Storck is a German candy company that makes some fantastically chewy stuff, such as Reisen Chocolate Caramels, Toffifay, Werther Caramels and Mamba fruit chews. While Germany is the homeland of gummis, it’s strange to see such a large, established candy company suddenly get into the crowded gummi market.

I found a fun new, and unlikely place to shop for candy. It’s a gas station convenience store simply called Food Mart near my mother’s house in Glendale, CA. I’d filled up with gas there many times before (because it was one of the least expensive places in the area, clean, well maintained and had soapy windshield cleaner). One day when I actually went into the store I was shocked to see a huge selection of international candies. They carry German products including the most popular items in the Kinder line, Ritter Sport bars (including the seasonal varieties), British bars (Mars, Cadbury, Maltesers) and a really wide selection of American candies.

So I picked up this little package of Storck Mamba Gummies which are called funny fruity gummies and feature banana, orange, raspberry, pineapple, watermelon and cherry flavors. They feature real fruit juice in the ingredients and no artificial colors.

What I thought was interesting about this flavor assortment was the fact that it included banana, not a common gummi flavor. After I got the little package home (it’s only 1.5 ounces) I noticed that I didn’t have the full assortment of flavors. Above is everything inside the packet, four different flavors.

The texture is soft and pliable, they don’t stick together though they do have a little touch of oil on them. The shapes are tropical, little palm trees, snakes, a chameleon, sharks and something that’s either a raspberry or a puffer fish.

Banana (yellow) is tangy but with that creamy banana flavor. It was less artificial tasting than some other banana candies that have more of a caustic flavor. This was pleasant and soothing.

Pineapple (clear) is tangy, floral and jammy all at once. It’s an excellent rendition of pineapple.

Raspberry (deep red) was by far the most common flavor in my package, which is just fine with me because these are well done. The flavor is a mix of the boiled sweetness of raspberry puree with a light touch of the woodsy seeds and a note of iced tea in there. It wasn’t overly tart like some “blue raspberry” versions of the fruit.

Watermelon (pink) was quite authentic, at least as far as watermelon candies I’ve had this summer. It had a sort of rind taste to it, not just the sweetness of the flesh. Watermelon really isn’t much of a flavor as an actual melon, it’s more of a texture.

So, I missed out on Orange and Cherry in my package. I think I scored overall, as these were all nicely done. The fact that it’s a small package (only 130 calories) with no artificial colors makes it a pretty light treat for kids.

Related Candies

1. Au’some All Natural 3-Dees
2. Wonka Sluggles
3. Trader Joe’s Gummy Tummies
4. Mamba Sours
5. Katjes Tropical Gummis & Yogurt Gums
6. Storck Chocolate Riesen
7. Storck Mamba Chews

Cadbury Adams, makers of Swedish Fish and Sour Patch Kids have introduced a new product to their line of jelly candies. Sour Patch Kids Berries are a variety of four berry flavors of the classic chewy jelly candy covered in sour sand.

There’s no mention of this product on the Sour Patch Kids website, and the package is rather scant with details as well. There are four colors for the candies, but there’s no mention of the flavors. I think they’re: Cherry, Blue Raspberry, Strawberry and Grape.

The regular Sour Patch Kids come in four flavors: orange, cherry, lemon and lime. The Sour Patch Fruits come in watermelon, orange, lemon, lime, grape and cherry. Then there are the individual flavor packs like Watermelon, Peach and Cherry. It seems like cherry gets a lot of attention from the Sour Patch family, here it is in three different assortments plus a package all of its own.

Sour Patch Kids are a simple construction, a firm jelly candy is molded and then coated in a sweet & sour sand. They’re small, so one is a good bite.

Grape (Purple) is a great sour flavor. This grape is just like a jelly version of Pixy Stix or SweeTarts. There’s a lot of fake grape flavor to go along with the sour.

Cherry (Red) is as I expected, tart and sharp with the strong woodsy notes then sweet and a little on the medicine side, especially as the food coloring kicked in.

Strawberry (Pink) this was the flavor I wasn’t quite sure about. It’s soft and floral and more delicate than the others, perhaps even a little citrusy.

Blue Raspberry is a well rounded flavor. It’s quite tart at first then morphing into a sweet and floral berry flavor that’s reminiscent of the Swedish Fish.

Here’s something that’s been bothering me for years. Sour Patch Kids don’t look like kids. They don’t look like much of anything except maybe shaving brushes. There are little characters on the package, but I’ve never quite been able to make them out. Jelly Babies manage to look like their little characters on the package, so I know the molding technology allows this. Even Swedish Fish do an excellent job of looking like little fish.

It’s interesting to see a new mix of flavors for the Sour Patch Kids, even if the actual flavors are not new. There’s nothing earth shattering here or innovative, just a limited mix that might appeal to folks who don’t like the citrus flavors in the regular Sour Patch Kids or Sour Patch Fruits.

Related Candies

1. Sour Punch Bits - Tangerine-Lemonade
2. Tootsie Sour Dots
3. Sour Patch Chillerz
4. Haribo Saure Dinosaurier
5. Lifesavers Gummies Sour
6. Sour Patch Extreme
7. Sour Patch Kids

Pernigotti is an Italian chocolate maker and confectioner, founded in 1860. They’re based in northern Italy, the birthplace if Gianduia and home of the famous Piedmont hazelnuts.

Gianduia was invented back in the late 19th century during a time of chocolate shortages, confectioners put hazelnut paste into milk chocolate to preserve the texture but conserve chocolate solids. The resulting product became a wonder all of its own and actually more expensive these days than straight chocolate when made without oil fillers. The Piedmont area of Northern Italy is also known for its prized and unique tasting hazelnuts (nocciola). Gianduia has a lower melting point than chocolate because the oils in hazelnuts are not solid at room temperature so it’s quite creamy and slightly cool on the tongue.

The Pernigotti Orogianduia Gianduiotti comes in little hat shaped morsels wrapped in textures, matte gold foil. They smell quite sweet but have a note of the toasted hazelnuts. The ingredients are superior to most imitators - sugar, hazelnuts, cocoa paste, cocoa butter, milk powder and no additional vegetable oils.

They’re quite firm at room temperature, which is good because it’s been warm this summer and hard for me to store my large chocolate reserves. These have been sitting in an insulated cooler (no freezer packs, just enough protection from the daily swing of temperatures in my un-air-conditioned house.

They’re sweet and have a slight sugary grain. The melt is cool on the tongue and has a deep roasted hazelnut flavor. There wasn’t much of a chocolate punch to it, more of a milk note for me. It wasn’t the richest chocolate and hazelnut experience I’ve ever had, but a great little evening treat and excellent with dark coffee.

The item that I was most excited about from Pernigotti was their new Nerogiandua Crema Fondente. If you think the package looks a bit like a beauty product, it’s no accident. The marketers wanted to capture women looking for a little decadent pick me up. Think of it as Nutella for grown ups.

As I found the standard Orogianduia a little on the sweet and milky side, was hoping the Nero (black) would be a little richer. The package for this version was all in Italian, but I was able to figure out what everything in there was. The first ingredient was sugar, then Piedmont hazelnuts (20%) then cocoa powder (19%) and then it went on to list refined vegetable oil (of unknown origin), soy lecithin and vanilla. There was no dairy in there at all.

The look of it is dark and glossy, like a fine frosting, not like fudge or a rustic paste. The texture is smooth and the flavor was immediately sweet and nutty. After the sugar dissolved away there were wonderful charcoal flavors of chocolate and toasted hazelnuts. It’s definitely decadent. For a while I was eating it by the spoonful, but I also found that it was great on pretzels or the more traditional Belgian waffles.

I haven’t seen this in stores in the United States yet, but did find it online for about $6.00 a jar. Since it’s already a spreadable product there’s less of an issue of melting if you get it shipped (I would probably never order gianduia via the mail any other way). I tried a similar product from Pralus (France) called Creme de Noisette which was spectacular but about twice the price.

I keep my jar in the fridge and just bring it to room temperature at the time of consumption.

The last product is kind of a mini hazelnut cream chocolate bar. This version of the classic gianduia is called Orogianduia Nocciogoie and is encased in a chocolate shell and has two large, whole hazelnuts inside.

They come in a similar bag that holds only 5.25 ounces and each is individually wrapped. The prices run about the same, again, these are not easy to find in the United States unless you see them at an import store or specialty grocer. I’ve had trouble finding a source online for them.

Each piece is nicely packaged and protected in a gold mylar wrapper. Inside they smelled wonderful. They were a bit more chocolatey than the straight gianduia hats, as there was the small bit of milk chocolate shell. What really made these spectacular was the large and crunchy hazelnut inside. They were fresh and aromatic and provided a great offset to the very sweet Italian gianduia.

Just as there are a oodles of varieties of milk chocolate in the world, there are quite a few different versions of the classic hazelnut paste in chocolate. Once you get past the ingredients, the rest is up to personal preference. I missed the sticky, milky and nutty flavors of Caffarel in the milk chocolate versions from Pernigotti, but their Nerogianduia was really spectacular and something I would be happy to keep on hand.

Related Candies

1. Milka NAPS Mix (Assortment)
2. Die Besten von Ferrero: Mon Cheri, Kusschen & Rondnoir
3. Pralus Creme de Noisette
4. Caffarel Gianduias
5. Ferrero Rocher
6. Caffarel Gianduia 1865

Wild Blueberry Maple Ice Mints are made by Big Sky Brands in Canada. Big Sky also makes Jones Soda and YogenFruz candies.

Their tins are always quite smart looking and I rather liked the simplicity of this one, just a smaller version of the standard set by Altiods. The embossed top flips open to reveal the candies inside.

The tin says that the “mints” are made with real Canadian maple sugar. The full ingredients are: pure cane sugar, maple sugar, natural flavor, calcium stearate and malic acid. There are thirty in a tin, which holds less than an ounce, .85 ounces.

The candies have a polished yet rustic look. They’re shiny and sharply stamped with a little maple leaf in the center. But the texture and color of the candies is a little mottled, it’s not a bright white and has little caramel colored flecks in it.

The scent is definitely smoky and like toasty maple syrup. The flavor of the candies though was a bit different from what I was expecting. It is a combination of all the flavors that are listed in the description, they are mint, they have maple sugar in them and blueberry flavor. It’s a riot of flavors. Not a “burn my tongue down” riot, but the kind that pulls off my backpack and steals my books kind. The blueberry is tart and floral, the maple is rustic and woodsy ... so far so good. But the mint is cool and minty with a little note of eucalyptus. It’s like a blueberry cough drop made in some sort of colonial re-enactment apothecary shop.

I liked the straight ahead Maple Ice Mints, so I’ll have to stick with those, because these are just not for me. But I’m also not very happy with the combination of mint, lime and white rum that are used to make a Mojito. So if you’re down with mojitos, maybe you’ll be down with Wild Blueberry Maple Ice Mints.

Related Candies

1. Brach’s Maple Nut Goodies
2. Gimbal’s Sour Lovers
3. Panda Blueberry Liquorice
4. Maple Ice Mints
5. Yogen Fruz Smoothies
6. Caramilk Maple
7. Jones Soda Grape Carbonated Candy

While things have stagnated in the world of Life Savers hard candy rolls, it seems that Wrigley’s (current owner of the Life Savers brand) can always innovate new versions of their Gummies line.

I found this package of new Life Savers Gummies Collisions at the drug store. It’s not listed on their websites.

The concept is pretty simple, each piece has two flavors, divided longitudinally. There are three sets in the package: Raspberry Lemonade, Cherry Watermelon and Pineapple Punch. Two flavors in one gummi isn’t really new, gummi worms have been doing it for years. Here we have the worm eating its tail to form a hoop of gummi.

Each piece is just shy of one inch around. They’re easy to identify and all were nicely molded. Life Savers gummis are quite soft and pliable. They’re also pretty big, clocking in at about 4 grams each while most gummi bears (using Haribo as a standard) are about 2.2 to 2.5 grams.

Raspberry Lemonade is yellow and red. The raspberry flavors are really interesting, because I got a lot of the seed notes along with the floral overtones. But the lemon only gave up a smidge of zest, no actual tart lemonade vibe in there.

Pineapple Punch is half aqua and half yellow. It smells mostly of punch and unfortunately also tastes of fruit punch. I was hoping for some of that inimitable Life Savers pineapple flavor, and the yellow side did have a little hint of it, but it was dominated by the artificial punch flavor. There was a slight sizzling, effervescent intensity to the flavor. It was sweet and had a lot of guava notes with a little hint of mango, papaya and of course the pineapple.

Cherry Watermelon is light green and red. This one definitely had the strongest scent, which was the watermelon. The watermelon flavor was also strong in the candy, even when eating the cherry half. It reminded me of a slightly thinned out Jolly Rancher. Tangy, sweet and with a sort of rind flavor. The cherry gave the whole thing that slight woodsy flavor. Mostly I think they missed the boat on the cherry thing: Life Savers wrote the book on Wild Cherry, they own that flavor. It should be in here, if they have a cherry something, it should be the iconic Life Savers Wild Cherry.

There was a sameness to each of the varieties, I didn’t taste a distinction between the two sides. So that means instead of having six flavors in the bag, there were really only three. That’s not an amazing diversity, however, if you like all three flavors, that means you’re never going to be disappointed at getting any particular version. I didn’t care for the watermelon & cherry one, so a third of the bag would have been disappointing for me.

Related Candies

1. Trolli Soda Poppers
2. Wonka Springy Double Yummy Gummies
3. Life Savers Pep-O-Mint & Wint-O-Green
4. Meiji Poifull
5. Au’some Easter 3-Dees Gummy
6. Trolli Sour Brite Crawlers
7. Lifesavers Gummies Sour
8. Lifesaver Gummies

Meiji is one of the major confectionery companies of Japan with recognizable brands like Yan Yan, Hello Panda, Chelsea and my favorite GummyChoco. I admire their products quite a bit, their flavors are bright and authentic and the attention to detail is excellent. Last year I reviewed their standard Meiji Milk Chocolate bar and found I really liked their intense flavor style. So I picked up this box called Meiji Corot which simply called them chocolate ball in English on the otherwise Japanese package.

Meiji also packages their candies well, but this is the first one I’ve really had an issue with. The box is large, it’s 4.25 inches high and 2.75 inches wide, that’s larger than a deck of poker cards or a box of cigarettes. Inside the box is a little mylar packet. It protects the candy well and certainly kept it fresh, but there’s only 1.48 ounces of candy in here - a standard bag of Milk Chocolate M&Ms as 1.69 ounces.

Hershey’s came out with a similar product last year, called Hershey’s Drops. They’re also big disks of solid chocolate with a light, shiny glaze to keep them from sticking together.

The chocolate balls are actually oblate spheroids - a squashed ball. The aspect ratio or flatness of the spheroid is determined by the dimensions. The major axis is 1.5 times the length as the minor axis. (They’re .75 inches across and about .5 inches thick at the center.)

The candies are 3.5 grams each, so a hefty little bite of chocolate compared to an M&M which are about .85 grams.

They’re creamy and milky with a chocolate pudding flavor to them. The dairy flavors are distinct and the chocolate is quite powerful, certainly a more dominant note. There’s a strong bitterness that I don’t think I get with most consumer milk chocolate products. It’s toasted and maybe even a little smoky with notes of plain old charcoal. I enjoy the flavor, it’s munchable with a great texture but a little more sophisticated than a standard milk chocolate candy.

The ingredients are not quite as desirable as the plain Meiji Milk Chocolate bar. This version of Meiji’s milk chocolate also contains some vegetable oil filler (though there’s also plenty of cocoa butter in there). The curious ingredient towards the end of the list was trehalose. Trehalose is a sugar, a disaccharide made of two glucose molecules. It’s only 40% as sweet as the standard sucrose (a disaccharide made of one glucose and one fructose molecule). I’m not quite sure what its purpose here is, it’s not here in great quantities, as it’s on the list after the soy lecithin (which is usually less than 2% of the overall mass of any chocolate product).

I also recently picked up some of Meiji’s 40th Anniversary editions of their popular Meiji CoffeeBeat chocolate candies. I’ve reviewed them before, but these versions were in different packaging and came in two versions - a milk and dark version.

The Milk version, in the tube, has a great sweet latte flavor to it. The coffee is quite strong and rich and the sugar and milk mixture is reminiscent of caramel. The one in the box didn’t come with any additional English descriptions but I can say that the milk flavors are downplayed at the coffee flavor is extremely strong, yet the texture is still creamy and smooth with a lingering charcoal bitterness.

I love these little nuggets. They’re about the size of a real coffee bean or an M&M and feature a solid coffee flavored chocolate core covered in a thin crunchy shell. I don’t know why we don’t have these or something like these widely available in the United States.

The Meiji CoffeeBeat keep their 9 out of 10 rating. (If they were more affordable and easier to find, they might get a 10 out of 10.)

Related Candies

1. Meiji Milk Chocolate
2. Hershey’s Drops: Milk Chocolate & Cookies n Creme
3. Meiji Poifull
4. Galaxy Minstrels
5. Meiji Gummy Choco
6. Coffee Beat
7. Dars Bitter

I know there are a lot of blogs out there that review candy these days, but somehow I feel alone in my obsession for licorice. (And I feel sometimes that I’m alienating my non-licorice loving readers by featuring something black every week.)

I picked up this cute little can from Van Slooten called Flowers & Butterflies Mix of Sugared Liquorice. It’s Dutch and as far as I could tell, was a mix of salted and sweet licorice much like the previous little can I picked up and reviewed of Licorice Figures. It seemed a bit pricey, something the size of a can of beans that cost $3.99, but they really packed the candy in there, it’s over a half a pound at 8.82 ounces.

The mix inside was as described, at least six different shapes and as far as I could tell, three different varieties.

Gummi Flower & Tulip is chewy and dense but with a very mild flavor. It was mostly a toasted sugar flavor, sort of like a marshmallow and some light anise. That was it. I liked it and I ate them all. At first I didn’t realize that the tulip was the same as the flatter 10 petal flower. But once the tulips were gone (yes, I ate them first), I figured it out.

Butterflies are a great medium brown color with sparkly grains of sugar. There are two shapes for the butterflies, but I found the texture and flavor to be the same with them. I expected a griotten flavor and texture, which is a light and airy gummi with a salted licorice flavor. These did have that brown sugar and salted licorice flavor but with instead the texture was sort of tacky and chewy. I can’t say that it as quite a gumdrop, but it definitely wasn’t a gummi marshmallow. I enjoyed these, the salt was quite noticeable but not so much of the ammonia aftertaste taste that I don’t care for.

Gumdrop Flower is really chewy and has a strong molasses flavor. Aside from the grainy sugar coating, it’s quite smooth. I enjoyed it at first, but then there’s a tangy element that creeps in along with something metallic, then I got a hit of the ammonia. As long as I alternated them with the other versions, I found them passable. Ultimately I was left with a dozen of them in the bottom of the can.

I would eat these again, especially for the milder gummi varieties. They’re also pretty and I like the compact, easy to open and close package.

Candy Gurus tried their Fruit Gums called Fun & Sun Fruit Gum

Related Candies

1. 12 European Licorices
2. Van Slooten Lakrids Figurer
3. Albanese Gummi Butterflies
4. Van Slooten - Autodrop Total Loss
5. Licorice Assortment
6. Dutch Licorice

You may have seen Tea forte before. It’s a line of premium teas that come in little pyramid shaped mesh teabags. The blends are quite tasty but very expensive.

The company also introduced a line of sugar free, all natural mints called Minteas recently that come in these attractive leaf shaped (or surfboard, take your pick) tins. They’re also expensive, but a little more affordable considering the number of servings in the $2 package. I picked out the Minteas Retreat: Lemongrass Yuzu.

The bottom of the tin says: Get away with the soothing calm of wild-crafted lemongrass and the comforting citrus of Japanese yuzu. Relaxing chamomile offers the perfect antidote to stress. A sanctuary for the senses.

The tin says that they use organic botanicals and fair trade certified, organic white tea. (The fair trade tea is a minor component in the ingredients, the second to the last element, right before calcium stearate. There is also some plain old organic green tea in there.) They’re sweetened with sorbitol and xylitol, natural sugar alcohols that feel cool on the tongue and have fewer calories per gram than regular sugars.

The scent of the candies is quite nice, if you like Murphy’s Oil Soap or other citrus based cleaning products and candles, you’ll love this. Each little leaf shaped piece is a little longer than a half an inch. The pressed tablet candy dissolves or crunches, depending on your eating style.

The first thing I get is a sharp, bitter zest note. It’s not quite lemon and not quite grapefruit. It’s yuzu, which is a Japanese citrus similar to a grapefruit in its flavor components, only it’s usually the size of a lemon or orange and costs about $30 a pound here in Los Angeles. There are more floral blossom notes to it than just oily zest.

The little mint has a slight lemongrass note as well, which is kind of gingery and soft. There are other herbal and tea flavors in there, some green tea, which might also contribute some of the bitterness and soapy notes and chamomile, which always reminds me of catnip.

As far as “mints” go, these do have a long lasting flavor, a sort of jasmine freshness that lingers after the candy is gone. But the flavor while it’s in my mouth is a bit bitter, a little too much for me.

The package says that the product was designed in the USA but made in China. However the website says that the “source” of the ingredients is Egypt for the chamomile (ingredient #5 on the list) and Japan for the yuzu (not specifically listed as an ingredient, but probably is part of the “natural flavors” of ingredient #3. I feel misled about their transparency. If they’re going to say that something contains fair trade and/or organic ingredients, I also want to know where all the other ingredients come from. The website says they’re gluten free but makes no mention of their vegetarian/vegan status or any nuts or other allergens.

Related Candies

1. PUR Gum: Xylitol Sweetened
2. Maple Ice Mints
3. Newman’s Own Ginger Mints
4. Choward’s Spearmint & Lemon
5. SparX
6. XyliChew
7. HiCHEW Yuzu & Valencia