Candy Blog

Here are a few combo candy-toy items for Easter baskets and beyond:

I thought this little M&Ms mini figure was pretty cute. He’s made of some sort of durable hard plastic, not that cheap thin stuff.

The little figure is full of mini M&Ms. They’re regular M&Ms, not the Easter pastel version, but I’m okay with that.

The most vexing thing about this is the little hat that twists/pops off to reveal the candy. It was like a frelling child safety cap without the insane instructions.

There were a few varieties, including Green, Red and Yellow. I liked the Blue because it felt most like Easter pastels even if he did have some sort of a goofy look on his face. I don’t know if the bunny hats are swappable for other non-holiday novelties.

It was expensive for the scant amount of candy involved, $1.99 regular price. But a fun grab next week on sale, perhaps.

When I was a teenager I had a thing for sheep items. (Well, in college we actually had a sheep living at a house I was renting a room at, but he was more of a lawnmower.)

My obsession caused me to rewrite passages of Shakespeare with sheep in mind:

Methought I heard a voice cry ‘Sheep no more!
Macbeth does murder sheep’, the innocent sheep,
Sheep that knits up the ravell’d sleeve of care (1)

I’ve kind of moved on from the sheep thing (though if I ever have one I get to name, he’ll be called Fleance).

While this little cheap plastic egg with sheep features was only 99 cents, it also only has give Hershey’s Kisses in them. (At least they’re pastel foil.)

Moving up in price, Candyrific recently expanded their toy/candy line with some M&Ms themed items.

They fall more in the realm of toys than candy containers and are pretty fun combinations.

The first is a set of fans. Candyrific came out with a really good candy novelty a couple of years ago, which is the fan that has little LED lights on it and a candy container in the handle. This new version has the M&Ms characters in various colors holding the fan. The central container at the base of the handle holds .7 ounces of regular M&Ms. (There’s supposedly a version of this for Easter, but I got the year-round version as a sample and haven’t seen the pastel ones with bunny ears in stores.)

The second is a miniature Etch A Sketch that holds a small fun-sized pack of M&Ms.

I have to admit that I enjoy these a lot. I don’t care about the candy inside. I wish that they lit up like the other versions do, but I’m guessing the money they spend on those LEDs in this instance goes to M&MS for the licensing of the characters. But at least they have real M&Ms in there.

They’re well made and even have a real battery compartment that can be opened and replaced for actual lasting play.

I really could have used a few of these last September during that blackout on Labor Day weekend where my house was over 100 degrees inside.

The fan blade is made of a soft foam, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t hurt myself with it. Maybe if I stuck it in my eye. (Please don’t try that, or if you do, please don’t blame me.)

The other fun item is this little Etch A Sketch with a couple of M&Ms on there. They come in a few different colors, but they’re pretty much the same. I had an Etch A Sketch as a kid and enjoyed it ... actually got pretty good at drawing on it. This one doesn’t work quite as well, the little stylus draws a very thin line, probably a little too thin on the first pass, so I ended up going over my lines twice.

It’s a crazy small amount of candy, but like the fan, it’s pretty easy to put any kind of candy in there and refill it however you like.

The biggest drawback is trying to clear the Etch A Sketch, which everyone knows involves turning it over and shaking it wildly. With the M&Ms in the little container part it makes a lotta noise and to clear the EAS properly, I broke some of my M&MS.

There is an easy solution to this of course, just take the lid off (the part that has the EAS on it) and just shake that. Like my problems with getting the hat off of the Easter minis, I’m sure a child would figure this out much quicker than I did.

The last item is a bit of a re-review of one of my favorite candy novelties so far, an Easter version of the Gummy Lightning Bugs.

This version has little gummy rabbits and is called Lightning Bunny Candy by Kandy Kastle. They’re all one flavor, instead of a mix. I was worried when I saw that they’re all red, but it’s cool, they’re strawberry, not cherry.

For only 99 cents there are 9 little gummis and the cute purple light up tongs.

The package said that the tongs were redesigned. Actually, it says “New & Improved Tong Included” so they’re better than before and there’s only one. (Tongs, I’m guessing are like scissors and pants and are always plural.)

The tongs aren’t really improved, if you ask me. They’re just shorter than before, probably easier to grasp for little fingers and they don’t stay on as readily, which probably provides a lot more longevity.

This is the kind of exploratory toy that I think is good for kids. It makes them slow down and really look at everyday things in a different way.

I tried them on some other items, they don’t open as widely as they used to, so anything as large as say, a Spearmint Leaf is too big. But small items like jelly beans (awesome!) and chocolate covered coffee beans (boring) are the right size.

I think adding a little toy in an Easter basket is fun. (I think the best one I ever got was a kite, which me & my brother and sister took out to the field across the street behind the cemetery and promptly got caught in a tree within an hour.)

The Hershey’s one isn’t the best toy in the world, but the design is nice. The filled M&M is also nice and certainly well built, but doesn’t offer much opportunity for interaction. I can see it being collectible though. The fan & Etch A Sketch are the best of the bunch, but a little pricier for “candy” items at $3.99 retail, but still a good value for a small toy.

If parents are looking for a way to still have a bit of bounty in the basket, a novelty item that contains a small amount of candy (especially something that can be refilled on a regular basis) is a good compromise. I mean, I wouldn’t have felt cheated if I got one of these as a kid.

They all get a solid 7 out of 10. The Lightning Bunny was made in China, in all other cases the candy was made in the USA, but the toys were made in China.

Related Candies

1. Gummy Fishies
2. Bug Jar Candy
3. M&M and Reese’s Pieces Peanut Butter Eggs
4. Gummi Lightning Bugs
5. Light Lollipops

You thought I was done with hollow chocolate rabbits?

I can’t stop buying them. (And, um, taking photos of them, as this post will demonstrate, it’s mostly photos.)

Here are a couple of other more upscale models, in case you still haven’t outfitted your Easter basket for the year. Call it my Bunny Battle, spawned in part by sticker shock at Whole Foods (who doesn’t come away from WF without some degree of sticker shock?).

I picked up this extremely cute and extremely small goodie basket (I think they call it a favor basket) from Lake Champlain. It contains three filled half eggs and one tiny .6 ounce hollow milk chocolate rabbit. The price? $8.49.

Now, lest you think that it’s the little eggs that are racking up the tally there, the bunny all by itself on the Lake Champlain website is $3.25 ... it’s just chocolate, nothin’ special there. Just all natural milk chocolate.

I’ll get to the bunny in a moment, but first the unique items in this little basket (well, more like a cup) are the Lake Champlain filled eggs. They’re lovely little half eggs with a pretty molded shell that has the Lake Champlain logo and the word “Vermont” on it.

It comes with three eggs. I reviewed the blue foil wrapped egg before that has a hazelnut cream inside before, so I picked up the rest of the eggs in their set to make sure that I’ve covered them all. (The basket came with Raspberry, Caramel & Peanut Butter.)

Gold = Caramel in Milk Chocolate. The shell is sweet and firm, the center is creamy and flowing. It’s pretty salty on the inside and with a real taste of burnt sugars.

Pink = Raspberry Cream in Dark Chocolate - very jammy center, definitely more fruit than chocolate.
Light Green = Coffee Ganache in Dark Chocolate - this was quite a treat, rich and robust coffee flavor, a little salty and not at all sweet. Not quite enough filling for me though, it seemed like there was a lot of shell and not a lot of cream.
Orange = Peanut Butter Cream in Milk Chocolate - oh so sweet. The filling is very light in color, much lighter than a Reese’s. It’s salty and a little grainy and very nutty.

I didn’t want to overwhelm everyone with too many See’s items, so I’ve had these Rabbits for a while. I picked up one of the milk (small in gold foil) and one of the dark (in blue foil). They’re hollow, but still rather hefty.

The See’s Milk Chocolate bunny is less than 5” tall, yet it towers over the little one bite Lake Champlain Hollow Rabbit.

Lake Champlain Milk Chocolate - it’s sweet and milky, but smooth and has a very slick melt on the tongue, almost like it has hazelnut in it. ($3.25 for .6 ounces) The larger sizes are priced at: $15 for a 9.5 ounce solid rabbit and a novelty one driving a car for $20 for 8 ounces.

Lake Champlain uses Belgian chocolate for their molded items. The ingredients are all natural.

See’s Milk Chocolate - it’s sweet and slightly less milky, with more of a roasted base to it. It’s not quite as sweet as the Lake Champlain, but still has similar silky qualities. ($2.45 for 2.2 ounces.) There is a smaller one that’s solid that goes for $1.00 at the stores and the other hollow novelites available are $4.90 for 4.5 ounces and the largest standing rabbit is $8.50 for 10 ounces.

The ingredients on the See’s are pretty standard, the only one that throws up a flag is the use of vanillin (but they also use real vanilla, go figure).

So they both taste good. They’re both good quality. They’re both cute ... I’ll admit that I like the squat and fat Lake Champlain format, but the foil wrapping and doe-like eye of the See’s is awfully lovable, too.

It comes down to two other things, I guess. Price and availability. See’s is pretty easy to find on the West Coast and of course you can order via the internet.

There’s a nice campaign to raise awareness about the hazards of giving children real rabbits (or baby ducks or chicks) at the holidays called Make Mine Chocolate. While a chocolate rabbit is not going to engender the same sort of squishy lovey feelings in a kid that a real animal will, it’s much more humane.

I had rabbits as a kid and I can attest to how much responsibility it is to care for a pet (especially one in a cage).

Finally, there is my huge friend the See’s Dark Chocolate Hollow Rabbit who clocks in at 4.5 ounces.

He sat around my office for weeks, I really liked the look of this rabbit in the light blue foil with his drowsy, heavily-lashed eyes and real bow.

Eventually the foil had to come off though, I had no idea what was beneath, I expected something similar to the milk chocolate one. The 2.2 ounce version (which also comes in dark chocolate) has those little drawn on hairs, so you know it’s a rabbit.

This one, well, it was startling. Mostly because it’s so stylized. I immediately thought of those Draw Me! ads that used to appear in the back of comic books and magazines.

It’s so smooth yet angular. And the eyes are so vacant.

The dark chocolate is tasty, very smooth but middle-of-the-road. Kind of like very good chocolate chips or a good cup of hot chocolate. A little hint of bitterness, no dry finish and a buttery melt.

The bunny isn’t really that much taller than the 2.2 ounce one, just wider and of course has a very thick wall. (Honestly, I had a hard time ringing his neck to break him after I bit off the ears.) They come in milk or dark, but no white.

Related Candies

1. Upscale Hollow Chocolate: Michel Cluizel & Hotel Chocolat
2. Wonka Golden Egg
3. Palmer Hollow Chocolate Flavored Bunny
4. Russell Stover Hollow Milk Chocolate Bunny
5. Lindt Chocolate Bunnies (Dark & Milk)

I really didn’t want to buy these; they couldn’t possibly be better than the Brach’s Bunny Basket Eggs (or worse, for that matter). Which I didn’t like, but have devoted followers. But I have to admit that it’s a valid confectionery expression: a grainy marshmallow covered in a lightly-flavored jelly bean-like shell.

What convinced me to get these though was the name: Hiding Eggs.

It seems obvious that Judson-Atkinson Candies is well aware that these aren’t for eating! They’re for hiding ... possibly without any hope of every finding. They’re all individually wrapped, which is great for throwing in Easter baskets or reassuring when you find one stuck in the sofa cushions in August and shrug and eat it anyway.

They come in the standard color & flavor variety of fruit jelly beans: Orange, Lemon, Grape, Cherry, Lime and Vanilla.

I’m not going to lie to you, this is not a comprehensive review, I didn’t eat all of them. I tasted the purple, orange and white ones and that was it. Read the Brach’s Bunny Basket Eggs review for my complete rant on the subject of these candy impostors (not that they’re BBBE impostors, but that they’re masquerading as edible confections).

The centers are soft and grainy, the shells are crunchy and grainy. The flavor layer is very mild, but the tastes distinct enough that you could probably tell them apart with your eyes closed. Each egg is a substantial hit of sugar, weighing in at a little over 13 grams each and about 50 calories (yes, that’d be 13 grams of carbs!).

So if you’ve been having trouble finding the Brach’s, or just want a brand that’s made in the USA (most Brach’s products are no longer made here), Judson-Atkinson Candies has your new favorite hiding egg. Added bonus, they were only $1.49.

The one thing that I find so enchanting about these is that they’re part of a rather extensive line from Judson-Atkinson that includes all different sizes of these eggs. Pigeon Eggs (small marshmallow eggs), Hen Eggs (medium marshmallow eggs) & Turkey Eggs (large marshmallow eggs). The Turkey variety tops out at about 1/3 larger than the Hen Eggs (which I think I’ve reviewed here ... it’s so hard to tell).

They’re an important part of Easter, I’ll grant you that. I’ve had mine for the year (just like I used to eat my bit of Pork & Sauerkraut for New Year’s as a kid ... for the record it was the pork that I didn’t like, I love sauerkraut), so I should be very lucky. Since they’re wrapped they may make good filler for pinatas, so pick some up on clearance next week.

These have a marshmallow center, so contain gelatin and are not suitable for vegetarians.

Related Candies

1. Circus Peanuts
2. Melster Marshmallow Eggs
3. Jelly Belly Deluxe Easter Mix
4. Peeps Lollipop Rings
5. Dubble Bubble Chick Eggs
6. Brachs Bunny Basket Eggs

Jelly Belly prides itself on its extensive flavor list. (See Brandon’s exhaustive tasting notes and listings of all the flavors that have ever existed.)

Jelly Belly has had a chocolate pudding flavor in the mix for quite some time and I’ve avoided it for the most part. Chocolate is not a flavor, it’s an experience made up of far too many things like alkaloid compounds, monounsaturated fats and polyphenols that simply cannot be bottled and applied to other confections.

Jelly Belly went ahead and introduced a new bean anyway, Dark Chocolate. I picked up some samples at the Fancy Food Show, tasted a few and then put them away for a time when I wasn’t innundated with so many good things.

In short, chocolate jelly beans are to chocolate the same thing that Tootsie Rolls are. Something utterly different and unsatisifying if you were expecting anything approaching chocolate. However, if you’re looking for something that’s durable and attractive, but not necessarily tasty, these may be your new favorite.

They got the color right, they’re pretty. A little on the dark purple side (cuz of all those artificial colors like Red 40, Yellow 6 & Blue 2) and containing not more than 2% of actual chocolate.

But they’re postively bitter to me. I chomp down ... there’s a mild sweet taste, like cocoa made with hot water, but then there’s a strong bitter blast. I’m not sure if it’s all the antioxidants (hah!) or the artificial colors, but they’re just inedible.

I thought at first it was just a bad bag, or just me. So I opened a different sample bag that was sent to me later by Jelly Belly. Same thing! Turns out I’m not alone, both Caitlin & Brian at Candy Addict recorded the same reaction.

Related Candies

1. Sixlets & Limited Edition Dark Chocolate Flavored Sixlets
2. Jelly Belly Licorice Bears
3. Tootsie Roll Mini Chews
4. Sport Beans
5. Jelly Belly JBz

I stared and stared at these at the Target a couple of weeks ago and thought, “I have these eggs, that’s enough Lindt for one Easter.”

But then I was back in Target again last week and there they were, further on sale (only $1.33 for the package instead of $1.66 on sale). It was the fact that they were hazelnut that got me. Or maybe that they were carrot-shaped. Or maybe that I only had one item and I’d already walked about 2.3 miles around the circumference of the new Harbor City store and that negates any calories in my basket, right?

The little box holds four of the carrots. They’re billed on the box as, “Solid Milk Chocolate blended with Hazelnut.” That sounds like guanduia!

Honestly, I was thinking it would be a hazelnut paste filling, not a whole stick of guanduia, but I’m not saying I’m disappointed.

Out of the foil the little confections stop looking like carrots and now look like folded umbrellas completely with a hooked handle. Very springy! They’re about 5.25” tall, with the chocolate portion at about 2.75” high. Each portion of chocolate is rather small, about .4 ounces or so (rather like the little traditional Piedmontese hats).

The chocolate is less milky tasting than the regular Lindt variety, instead it has some dark roasted nut notes and of course that rib-sticking hazelnut satisfaction.

They’re a cute little novelty, and at that price and with no artificial ingredients, it’s hard to beat. Unless you want some pretty foil-wrapped mockolate. I’m sure there’s something you can do with the leftover little sticks too, maybe something for Barbie or GI Joe. Definitely an item to pick up on clearance.

Made in Austria.

Related Candies

1. Milka Alpenmilch
2. Caffarel Gianduias
3. Caffarel Chocolate Truffle Mushrooms
4. Lake Champlain Hazelnut Eggs
5. Caffarel Gianduia 1865