Napoleon hard candies are made in the Netherlands and at one time were just a simple lemon candy with a sour center. Later they started adding other fruity flavors and of course the salted Dutch licorice.

When I was in Amsterdam last month on a brief layover, I popped out to the grocery store to see what else was new and I found these Napoleon BonBon Cola candies. I was excited to bring them home and eat them, though probably not review them. Then on Tuesday I was in the Farm Fresh Market at the Ferry Terminal in San Francisco and I saw them there too, so they’re available (though probably rather limited) in the United States as well.

It’s great to see them here, because there’s really nothing else like them in American markets (though Japan gets pretty close).

The Napoleon construction of this candy is pretty easy to understand. It’s a sphere of nicely flavored and press molded hard candy with a little reservoir center of powdered sour lemon flavor with a slight fizz.

The cola hard candy is smooth and has a good even dissolve without sharp voids. The flavor is sharp and distinct, a spicy mix of cola nut, a touch of cinnamon and nutmeg and tart citrus. The sherbet center started to leak out as I sucked on the candy, giving a little pop of tart flavor and sometimes a slight fizz. The center also gives a slight cooling effect on the tongue along with the searing sourness when taken at full strength.

I liked them a lot, there’s a lot of interactivity considering the fact that they’re just a hard candy. Cola flavor is pretty rare in the United States in candy, which is too bad because it’s a great flavor that combines spice and citrus so well. I don’t drink soda, but I love the flavors that were created for them.

If you see these, give them a try. I don’t know if I’d special order them on the internet, but I’d certainly pick them up again if I saw them. They were especially good for the long drive back from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Hard candy is great for keeping me alert without too many calories.

Related Candies

1. Skittles Fizzl’d Fruits
2. Napoleon BonBon
3. Zip Bomb
4. Soda Can Fizzy Candy
5. Zotz Apple
6. Pop Rocks Cherry Cola
7. Haribo Fizzy Cola

Hershey’s has been chugging along with their Pieces line, the long-overdue expansion of the Reese’s Pieces product into other pelletized versions of popular Hershey’s candy bars.

The new Hershey’s Pieces - Milk Chocolate with Almonds isn’t as innovative as some of the other candies, such as the Almond Joy Pieces or the initial Reese’s Pieces. But they fill a void in Hershey’s offerings and I was looking forward to them.

The first big stumbling block I had, though, was the price. 8 ounces for about four dollars. Other stores sell them for $4.50. I have a hard time paying 8 or 9 dollars a pound for Hershey’s candy in bulk quantities.

They also don’t reinvent the niche with some new quality. They’re not low in allergens, the list on the back says that they may contain soy, wheat, other tree nuts and peanuts. A great selling point would have been a nutty candy that is actually peanut and/or gluten free.

The Pieces look like the package illustrates. They come in three colors: dark brown, brown and cream. They vary widely in size, based on the core of almond. Some are as small as a Peanut M&M, others are huge, sometimes over an inch long.

They’re a standard construction of a well-roasted almond, a milk chocolate coating and then a colored candy shell. The colors are pleasing. I actually enjoyed their muted tones more than the loud and artificial M&Ms Almond. Of course these are also artificial, with Red 40, Yellow 6 and Blue 1 & 2 ... just less bang for the coloring.

The almonds are roasted to a very dark color, roasted in cocoa butter and/or sunflower oil). This is a good choice. I found them all crunchy and fresh tasting, not a single fibery or bitter one in the bag.

The shell is thin enough to crunch easily and provide only a modicum of sweetness. The milk chocolate is only marginally acceptable. It has the Hershey’s sour note to it, which I actually like sometimes, especially when mixed with more savory elements. Here it was such a back seat to the large almonds, it worked.

I prefer this, by far, to the Hershey’s Milk Chocolate with Almonds bar. But I don’t like it better than M&Ms Almond, because of the difference in the chocolate flavor. What I’d really like to see is a Heath Pieces at this point, that’d really set the Pieces line apart from their current iteration as an M&Ms clone.

Related Candies

1. Hershey’s Special Dark Pieces
2. Hershey’s York Pieces
3. Hershey’s Almond Joy Pieces
4. Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Almonds
5. Sconza 70% Dark Chocolate Toffee Almonds
6. Reese’s Pieces
7. M&Ms Line
8. Reese’s Pieces with Peanuts

In the history of candy, I’m pretty confident that some of the earliest boiled candy sweets created were nut and seed brittles. The genre of sesame brittles fit in nicely as one of those candies that I think has been around for a thousands of years. Early versions probably used date sugar and honey instead of refined sugar.

The Joyva Sesame Crunch is a dead simple candy, made well and without much fuss or fanfare. It’s sold in two formats, the large single serving plank (1.125 ounces) and little individually wrapped snaps.

It has only four ingredients: sesame seed, sugar, corn syrup, honey. It’s packaged equally simply, a small paperboard card to keep the slab from breaking and then inserted into a cellophane sleeve. The logo may not be a thousand years old, but certainly looks like it could be from the 1970s.

I’ve been eating these candies for years, and they seem to fall into the genre of healthy, judging by the number of natural food stores that carry them. They’re exceptionally durable too, since there’s no chocolate they don’t melt and the coating of sugary candy over the sesame seals them up so they don’t oxidize (get rancid).

The brittle base is just boiled sugar and some honey, the flavor is mostly from the sesame seeds themselves, which are nicely toasted and have a good oily, nutty balance with a light grassy and bitter note. The sweetness is mild, and the overall crunch and chew is long lasting. I find that when I buy these, I have a hard time not eating whatever quantity I have in one sitting. Still, my ideal version would probably have a little more candy to it, and a little more honey flavor.

Since sesame seeds are the main ingredient, there’s a fair amount of fat in the bar, though I’ve read that sesame oil is quite healthy as far as vegetable oils go. The bar is filling, but not too sweet, so it straddles the line of snack and candy very nicely. It’s filling and even has a little bit of protein, so it will probably keep blood sugar levels from spiking like other pure sugar candies might. The calories on the label say 180 for the bar, but I think that’s steep for a sesame candy that’s only 1.125 ounces. (Tahini is about 160 calories per ounce and has no sugar in it, which is lower in calories per ounce than sesame oil.)

The bar is Kosher, naturally, as well as being marked as gluten free. It may contain traces of almonds or pistachios. The package doesn’t say anything about peanuts. It’s not vegan, unless you’re the kind of vegan who’s okay with honey.

Related Candies

1. El Almendro Turron Selection
2. The 110 Essential Candies for Candivores
3. Fard’s Persian Pistachio Nougat
4. De la Rosa Mazapan
5. Joyva Joys
6. Halvah and Turkish Delight
7. Pocky Kurogoma (Black Sesame)

One of the charming candies that I’ve sampled over the years from Japan is from Fujiya. Fujiya makes confections as well as running a series of cafes. Their mascot is Peko-Chan, little chubby cheeked girl in pig tails, which is now a well recognized icon around the world and appears on the Milky brand of chocolate candies.

Fujiya also makes a line of inexpensive chocolate candies more for adults under the Look line. These are usually little trays of individual pieces, often with multiple flavors in one package. I was attracted to this new introduction of single flavors. The Fujiya Look Crepe in Chocolate comes in a nicely sealed flat package and retails for less than $2.00 usually.

The tray inside holds 12 pristine and lovely little chocolate squares. They’re a little over 3/4 of an inch square and a half an inch tall. They’re shiny and fresh. So far, so good.

The English translation sticker on the back lists the ingredients and the nutritional panel. Instead of giving the calories for a serving, it says that one piece has 24 calories. So they’re kind of high in fat since they clock in at a calculated 158 calories per ounce. The other thing that the ingredients revealed is that this isn’t quite real chocolate. It’s made with cocoa butter, but there’s added vegetable fat. After eating them, I wouldn’t have needed to be told.

Again, they look great. They smell great. The bit is soft, the “crepe” inside is like an ice cream cone or feuilletine. It’s crispy and has a slight toffee flavor to it. It’s airy, you know, because there’s that big void in the middle ... a great mix of textures. But the problem becomes the chocolate coating. It looks great and even has a rich chocolate flavor, but the texture is just weird. It’s gummy, thick but without that smooth melt that real cocoa butter delivers. I’d call it waxy, but because it does actually melt, it’s hard to pin that on it.

The chocolate flavor, however, for a milk chocolate product, is especially rich, like a really decadent cocoa drink. It’s also not overly sweet. But still, since so much of the candy is made up of the chocolate, it’s just too disappointing to keep eating.

Like the blue packaged Crepe in Chocolate, the pink packaged Fujiya Look Wafers in Chocolate have it all going on in the looks department. The packaging is sharp and accurate. It’s bold and even has enough English on the wrapper to keep me from being confused.

This version is a little lighter, each piece has 22 calories. The construction is like a KitKat bar, a series of light wafers with cream between them. There are 12 little pieces in a segmented tray in the package.

The wafers are great, airy and crispy with a slight vanilla and malt note. The cream between them ... hardly noticeable. It’s all overshadowed by that same, weird, not-quite-chocolate stuff. It’s too bad, because I really wanted to love these, especially the Crepe since it’s such an uncommon combination in the United States. At least I know that I wasn’t imagining it or it was some anomaly with one package. Both had the same qualities, both were within the expiry and obviously were stored properly.

I might give Look another try, as they try new flavor combinations very often, but I’ll be careful to read the package first so I don’t get my hopes up for good chocolate.

Related Candies

1. KitKat Otonano Amasa (Adult Taste)
2. Mars Delight
3. Tunnock’s Caramel Milk Chocolate Wafer
4. Eat with your Eyes: The Most Awesome Chocolate Bar Ever
5. Vanilla Beans KitKat & Bitter Orange Aero
6. Short & Sweet: Japanese Goodies
7. Feel Envy

Angry Birds Fruit Gummies were introduced late last year to tie into the popular video game of the same name. They’re made by a company called Healthy Food Brands which says on the front of the box that these are made with Real Fruit Juice, in addition to Natural and Artificial Flavors (plus a heaping helping of artificial colors).

They come in a theater style box. There are four “collector editions” of the box, each themed for a different main character of the game: Red, Yellow, Green and the Blue, which I chose.

The box is 7 inches long, 4.25 inches wide and .75 inches deep. The interior white packet is 5.5” long, 4 inches wide and the .33 inch thickness is that of the gummis themselves when they’re spread out (and don’t even fill the bag). So, it’s what I’d call a big box for a small amount of candy. There are 3.5 ounces in the box and I paid $1.69. Of course I bought them at 7-11, which is very expensive for candy. But still, it’s a poor value for sugar candy. Other sugar candy movie theater boxes give you at least 6 ounces for the same price (Dots, Mike and Ike, Hot Tamales, etc.). Chocolate candy is the only exception to that, but I expect there to be a price difference for nuts or chocolate, not licensed shapes.

Each flavor is a different color and a different character. They’re bright and soft and bouncy. They’re not terribly greasy, but do have a little waxy coating to keep them from sticking. They’re rather small and mostly round - a little less than 3/4 of an inch in diameter.

Cherry (red): The Red Bird - it’s cherry. It’s soft and has a strong chemical flavor to it, not very well rounded and has a slight apple juice note to it (but the fruit juice concentrate used is white grape). 
Lemon (yellow): The Yellow Bird - it’s lemon and a bit soapy and bland. It’s a little tangy, but not as sour as I’d expect a lemon gummi to be. 
Raspberry (blue): The Blue Bird - the floral flavors remind me of shampoo or a children’s perfume product. The chew is soft and smooth and the flavor is sweet and sour, but mostly artificial.
Apple (green): The Pig - tastes an awful lot like apple juice and some green apple flavoring. There’s also a grassy note to it. I wasn’t that keen on them, but they didn’t actually taste artificial, so I give it some credit for that.
Grape (black): The Bomb Bird - it’s supposed to be grape and it did have that Grape Soda sort of flavor to it, but it was so bland that I probably couldn’t have identified it with my eyes closed.
Strawberry (lighter red): Big Brother Bird - this was a dead on impression of Strawberry Jell-O. I’m rather fond of the stuff, not so fond that I’d actually make a batch, but fond enough that I liked these gummis and did pick through the assortment to find these.

Basically, these are serviceable but hardly improve upon other gummies out there. They’re expensive with the only thing to really recommend them, aside from the nicely designed box is the fact that they’re gluten free and nut free (if those are things you’re interested in). They’re made in Mexico.

My suggestion? Buy one box, you know, for the box, and then keep refilling it with something better. I suggest Albanese Gummi Bears, or any of the cute shapes they also come in like butterflies, army men, worms or flowers. Those are made in the USA, come in really great flavors and cost half as much.

Check out Jess’ review on Foodette Reviews.

Related Candies

1. Life Savers Gummies Spooky Shapes
2. Trolli Gummi Bear-Rings
3. Candy Source: Albanese Candy Factory
4. Wonka Whipped Wingers Gummies
5. Au’some All Natural 3-Dees
6. Albanese Gummy Army Guys
7. Wii Candy Dispenser & Nintendo Gummis
8. Albanese Gummi Butterflies
9. Brach’s Gummi+Plus & Tropical Gummis

It’s the time of year when I find myself turning to cough drops. Not so much this year because of any particular cold, but it makes me feel like it’s winter. There’s something about the flavors of cough drops that are as essential to the early months of the year as cinnamon and nutmeg is to Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Spice and herbal flavors have all but disappeared from hard candy on the shelves at mass market retailers, so cough drops are a good place to find that. I picked up this classic looking box of Luden’s Honey Licorice Throat Drops just before I found the revived Pine Bros Softish Throat Drops. I was attracted to the name of the flavor, licorice and honey are both soothing and uncommon.

The box is simple and elegant and features a belt & suspenders form of freshness protection. The drops themselves are inside a thick waxed paper sleeve inside the box, which has a tab top closure. Then the whole thing was inside cellophane shrink wrap. I appreciate the inner waxed liner, because the plastic overwrap only protects the drops while they’re in the store, not after I’ve opened them.

There are 14 drops inside and because these are therapeutic items, they’re not considered food and taxable in California. They’re marked as Kosher, but have no weight listed or a full nutritional panel.

The drops are petite, with smooth rounded corners, they are about 3/4 of an inch long. The color is, well, rather dull, but at least it isn’t enhanced with artificial colors (or flavors). The dissolve is smooth and there aren’t any sharp voids in the boiled sugar base. The flavor is strong on the menthol, light on the honey and with only a touch of anise/licorice. It reminds me of a hard candy version of Fisherman’s Friend. The menthol is strong enough to give me that cool feeling in my sinuses, which are pretty clear at the moment.

I finished the box and now I’m inclined to try some other flavors, like Honey Lemon.

As a side note, the cough drop and candy connection really isn’t that surprising. William H. Luden, who made Luden’s Throat Drops, also created the 5th Avenue bar and made various other items like peppermint patties, chocolate covered raisins and peanuts plus hard candies. Though Hershey’s now owns the rights to the Luden’s candy products (though only makes the 5th Avenue now), Luden’s cough drop business is now owned by a company called Prestige Brands which makes products like Cloraseptic, Efferdent and Compound W. (Let’s hope they never combine the attributes of all three of those products.) The package I’ve reviewed, however, still said McNeill Consumer Healthcare, which sold off Luden’s in late 2010. So there may be some differences in packaging and more current products.

UPDATE 3/2/2012: The packaging has changed. I have to say that I’m a little disappointed, because they’ve looked the same as long as I can remember. But then again, the new boxes are quite nice as well.

Related Candies

1. Krauterbonbons from Lubeck Christmas Market
2. Villosa Sallos Licorice
3. Perfetti Van Melle Golia
4. Honees Honey Filled Drops
5. A Bit of Medicine: Cocoa as Cough Suppressant
6. The Apothecary’s Garden: Spices

I’ve been stopping by convenience stores more often lately, waiting for some new candies to come out on the shelves, so I noticed these Mamba gummis. I’ve already tried the regular packages, but these were Sour, so says the big green splat on the front.

The Mamba Sour Gummies end up being expensive at the 7-11, which is almost as bad as going to a concession stand at the movies. 1.5 ounces is $1.19. The package says that they’re made with real fruit juice (5%) and the calorie count per ounce (100) is actually pretty low for candy, with only 150 calories for the entire package.

The package says the flavors are: orange, banana, raspberry, pineapple and cherry.

The pieces are about one inch across and feature a sweet and sour sanding on them. They’re soft and pliable, like gummis.

The idea of Sour Banana isn’t exactly appealing. I don’t care for unripe bananas, though they’re not really sour, just not quite sweet yet and too firm. In this case the sour banana doesn’t taste like either a ripe or unripe banana. More like a lime soaked banana.

Pineapple was dreamy. It was floral and tingly and unlike the banana that started out sour, this started out sweet and got quite sour towards the end, all the way to the jaw tingling finish.

Watermelon was quite mild and really only about the sour. It had a good and reasonably authentic watermelon flavor, which means not much of a flavor at all.

Raspberry is a sour jam without much floral or much in the way of that seed flavor. It’s okay, not really one of the better raspberry gummies I’ve had, but it is at lease naturally flavored.

I didn’t get any orange in my package, nor it appears any cherry.

The gummi market is crowed, though there aren’t that many in sour available in little packets at the convenience stores, so I have to give credit to Mamba for being in that space. I think the biggest competition for these would be the Life Savers gummis. With the natural ingredients and 5% juice content in this version, I’d say a parent is much better off with these than Life Savers. The packaging and shapes don’t make it feel like it’s a compromise.

Related Candies

1. Storck Mamba Gummies
2. Starburst Sour Gummibursts
3. Katjes Saure Ananas (Sour Pineapple)
4. Mamba Sours
5. Lifesavers Gummies Sour
6. Sour Gummi Bears

I know it will seem odd to much of the country on January 3rd for me to say this, but it’s hot today. It’s already 75 degrees this morning and looking to top 85 by mid-day.

While I revel in winter in Southern California, because I can buy, store and enjoy as much chocolate as I want, I turned my attention to an item I bought before Halloween. These Pink Lemonade Airheads.

Airheads were one of those candies that didn’t exist when I was a kid, and by the time they came out, it was past my sour candy phase and I didn’t pay much attention to them until I started Candy Blog. I gave them out for Halloween for the first time this year, and I was really shocked and pleased at how excited the kids were to get them. The one flavor in the mix that caught my attention was the Pink Lemonade, so I went back and purchased more after the holiday.

They’re small bars, a little over a half an ounce per packet. The little plank is about four inches long and a little over an inch wide.

Airheads are a strange candy, in a category really by themselves. They’re a chew, but not a full taffy. They’re a bit grainy, but have a smooth melt in the mouth.

The Pink Lemonade flavor is pink, but more on the salmon side than a light red. It smells like a tub of Country Time Lemonade Mix. The bite is a little tough, but the bar is flexible and easy to rip apart. It tears in a bit of a grainy fashion, instead of pulling smoothly like a taffy would.

The flavor is a straight lemonade - it even has a that slight powdery grain to it in the early part of the chew. The lemon is tart and sweet but not an authentic juice flavor and has only a light zest note to it. It is rather like a chew SweeTart.

I can’t see myself eating these a lot, but I like that the chew is clean, not sticky like a taffy or jelly candy can be. It’s somewhere between a SweeTart and a Starburst. It might be fun if there were smaller bites, so I could get more flavor variety. But then I imagine that all I’d want would be lemon anyway.

If your New Year’s resolution was to slow down on the sweets, they’re a pretty efficient little treat. There are only 60 calories in a bar, though it’s all sugar and no actual nutrition. They’re cheap, nearly indestructible, portable, Kosher and probably vegan if you’re the kind who eats unnatural things (they don’t say the source of the pink coloring). Made in a facility that processes wheat flour. No other statements about tree nuts, soy, dairy or peanuts.

Related Candies

1. Sour Punch Bits - Tangerine-Lemonade
2. Wonka Kazoozles: Cherry Punch & Pink Lemonade
3. Mike and Ike Alex’s Lemonade Stand
4. Kasugai Fruits Lemonade
5. Head to Head: Chewy SweeTarts vs Chewy Tart n Tinys
6. Head to Head: Mentos Sours & SweeTarts Shockers
7. Airheads
8. Airheads Xtreme Sour Belts