Just a quick post to say Happy Easter to my Christian readers (and anyone who loves Easter candy).

The Monday after Easter marks the slow close of Candy Season until stuff starts appearing on the shelves for Halloween.

I hope you find some good deals! Here’s a mini-review of this Hershey’s Hoppy Egg Filler hollow rabbit.

This tall treat is from Hershey’s and made in the US. (The giant Hershey’s Kisses are now made in Mexico.)

The box makes him look formidable at 18 inches high. But the actual bunny inside is only 13 inches tall. I took his photo yesterday and ate his ear this morning for breakfast.

As far as solidness goes, he is technically hollow, but the shell is quite thick. This rabbit is 20 ounces, so there’s a lot of chocolate there. I had to take two bites of his ear ... and still didn’t hit air. (Instead I ended up poking him with a knife to find out how far the ear mass went.)

The chocolate was mediocre. It’s sweet, a bit grainy. It has only a hint of the distinctive Hershey’s tangy bite to it. I’m wondering if part of it is that he’s not really “sealed” in that box. He’s surrounded by an absurd amount of packaging, but none of it is airtight and the box is just closed with a little piece of tape. For $20 or so, which is what this guy is supposed to retail for, I think I want smaller but better.

I have to say that he was impressive looking and I’m sure any child will be thrilled to find one today ... or even on Tuesday.

What was your Easter breakfast?

Related Candies

1. Riegelein Confiserie Hollow Chocolate
2. Lake Champlain & See’s Bunny Battle
3. Upscale Hollow Chocolate: Michel Cluizel & Hotel Chocolat
4. Palmer Hollow Chocolate Flavored Bunny
5. Russell Stover Hollow Milk Chocolate Bunny

As an impulse by at Gelson’s (one of the upscale grocery stores in Los Angeles), I picked up this Marich Easter Select Mix.

I thought the packaging was really nice, better than the crunchy stand up bags that I usually see these sorts of mixes in (the current version of the Jelly Belly Easter mix was on the same shelf). The sleeve slips off to reveal the clear box, which opens easily and can be used for serving in casual settings.

It was expensive, though, for a mix of sugar candy (there were three foil covered chocolate eggs).

The package was $6.99 for 12 ounces ($9.32 a pound).

The package describes the contents as A cheery Easter assortment of creams, milk chocolate eggs, mints and jelly eggs..

The colors are bright and pleasant and there is a really nice mix of shiny little candies, I definitely bought these for the looks.

There were only three Foiled Chocolate Eggs in my mix, which was fine with me as I wasn’t buying it for the chocolate anyway. I thought the foil was a little dated, but that really didn’t matter after I ate one. The chocolate is quite distinctive - very sticky and smooth, strong dairy and malt notes with some caramelized sugar in there ... really tasty. It’s a big change from Hershey’s or Dove.

The Easter Creams are a fondant, like Candy Corn. They come in a variety of different molds (chickens, rabbits, chicks and decorated eggs) and flavors (lime, lemon, strawberry, vanilla and something called Wildberry).

The creams are very firm and have a bit of a shiny shell on them (a confectionery glaze perhaps?). They don’t smell like much. The flavors are mild and exceptionally sweet. The texture is a bit crumbly but ultimately very smooth. I don’t know what this wildberry thing is, but it tastes like a cross between violet, bitterness and raspberry. My favorite was actually the lime followed by the vanilla. Lemon was good but far too close to flavorless and strawberry had a bigger pop of flavor but also an artificial color aftertaste for me.

The little Nonpareil Pectin Eggs were quite bright. The little crunchies are a combination of magenta, purple, orange, white and yellow ... quite a riot of colors. Which is too bad, because I’m pretty sure that the colors are what made the crunchies so incredibly bitter. I don’t know if there’s something going on with my tongue lately or these really are this weird.

The fun part though is the wonderfully smooth & tangy orange jelly inside. It’s a very firm and flavorful jelly, almost like a gummi. They brought to mind these gummis I had from Jelly Belly a few years back (that they don’t seem to make any longer).

I tried peeling them, but that was simply too much trouble.

Next were the huge Jelly Beans. They’re a full one inch long and have a slightly translucent quality to them.

The shell is thin and crisp, beneath that is a consistent grainy layer, then a smooth and light jelly center. The biggest disappointment was the clear one, which was pineapple. For some reason it was horribly bitter on the outside to me. I couldn’t figure it out, especially since I kept thinking when I ate them without looking that they were spiky blue (that something about my synesthesia).

The Easter Holland Mints were the only other “chocolate” item in the mix. These were quite bit, bigger than the ones I get from Jelly Belly or Koppers.

The shell is flawless and shiny. It has a nice crunch to it, like an M&M. The dark chocolate beneath that is slightly bitter but otherwise creamy and mellow. The mint center is a soft but dry fondant (that’s uselessly colored light green). It’s a mild mint and the whole combination is great. There were only four in my mix, so I sadly didn’t get to enjoy many of them.

I’ve been seeing more Marich products in stores lately. I reviewed their Triple Chocolate Toffee a while back. I got a hold of a few handfuls of some of their chocolate items when I was working on a photo shoot for Candy Warehouse. I thought I’d share a few thoughts on those (not a full review):

Capuccino Almonds

The almonds in my assortment were huge. Some of these pieces were an inch and a third long.

The almonds at the center are well toasted. The milk chocolate coating is a coffee flavored chocolate. It’s a nice combination, the coffee flavor tastes especially authentic (although a bit chalky towards the end, as I think they’re using real ground coffee in there).

Dark Chocolate Covered Candied Ginger

These little cubes of ginger have a thick and glossy coating of dark chocolate.

I always enjoy chocolate covered ginger and was frustrated when I bought it at Trader Joe’s and the pieces were a bit sticky. These are perfectly sealed in the chocolate shells. The ginger is at once woodsy and warming. The extra sugar balances it all out with some texture and sweetness.

The Raspberry Chocolate Cheesecake was definitely the unique one in the bunch.

It’s a real dried raspberry center. Then it’s covered in dark chocolate. Then a white chocolate coating with a final veneer of raspberry flavor on that.

The tangy raspberry dusting mixes with the sweet and milky white chocolate to give that cheesecake flavor (or maybe more of a yogurt flavor). The real raspberry center certainly has a pop to it ... and a lot of texture which includes the seeds. The dark chocolate seems to enhance the seedy flavors. This one simply doesn’t work for me.

Also on the red side of things were the Pastel Chocolate Cranberries.

The outside is a red-colored white chocolate, then a little layer of chocolate. The center is a dried cranberry.

What I liked about these were how tart and intense the cranberries seemed to be. I eat dried cranberries quite often, but they’re usually sweetened. If there were sweetened, it certainly wasn’t too much. The tangy chew of the soft and moist berries went well with the otherwise flavorless red shell.

A few other items I tried were a Peanut Butter Caramel that had a caramel ball center, a layer of peanut butter and then a thin chocolate shell dusted in confectionery sugar. The caramel wasn’t quite chewy enough for me so all the textures melded together.

I also tried a hard crunchy shell chocolate covered caramel. They looked like quail eggs. I can’t quite describe it, it was like a chocolate creme brulee.

They make a Dark Chocolate Covered Toffee Almond, rather similar to the Sconza one I tried a few years ago. The dark chocolate was good quality, nice and buttery. The nuts were well toasted, sometimes it seemed a little too much so though. The toffee was crunchy and crisp.

On the whole, they’re an inventive company that makes a lot of really fun products. Most are great quality, I would love to see them decrease the amount of artificial colorings (they do make a line of all-naturals, too).

Related Candies

1. Milk Maid Caramel Apple Candy Corn
2. Big Bite Gummy Bear
3. Smooth n Melty
4. Gourmet Goodies Candy Corn
5. Krunchy Bears

The last item I’ve picked up from Russell Stover this year is their White Chocolate Peanut Butter Rabbit.

I bought it because Hershey’s has tweaked their White Reese’s Peanut Butter products. They were once a real white chocolate coating with cocoa butter, but now they’re a hydrogenated tropical oil concoction.

So I was careful to read over the ingredients on the Russell Stover white chocolate: White Chocolate (sugar, cocoa butter, whole milk, soy lecithin, artificial flavor & salt), peanut butter (peanuts, hydrogenated vegetable oils, salt) sugar, partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, tapioca dextrin, dextrose and salt.

It’s a pretty sizable rabbit, though it’s also over-packaged. The box is 4.5 inches wide and 7.5 inches high but the bunny is only 3.25 inches at its widest and 5 inches at its tallest. The rabbit is inside the sealed box in a little plastic tray.

It weighs three ounces and this one cost me $1.50 which I didn’t find at all unreasonable.

Opening the box, it smells like Easter baskets - milky sweet and fake.

It’s a nicely molded Rabbit with good details. The proportion of white chocolate to peanut butter varies greatly, depending on where I bit into it. The edges and creases were loaded with more white chocolate and the domed portions were mostly peanut butter.

The white chocolate is sweet and surprisingly smooth. But it was oddly waxy, not in a bad way, just in a fake way, like it needed an authentic dose of real vanilla beans or something. The peanut butter center is the crumbly peanut butter with the slight grain to it. It’s salty and nutty, but also rather sweet, too. The effect of the product is that it burns my throat. I think I might like it with more peanut butter and less white chocolate, perhaps a version of the peanut butter egg?

It just didn’t thrill me much. I ended up eating the whole thing, but it took me about three weeks of nibbling on it now and then. But if you’re a white chocolate & peanut butter fan and are disappointed with Hershey’s turn towards the oily side, it might be a good option ... especially if they’re on sale starting Monday.

Related Candies

1. Askinosie White Chocolate (Plain, Nibble & Pistachio)
2. Choceur Coffee & Cream
3. Vanilla Beans KitKat & Bitter Orange Aero
4. Toblerone Single Peaks
5. M&M Pirate Pearls
6. Bleached Reese’s

While some folks find the Cadbury Creme Egg to be the ultimate achievement in Easter confectionery, be warned that there are some pretenders to that throne. At the stores this year I found two such “knock offs.”

I found Walgreen’s and CVS had their own eggs this year. The CVS brand is called Absolutely Divine and comes in gold foil with a purple and black logo ... which made me wonder if they were a dark chocolate product. The Walgreen’s version is in primary/secondary colors and comes in both the Creme Egg and Caramel Egg.

What could a store brand have to offer? Well, the first thing I noticed about these CCE simulations is that they’re bigger. In fact the shelf box for the Walgreen’s said that they’re 14% larger. These eggs are like the once powerful Cadbury Creme Eggs in their original 1.38 ounce size (CCE are now 1.2 ounces).

Walgreen’s had these generic looking Creme Eggs on sale this past weekend for 40 cents each, which is not much less than an actual Cadbury Creme Egg. What I found so surprising is that I’ve been to that Walgreen’s at least twice before during this Easter season and these weren’t out on the shelves.

It was tough to read the wrapper. What I did get was that these are made in Canada and the chocolate shell is made of real chocolate.

The shell has a little line design on it, not the same as the Cadbury Creme Egg, so at least they’re using different molds.

Biting into the egg was a bit tough. It’s a thick shell and I was greeted with a creme that resembled a cordial more than the fondant than I was used to.

The difference between the egg white and egg yolk wasn’t quite apparent, though the best I could tell was there were two different colors of fondant in there. The center was sticky and inconsistent. Sweet, flavorless with little patches of clotted graininess.

Rating: 3 out of 10.

The Walgreen’s Caramel Egg comes in a purple wrapper. It was pretty easy to unwrap, but it felt quite heavy.

Biting it was similarly difficult to the Creme version - the shell is thick and almost solid on either end with only a minor void for the caramel at the center.

The caramel isn’t chewy or flowing. Instead it’s more of a pudding-like goo. As far a flavor though, it’s like a good caramel pudding, it’s very smooth and has some toasted sugar flavors. The chocolate shell is a bit hard, a little grainy and very milky tasting.

As far as this brand goes, I rather liked this Caramel Egg ... not enough to buy it again, but as a simulation of the venerable original, it at least meets expectations.

Rating: 4 out of 10.

The CVS Absolutely Divine Creme Egg didn’t look like much in the store. There was no explanation on the display box, and actually finding the “creme egg” part on the wrapper was pretty tough sleuthing that involved carefully flattening the foil after unwrapping.

I fully expected these to be made in Canada like the Walgreen’s counterpart ... that they just came spilling off the line to be randomly divided into different groups for different foil wrappers. This was more shocking when I read that they have identical ingredients and molding. But origins aside, the important part is how much they cost and how they taste.

I paid 50 cents each for these.

The egg was similarly thick-shelled.

The creme center was also similarly inconsistent, though not quite as flowing as the Walgreen’s version.

The chocolate shell was disgusting. It tasted like roasted cardboard. Musty, grainy and overly sweetened, perhaps steamed cardboard.

The sweet filling was completely overpowered by this too-much-bad-shell. And the name, well, they’re absolutely not divine.

Rating: 2 out of 10.

I have one other piece of not-so-shocking info. These are all sticky. Not something to be eaten while using a keyboard.

What I came away with is this: if you love Cadbury Creme Eggs, buy Cadbury Creme Eggs. If you don’t like Cadbury Creme Eggs, these aren’t going to persuade you that they’re a great candy. Spend the extra eight cents or whatever the price difference is and get the real stuff.

Related Candies

1. Cream Drops versus Creme Drops
2. Junior Fruit Cremes
3. Vanilla Creme Kisses
4. Cadbury Canadian Creme Eggs
5. Cadbury Orange Creme Eggs
6. Cadbury Mini Eggs

I picked up this package of Necco Paas Gummi Baby Bunnies at the Dollar Tree. I was a bit miffed even before I purchased it. As you can see from the photo, the bag is mostly empty. The product takes up, at most, a third of the bag ... though I have to say it did weigh a hefty nine ounces, which is a generous amount of candy for a buck. (The back of the package says “this product is packed by weight”, which I’m guessing means they’ve gotten some comments.)

The package design is rather lame. The illustration of the Easter Bunny with his basket of baby bunnies isn’t really very contemporary, and I don’t even know what’s going on with the yellow fluffy duck with red hiking boots in the background.

The package promises gummi bunny shaped candies in six creamy flavors. I’m accustomed to transparent gummis, these are opaque, but also apparently creamy.

All my other confusion and miffed-ness aside, these were a pleasant surprise.

These juvenile lagomorph confections are a little bigger than a gummi bear, clocking in at about one inch high. They’re soft opaque colors, matte and a little milky looking. The bag smells a bit like marshmallows and maybe a hint of circus peanuts.

Though the name says they’re gummis, they’re really not. There’s no gelatin in there (so I guess they’re vegan as long as you’re happy to eat modified corn starch, partially hydrogenated coconut oil and titanium dioxide). They look like mellocremes (fondant like Candy Corn), but they’re much smoother than that. They’re firm but give easily when bitten, not as sticky as a gumdrop, not as hard a Jujyfruits.

Banana - Yellow - I think this is the one that overpowers the bag. It’s a plastic-like fingernail polish flavor that wafts like some sort of VOC emission from an auto body shop. Still, I rather liked them, because I like fake bananas even though they made my lungs hurt.

Orange - Orange - rather like the lime one, the orange flavor is quite subtle. Reminds me of a creamsicle, or maybe the distant memory of the last creamsicle I ate about three years ago.

Cherry - Hot Pink - when I looked at this, I wasn’t scared of the cherry flavor, I was immediately turned off at the thought of all that Red 40 dye. The cherry flavor is stronger than the other flavors in the set. Then there’s a bitter component that I find pretty off-putting even if the cherry was rather nice.

Grape - Lavender - this was a baffling little rabbit. It tasted like the only one with a bit of a tangy bite, kind of like yogurt. But the grape flavor was barely there. It also had a bit of a bitter aftertaste.

Marshmallow - White - a rather believable toasted vanilla flavor. Smooth chew ... these are kind of what I’d always hoped Bunny Basket Eggs would be like.

Lime - Green - mellow lime flavor that lingers for a while, a bit of vanilla and it’s definitely smooth. A little bitter aftertaste.

They candies are soft and dry to the touch, so throwing them in the Easter grass out of the packaging like jelly beans is a decent option. They’re also cute enough to display in a jar or dish. (Really, anything is better than leaving in the lackluster package.)

Overall, I had no problem eating whatever I drew out of the bag, instead of picking through. (Though when given the opportunity, I threw the grape and cherry back.) The chew is soft and pleasant, not too sweet. They did tend to stick to my teeth, but not as much as something like Dots. They’re definitely worth the dollar I paid for them, but I really urge Necco to make the bag smaller by half, if only to save themselves some space & plastic costs.

Related Candies

1. Easter Novelty Toys (with candy)
2. Peeps Chick & Bunny Candy
3. Kisses Coconut Creme
4. Peeps Mash Ups
5. Jelly Belly Deluxe Easter Mix
6. Peeps Lollipop Rings

My office is now next door to a Cost Plus World Market. Which means that I browse there about once a week ... and try to resist buying more than twice a month. It took three trips before I succumbed to this one kilo (2.2 pound) bag of Sweet Moments Chocolate Eggs (Ovetti) made by Laica. Priced at $9.99 it wasn’t that it would cost me a Hamilton, it was that it was more than two pounds of foil covered chocolate eggs. That’s a lotta candy!

The description on the front says milk chocolate eggs with hazelnuts cream and cereals filling. There’s also a little logo in the top right that says puro cioccolato.

All of the candies are the same flavor, but feature four designs on the foil. Each has the company logo on it and calls these Nocciola (hazelnut).

The light blue has an angry chick, the green has a white duck, the tan has a decidedly unhappy sheep and the yellow features emotionless butterflies and flowers.

The eggs are about 1.25 inches long with little lines on the widest part. They smell sweet and a little like roasted nuts and hot chocolate.

The bite is soft and easy. The chocolate shell melts easily, it’s real chocolate and in the European milky style.

The center is creamy with dots of little cereal pieces. They’re like crisped rice, only spherical and according to the ingredients made of a mix of corn, rice, wheat and barley. They’re crispy and provide a nice malty crunch. The creamy paste in the center is sweet and sticky with a hint of hazelnut flavor - not as much as I’d hoped. The ingredients show that the center is sugar, fractionated oils, the cereal bits and then 8% hazelnut paste followed by cocoa & milk plus some other stuff.

Overall, they’re quite easy to eat. They don’t satisfy in the sense that after three I don’t want any more, instead I keep eating them. Though they’re more expensive than some other American made chocolate confections available for Easter, they edge out on the quality front and they certainly taste good. And they’re cute.

Last year Easter came much earlier (March 23, 2008), so I think there were far more after holiday deals to be found because of the compressed selling period between Valentine’s and Easter. One of them I was eager to take advantage of was this set of Caffarel Eggs being sold at Williams-Sonoma (they’re back this year). At regular price, they’re pretty expensive at $24 for 10 ounces (19 eggs). But I ordered them on clearance after Easter for $6.99 a bag. I also got the candy shell version which didn’t return this year.

Each little egg had a collar and label: mandorla (almond), torroncino (nougat), gianduja (hazelnut & chocolate paste).

Sadly my clearance deal netted me two bags of bloomed chocolate. I ate most of the first bag, and though the bloom wasn’t too bad, it did make the outside of the eggs rather oily and difficult to remove the clingy thin foil.

The chocolate is smooth and silky (other than the bloom issue), the center was rich and thick, much like the other Caffarel gianduia products I’ve had. The nougat one had little crunchy bits in it. The almond one had an amaretto flavor to it that I didn’t care for at all ... so about a third of the bag was a flavor I didn’t care for (but luckily others I know do).

The quality of the ingredients is top notch and the hazelnut flavor (or almond, in the case of the mandorla) is rich and decadent. The packaging is exceptional, each one is a little gift (though also makes a lot of little bits of paper for cleanup). I’m not going to give them a rating because of the bloom though.

They’re a wonderful little treat, but very expensive when there are other products around like the Ovetti or even the Moser Roth Truffles my mother sent me from Aldi. However, I do see them sold singly from time to time, usually for a dollar at fine delis ... so it’s definitely worth it to have a little treat now and then.

Related Candies

1. Lindt Chocolate Carrots
2. Nestle Creme Eggs
3. Lindt Lindor Truffle Eggs
4. Caffarel Figs & Chestnuts (Fico & Castagna)
5. Caffarel Chocolate Truffle Mushrooms
6. Caffarel Gianduia 1865

It used to be that only Black Licorice jelly beans were sold in single flavor bags. Then Jelly Belly came along and let folks pick out just their favorite flavor and the whole world of jelly beans changed. But other than the gourmet beans, it still seemed like pre-packaged single flavors were pretty rare.

This year, as I was looking at the shelves at the drug store and grocery aisle, I was pleased to see so many different jelly bean flavor singles. (Gimbal’s also had color mixes that I might try to pick up on sale after Easter.)

Last year Nestle introduced the Nerds Bumpy Jelly Beans, this year I found a new jelly bean version of one of their classic candies, the Spree Jelly Beans.

What pleased me even more than the new product was that I could just buy the lemon ones. I found these only at Ralph’s (grocery chain) this year, not at any of my other regular Easter candy aisles. They also come in Green Apple (light green) and Cherry (pink).

The first thing I noticed about these beans was that they seemed more opaque. In fact, completely opaque. No vague translucence here. The second thing I noticed was that they’re very smooth and have no “bottom” to them like most beans.

The ingredients say dextrose first. Most jelly beans start with sugar (a disaccharide, dextrose is a monosaccharide which is also known as glucose). Dextrose is what Sprees are made of! (As well as most “chalk” candies.)

On the tongue the flavor is mild and slightly cool. Dextrose is a little lighter sweetness than sucrose. The shell dissolves pretty quickly but it’s definitely different from the usual jelly bean shell. It’s not grainy except at the margin between the jelly center and the shell.

The flavor is a very mild sweet lemon at first, then there’s a little burst of tangy flavor at the edge of the shell and center. However, it wasn’t consistent. Every once in a while I’d run across a bean that had a really good Lemonhead burst to it, but most were much milder. I’d say most failed on the Spree motto of a kick in the mouth, which is too bad, because when they got their kicks in, they were definitely sizzling.

The crunch of the shell, if I chewed them up, wasn’t quite M&Ms style or as thick as the Nerds Jelly Beans, but still closer to that than a traditional jelly bean. The centers were basically flavorless, but a smooth and firm jelly.

On the whole, these were a very nice changeup from a regular jelly bean. They’re not quite as fun as the Nerds version, but the fact that they come in the pretty standup bags in specific flavors sets them apart. But they are a bit more expensive than regular beans. I got these on sale for $2, which I still thought was a bit high for seven ounces of sugar candy.

It’s not often that I’ll stop my fast forward through commercials to watch something. I definitely did when I saw the Reese’s: Perfectly Easter advertisement.

I’m not only a huge critic of candy (because I love it so), I’m also rather fond of breaking down advertising, but I’ll save that for another time.

The important takeaway I got on that advert was that Spring is in the Air and Reese’s Eggs are a chocolate covered peanut butter product.

Candy Blog reader, Peloria, has been wonderfully helpful in helping me track down these two versions by leaving comments on my original review of the perfect Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs (2006 version). I got a hold of eggs for 2009 from three stores with two different wrappers. For the most part single Reese’s Eggs are sold with the package that doesn’t say that they’re milk chocolate. But I also found the six pack that says Milk Chocolate above the Reese’s logo.

Whether they say Milk Chocolate or not, the ingredients are the same. So I did a little digging.

The classic Reese’s Peanut Butter Egg ingredients were (2005 source):
Milk Chocolate, Peanuts, Sugar, Dextrose, Salt, Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil, Corn Syrup, Cornstarch, Glycerin & TBHQ.

The current 2009 ingredients:
Peanuts, Milk Chocolate, Sugar, Dextrose, Vegetable Oil, Chocolate, Nonfat milk, Salt, Whey, Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil, Corn Syrup, Milk fat, Corn Starch, Soy Lecithin, Glycerin, TBHQ, Vanillin.

For reference, the standard Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup ingredients are (in 2009):
Milk Chocolate, Peanuts, Sugar, Dextrose, Salt & TBHQ.

There are a few changes there, but nothing that definitively says that these aren’t a real chocolate product any longer. But they’re different enough to change the nutritional profile. There’s more salt (they’ve gone from 140mg to 150mg), and 11 grams of fat now instead of 10.

So I tasted them (after all, at this point I had 9 of them). The chocolate coating looked a bit chalky, not glossy (and some looked a little swirly and uneven in color). They’re soft and the peanut butter overwhelms any chocolate flavor anyway. The peanut butter center is crumbly and nutty, not completely smooth but not crunchy, just a little more rustic than the stuff in a jar. Salty, sweet and satisfying. The chocolate coating feels cool on the tongue and seems to melt pretty well, but it also melts in my fingers pretty quickly too. It’s a good time these come along in the spring because they’d never make it in a Los Angeles summer.

I’m not sure why Hershey’s has removed the Milk Chocolate part from some wrappers, I fear it’s because they’re planning something for next year ... kind of easing us into crappy candy instead of a sharp shift that causes an uproar like the true & mockolate Kissables being on the shelves at the same time. I still consider them a winner. The prices appear to have gone up. I got the six pack for $2 on sale, but buying the individual ones, the best sale I could find was 75 cents each.

Hershey’s has a bunch of other candies for Easter in the Reese’s line, too. There are Fudge Covered Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs and Reester Bunnies, which are just a molded version of the RPBC in various sizes. They’re more chocolate than peanut butter. Then there are the Foil Eggs, the Reese’s Pieces Eggs (in beautiful pastels),

Then there’s this strange monstrosity which is also called Milk Chocolate Reese’s Peanut Butter Egg but unlike the 1.2 ounce version, this one is molded. It’s also 6 ounces (so five times as big but twice the price per ounce).

The box is ridiculously oversized for the product - it’s 6.5 inches long. The egg itself is 4.5 inches long, 1.5 inches high and 3 inches wide at the broadest part. That means one inch of space on all sides ... feels like more than just protection, feels like a bit of fakery. (Though it’s easy to see the entirety of the product through the cellophane window.)

The ingredients are pretty much the same as the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup - erring on the chocolate as the first ingredient, not peanuts.

I get the sense that these are supposed to be like those deluxe slicing candy eggs that have always puzzled me. Candy, in my opinion, doesn’t need any serving implements. It’s meant to be eaten with the fingers and needs no preparation or tools. Either I bite into this one and eat it all by myself, of I slice it up. Which I did.

Looking at the slices there, I think you can tell that this is not the same center as the 1.2 ounce egg ... it looks and feels a bit oilier (which is not a bad thing, just a different thing).

The interesting experience with these slices is that the amount of chocolate shell varies so much depending on where the slice comes from. The ends, of course, are mostly chocolate. But even in a center slice, the chocolate shell is especially thick, much thicker than any cup I’ve ever had from Reese’s, as thick as a regular Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Bar.

The chocolate flavor was completely lost on this product, it tasted like peanut butter fudge, though it was pretty smooth and sweet with a slight milky flavor to it. The peanut butter center was stellar. It was relatively solid, had the crumbly texture and didn’t taste as sweet as the regular eggs. I liked the clear distinction between the chocolate shell here and the peanut butter filling, instead of the unclear margins in the smaller egg. But sometimes the chocolate had a coconut flavor to it that I can’t quite explain nor say that I cared much for.

However, the silly over-packaging and price tag would certainly keep me from buying these ever again. But if you’re looking for something for a peanut butter obsessed person’s Easter basket instead of a pile of the small eggs or the standby bunny, it might be fun. Portion control was a lot easier than I thought, I sliced up rather logically into five pieces, though I can’t be sure that they were actually the same weight. The package says that it serves four (which means each serving is more than a single regular egg).

I feel like downgrading the 1.2 ounce Reese’s Eggs to a 9 out of 10, but maybe that’s an emotional response, a response out of fear, not one based on my actual tasting (though there was some throat burning from the sweetness I don’t remember from the past). As for the giganto one, it’s not something I appreciate, though I guess it’s okay. I give it a 7 out of 10.

UPDATE 3/30/2009: Thanks to Peloria’s continued documentation, I kept looking for these other non-milk chocolate labeled eggs. I finally found them at the 99 Cent Only Store near my house. The packages were 2 for a dollar.

Sure enough the ingredients indicated that they’re really not chocolate (I know, the photo looks like all the other photos, but trust me, this is what the reverse says):

Peanuts, sugar, dextrose, vegetable oil (cocoa butter, palm, shea, sunflower and/or safflower oil), chocolate, nonfat milk, contains 2% or less of milk fat, lactose, salt, whey, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, corn syrup, soy lecithin, cornstarch, glycerin, TGHQ & PGPR, vanillin.

They look a little flatter than the milk chocolate eggs (labeled or not). As for the taste, well, this one seemed really salty to me, but maybe that’s what happens when I have peanut butter eggs for breakfast. (Hey, eggs are a breakfast food!)

The mockolate coating wasn’t bad, it wasn’t any worse looking than the current eggs. It has a similar melt and cool feeling on the tongue, it’s sweet but I didn’t taste any milky component to it.

I still don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know why they’ve have both on the market at the same time, why they’d make two versions and ruin something that was perfectly good and perfect. As for the ruining part, well, they’re not that bad but I’m not fond of eating palm oil when I could be eating cocoa butter.

Related Candies

1. Reese’s Peanut Butter Bar
2. ReeseSticks (Revisit)
3. Hershey’s Miniatures
4. Short & Sweet: Post Easter Tidbits
5. M&M and Reese’s Pieces Peanut Butter Eggs
6. Dove Truffle and Snickers Eggs
7. Hershey Eggs