does contain bits of almonds, their flavor does not predominate as they do in Heath. The dark, buttery toffee flavor is the driving force. Also, while the two bars are about the same thickness, Skor's toffee is slightly stickier and more resistant to the tooth.

The Verdict

This may seem odd coming from me. In terms of everyday foods, I love almonds, while I'm not a huge fan of the taste of butter. But the taste of Heath, while certainly good, just seems weak when stacked up against the richness of Skor. Heath tastes like a chocolate bar with toffee in it; Skor tastes like toffee, and I actually like the butteriness in this context. I was actually a little surprised just how different the two bars were; it's easy to see why both remain on the market, as aside from both having the word "toffee" on the label and looking superficially similar from the outside, they're pretty much entirely separate entities, with a much bigger heads-up taste difference than something like, say, Coke and Pepsi. But put everything together - Skor's richer taste and its entertaining packaging (as far as I can think of, it's the only mainstream US candy bar that actually shows a picture of the bar on its wrapper, which I've always enjoyed) - and you come up with a clear winner.

Winner: Skor

Starburst Sour GummiBursts

When I had the original Starburst GummiBursts some months ago, I was not a fan. The gummy was too tough and the liquid inside tasted like cough syrup. I'm pleased to report that not only do the Sour GummiBursts not have this problem, they're also actually fairly sour, something that isn't true of far too many candies bearing the name.

It's a little disappointing, perhaps, that they had to go with the sour sugar; Sour Starburst are one of the few products that don't and to my mind they're better for it. When it comes to gummy candy it's probably hard to avoid that tactic, however. Either way, the overall experience is a vast improvement over the original product - the gummies are much softer and the "juice" inside (which actually does contain some real apple juice, with artificial and natural flavors) is significantly better-tasting than its original counterpart.

The flavors might help as well. The original used strawberry, orange, cherry and lemon, and at least three of them just didn't taste very good. The sour version mixes it up a bit with green apple, orange tangerine, watermelon and strawberry, all of which manage to be pretty decent. I was a little disappointed that the juice itself didn't seem to have any additional sour kick, but the candy as a whole has a nice little bite to it, so I'll take what I can get. (Mars does have a tendency to get sour right - Sour Skittles and Sour Starburst are both good examples of the genre, more than just tangy without being quite as devastating to the mouth as the nevertheless delicious Jolly Rancher Screamin' Sours.*)

It's also nice that the bag is relatively small (just 1.5 ounces), so you can have one without eating so much sour that it wrecks your mouth for the rest of the day (Sour Skittles, at 1.8 ounces and with many more individual candies per bag, start to verge on this problem). I love sour candy, but as I age I just can't eat that much of it, so having a pretty good example of it in a pretty small size isn't a bad thing by my standards.

*A few years ago I bought a bag of Screamin' Sours at a Jewel in Lake County. The cashier, as she rang it up, said to me, "I hope these are for your kids!" They were not.