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Ce De CandiesThursday, August 13, 2015
Mega Smarties ‘n CremeA couple of months ago on Candyology 101 we were talking about a new product called Mega Smarties ‘n Creme. It’s a layered Smartie candy with a creamy The roll is substantial, both in the packaging and the contents. I was initially shocked at the price of $2.49 for a roll, but it is 2.25 ounces. The wrapper is a paper/foil style that is easy to open and actually re-closes pretty well, too. The pieces are 1 inch in diameter. I pulled out some Giant Smarties I had sitting around as a comparison in the photo. There’s a vanilla note to the pieces once they’re unwrapped, but only from afar. The candies come in five colors/flavors. In a little diversion from the standard Smarties, there are blue ones in there. The disks remind me a lot of game pieces or poker chips. One side is lightly colored and flavored, the other side is white. I can’t tell if it’s a distinct flavor of its own. Purple is Grape and largely floral in flavor. It’s lightly tangy, but no actual grape flavor is in there. The floral notes are on the violet side of things. Orange was disappointingly bland. Yellow is Peach and by far the most tart of the array but not terribly peachy. Blue is Blueberry, another floral flavor, but there is a light tart and jammy note in there. It actually ended up being my favorite flavor of the group. Pink is Strawberry which is rather mild, which I think most people would be disappointed by. Though I found them pleasant enough, there was a weird “B vitamin” note that I had trouble getting around. Though they’re certainly better tasting that Flintstone’s Chewables, at least then I’d be getting my RDAs. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 3:14 pm Candy • Review • Ce De Candies • Compressed Dextrose • 6-Tempting • United States • Friday, September 19, 2014
Smarties Double Lollies and Mega LolliesSmarties are little tart wafer candies that have been made for 65 years. They’re a little bland but pretty much irresistible and ubiquitous starting around Halloween each year. To backtrack a little bit, this category of candy is called Compressed Dextrose. Dextrose is just a fancy way of saying sugar, but not the regular table sugar we’re used to, which is sucrose. Dextrose is the dry form of glucose, the same stuff in corn syrup. Dextrose is the basis of a lot of compressed tablet candies, like SweeTarts, Spree and Runts as well as Smarties. Glucose so bio-available that you can absorb it into your bloodstream sublingually. Many parents use Smarties as emergency glucose tablets because they’re readily available, easy to portion, inexpensive and not hard to get a child to eat. I’m quite fond of Smarties, but that straight glucose often goes straight to my bloodstream and the subsequent crash means I rarely buy a whole bag. The Double Lollies are preferable conceptually, then, because they’re only 8 grams each. Since they’re usually sold by the piece and more expensive than the rolls, this naturally limits my indulgence. The regular sized lolly has been around for years, though I can’t say for sure that I was always eating the Smarties brand. The Smarties Double Lolly is two flavors. Though they’re probably in several flavors, I could only find orange and yellow. They’re chalky and dry, but have a pleasant citrus flavor overall. They’re tangy and grainy, dissolve quickly but leave a powdery mess if biting the small pop doesn’t go well. I don’t find sucking on it goes very well. The chalk is absorbent, and while that’s fine for hard candies, I don’t like seeing my lollipop now darkened and cooled by my spit. (Hence my biting usually.) Interestingly the website for Smarties says that the Double Lolly is free of gluten (from wheat, barley, oats and rye), milk, egg, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, wheat, peanuts or soybeans. However, it does not say that for the Mega Lolly. I bought two of the Mega Lollies, one was lemon and orange and the other was orange and grape. The grape smelled floral and soapy. The pop itself is too big to comfortably fit in the mouth, so even if I were the type who liked to suck my regular Smarties lollies, the Mega just wasn’t going to work. It’s too dry, too awkward. Biting produced a mess of powder.
The odd part about the ingredients is the Calcium Stearate. It’s a flow agent and keeps the powder from caking. But the side benefit to this ingredient is that it contains large amounts calcium - a single Mega Lolly has 6% of your RDA. Too big, too dry, not a good value and not enough control. The classic size doesn’t have most of those challenges, but I’ll stick to the rolls of Smarties tablets. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 2:11 pm Candy • Review • Ce De Candies • Compressed Dextrose • Hard Candy & Lollipops • 5-Pleasant • United States • Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Candy Tease: April 2013Name: Bubble Gum Flavored Peeps Marshmallow Name: Smarties Gummies Name: Cinnamon Lovers Name: ALERT™ Energy Caffeine Gum Name: Cinnamo Sticks All images are courtesy of the respective manufacturers. POSTED BY Cybele AT 5:19 pm Candy • New Product Announcement • Atkinson's • Ce De Candies • Gimbal's Candy • Just Born • Highlight • Featured News • Monday, March 25, 2013
Short and Sweet: Easter Bites - Part 2I have a few more Easter items I wanted to include before Sunday. They’re not extraordinary products, but I didn’t want to pass them up. This year was, I felt, the best we’ve had so far this decade for Easter candy diversity. It was a nice mix of classic products, new flavor twists on existing items and then some exciting new diversions. The stores seemed well stocked, better than I saw them two years ago, for example. It’s an encouraging sign for the economy and for our tummies. Just Born is celebrating 60 years of their iconic Peeps marshmallow candies. They’ve come a long way from the early years when they came in plain yellow. Now they’re available in all the colors of the rainbow and special flavors. To mark the anniversary, they’ve created a 60th Anniversary version in Vanilla Creme flavor. They’re the individual Peeps (not a conjoined row) and feature little sparkly flecks of multi colored candies, like edible confetti. I prefer an uncolored Peep, as I think the artificial colorings get in the way of the pure sugary flavor. (Ghost Peeps, for that reason, are the best.) The Vanilla Creme is a soft flavor, artificial and lacking in the complexity of a nice Tahitian vanilla pod, but still it has a soft and comforting flavor that cuts a bit of the sugary sweetness. They’re bouncy and fluffy and grainy. The little confetti add a little bit of a crunch, but mostly they dissolve quickly on the tongue. These would be a fun version available all year round. I also heard that they’re releasing Birthday Cake Peeps which are a turquoise blue and yellow cake flavored. (Which is also a great idea for a year-round Peep.) Rating: 7 out of 10 I admit that I bought these because of the package. They’re just egg shaped gumballs. Smarties Bubble Gum Eggs are made by Ford Gum in the USA with real sugar, there are no artificial sweeteners in there. I bought them for $1.49 at Cost Plus World Market, but then I saw them at the 99 Cent Only Store for a dollar. They’re passably good. They come in different colors, but I really didn’t get a sense that they were different flavors, all vaguely and pleasantly fruity. They were soft enough to bite but have a satisfyingly crunchy shell. Each piece is a good size for chewing, two make for a little too much. The sugar takes a while to be dissolved, so there’s no bubble blowing right away. Even after the sugar is gone, they’re a little too stiff and snappy to blow a good bubble with. At other times of the year, they’re also available as plain old gumballs. I bought them before and feel the same way about them. They’re okay. Mostly I like them because they’re pretty. I just chew the sugar out, spit out the gum and start up with a new piece. Rating: 5 out of 10 I noticed this new Hershey’s chocolate bunny introduced in 2011 called Snapsy Snap-Apart Bunny. The concept is that the bunny is flat instead of dimensional, and pre-sectioned to break apart easily. The version I purchased, for a buck, is 2 ounces, or about the size of a King Size bar. It comes apart into five pieces. Each is a good size for dipping into peanut butter, which was always my favorite way to eat my Easter Rabbit. This is one of those products that solves a problem you didn’t know you had. I’m sure if this were sold on infomercials, the first part would demonstrate all the frustrating things about a sumptuous solid chocolate bunny and how hard it is to eat, how children fight over it and what it should be named. I don’t have much to say except that it’s a rabbit shaped Hershey’s bar. It’s made from Hershey’s marginally satisfying chocolate, the same stuff in Hershey’s Kisses, Hershey’s Miniatures and those addictive little Hershey’s Candy Coated Eggs. While I don’t think Hershey’s Milk Chocolate is good chocolate, it’s mighty fine candy. It’s fudgy, grainy and tangy and comforting. It’s also made in Mexico. (The Candy Professor had a bit of a rant about Snapsy.) Rating: 5 out of 10 Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 2:46 pm Candy • Peeps • Review • Easter • Ce De Candies • Hershey's • Just Born • Chocolate • Gum • Marshmallow • 5-Pleasant • 7-Worth It • Mexico • United States • 99 Cent Only Store • Cost Plus • Target • Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Mystery SmartiesIn the United States we have something called Smarties. They’re little rolls of sweet and sour compressed dextrose in mild flavors. (In Canada they’re called Rockets.) They’ve been around since 1949. Smarties come in three sizes. The Classic roll is 7 grams (.25 ounces). The Giant roll is 28 grams (.99 ounces). The Mega roll is 63 grams (2.25 ounces). So one Mega Smartie is about 3.3 grams ... basically, two Megas are equal to a whole roll of Classic. Smarties used to come in one set of flavors, but now there are a few varieties, including Tropical and X-Treme Sour. The rolls for today’s review are the Mega variety, which are the largest that Smarties makes. The twist for the new Mystery Smarties is that they’re completely mixed up rolls of all three flavor versions. Not only are they a combination but the colors are completely mixed up and randomized, red is not always cherry, white is not always pineapple. The mystery here is that it’s not a one for one swap. One time I had a cherry green one and another time I think it was a blue one (but that may have been a sour). The roll contains 19 tablets and two tablets are about 25 calories. They’re considered vegan. (The ingredients were hard to find, they’re on the twisted ends of the wrapper, not with the nutritional panel, so you can’t actually read the ingredients before you buy.) Ingredients: Dextrose (Contains Maltodextrin and/or Corn Syrup Solids), Citric Acid, Calcium Stearate, Artificial Flavors, Colors (Red 40 Lake, Yellow 5 Lake, Yellow 6 Lake, Blue 2 Lake). The classic and original size Smarties have always been my favorite. I’ve tried the X-Treme Sour and Tropical (and Bubble Gum) but they’ve messed with the unique quality of the standard, teensy, powdery and barely flavored tablets. The Mystery Smarties come in yellow, purple, blue, green, pink and orange. The colors hardly matter, as they’re just to mess with you. The large tablets are smooth and soft and fit nicely in the mouth. The flavors vary widely, from intense and burning lemon to a mild and sweet pineapple. The X-Treme sour flavors were a bit too much for me in this size, I think if I were to eat them, I’d prefer the little tablets. The texture is a little crumbly and dissolves easily. They’re not quite cool on the tongue, like some dextrose candies can be, but definitely not as sweet as a pure sucrose tablet would be. I didn’t enjoy the surprise of a very sour or a very cherry piece. After a while, I wouldn’t even finish the flavors I didn’t want. It made me long for the classics. But kids really dig this sort of thing, so give them what they want - a bit of variety and a few shocks. There are probably good lessons in there for children as well about not judging things by appearance, and maybe a more sobering one about never counting on anything. It’s a fun experiment that ultimately taught me to treasure consistency and how nice it is when expectations are met. Still, I recognize that I still have a problem with Smarties, I really can’t stop eating them when they’re in front of me. Smarties are free from most allergens: no milk, egg, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat or soy. They are vegan (calcium stearate is plant based) but do feature many unnatural ingredients including the artificial colorings. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 12:54 pm Candy • Ce De Candies • Compressed Dextrose • Sour • 6-Tempting • United States • Friday, October 31, 2008
Tropical and Xtreme Sour SmartiesEach year around this time there are lists of the best and worst Halloween candies. At the top folks always seem to have Candy Corn, but right in there is another misunderstood and underappreciated candy, Smarties. There’s not much too them, they’re a simple tangy compressed dextrose candy stacked into a tight roll and wrapped in cellophane. For almost 60 years CeDe Candy has been churning out the chalky, barely flavored tablets. It’d be a rare Halloween Trick-or-Treat bag that didn’t have at least one roll. More recently CeDe’s product line has expanded to include Bubble Gum Smarties, Mega Smarties and now Xtreme Sour and Tropical Smarties. The Tropical Smarties roll is attractive, orange and yellow accents give it a sunny, citrus look. The tablets themselves don’t look or smell any different from the original though. Original come in green, yellow, purple, pink, orange and white, Tropical seem to come in green, yellow, orange, pink and white. In the case of the Tropical array, when eating mindlessly the rolls had a soft sweetness to them with some notes of pina colada and banana/strawberry. In the particular the yellow ones are banana (in the regular array I think they’re lemon) and the white ones seem to be the pina colada. All of this causes too much thinking for something like Smarties though. Though the different colors are different flavors they’re one of the few candies I won’t separate before I eat. Tropical Smarties are pleasant, a little milder (if that’s even possible) than the Original. Rating: 7 out of 10. The first thing I noticed about the X-Treme Sour Smarties is that they’re more vivid. Not quite SweeTarts colors, but pretty close. The colors are green, yellow, purple, orange and pink (maybe red). They seem a bit denser and less powdery than the Original. The flavors are actually perceivable, though not terribly notable. The tanginess is very high pitched. Where SweeTarts are a mid-range tartness (malic acid) these seem more citric acidy. I like the balance of flavor to tartness with SweeTarts, but I can see this different kind of tartness and the back seat the actual flavors take having its appeal. Rating: 5 out of 10. On the whole, I’ve always loved Smarties in the sense that I will eat them, all of them, than later I will feel sick, curse them and vow never to eat them again because of my stupid lack of self control. The ubiquity of Smarties around Halloween is also accompanied by some sort of mind-warping amnesia ray ... and I again repeat my demonstration of how much power these little tablets have over me. (Note: Smarties are called Rockets in Canada. Smarties made by Nestle are little chocolate lentils and are sold everywhere except for the USA.) Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 8:52 am Thursday, March 13, 2008
Smarties Jelly BeansAnother new brand of jelly beans from an old favorite, Smarties Jelly Beans. Just to make things clear, the package says, “Tangy Fruit Flavors” ... just in case people thought they were some other assortment of flavors associated with Smarties. They never actually say which fruits they are, though. Actually, I think Smarties are an ideal Easter candy, with their pastel colors and light flavors. I like Smarties. I like their lack of flavor, the way they dissolve so quickly and smoothly. I like their tiny tablet size, their light colors and complete indistinguishableness from one another. These jelly beans were about the same price as others are these days, retail of $1.99. The Smarties come in five flavors/colors. The shell is a dry and a little crumbly and cool on the tongue (as dextrose usually is). The shells have a tangy and flavorful layer. The flavors aren’t very strong or complex. Grape is the most vivid, in that grape soda way. Green apple is pretty mild. Blue tastes like ball point pen ink smells (I think it’s raspberry). Cherry is very tart and then very sweet but less bitter than most pink/red cherry candies. Lemon was probably the sweetest of the bunch. What was missing was the white Smarties, you know, that one that we all think is pineapple and is by far the best. (What? You don’t think so, too?) The colors are bright and opaque, rather like highlighter pens. The funny part is that Smarties actually makes their lack of color in their compressed dextrose tablets a selling point. From their website:
In the case of these little jelly beans, I think they’re using just as much dye as everyone else. Most of all I noticed the similarities between the Smarties Jelly Bean and the SweeTarts Jelly Beans. So I gathered up an assortment of both and put them side by side. The SweeTarts Jelly Beans are on the left and the Smarties Jelly Beans are on the right. They are extremely close in colors, although the Smarties are missing the orange one completely. The beans were essentially identical with the Smarties being slightly more flavorful, mostly in the tangy layer. The colors very little but the purple and the green are the easiest to tell apart by looking at them and the blue in the SweeTarts version is punch flavor, not raspberry. I really don’t have a preference of one over the other. If you have a choice, I say go with whichever is cheaper or whichever brand you feel you prefer to support. They’re both made in Canada and come in 14 ounce bags, though their ingredients label differs slightly ... so it’s entirely possible that this factory churns both out under contract with Nestle or CeDe Candy. While all of the Smarties compressed dextrose products are gluten, nut and milk free, the Smarties Jelly Beans are made in Canada and are made in a facility that processes all the hit-list allergens: peanuts, nuts, milk products, soy products, wheat, eggs and sesame seeds. Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 10:53 am Friday, July 21, 2006
Mega SmartiesEverything’s better when it’s big! These are big Smarties. Yeah, there are two rolls of Smarties there in the picture. One is a regular sized roll and the other are the new gigantor Smarties. Each Mega Smartie is the same diameter as a quarter and tastes suspiciously like a regular Smartie. (Yes, those are Mega Smarties with regular Smarties on top to show scale ... Mega Smarties do not come with hats.) Really, there’s very little difference except that for the first time I was able to taste the actual vague flavor of each of the Smarties colors. Not that there’s a lot of it. Not that I want a lot of flavor in my Smarties. They’re plesantly sweet and tart and dissolve quickly on the tongue. If I have any complaint with the Mega Smarties, it’s that they’re not quite as crumbly. There’s something so light and chalky about the demi-Smarties that allows them to enter the bloodstream instantly. If there’s one thing to recommend Mega Smarties, it’s because they’re now in a single-serving package, you should be able to find them with other candy bars instead of in with the bulk and fun sized bags. I usually only pick up Smarties at Halloween, because that’s the easiest time to find them in the large bags ... see how clever they are! (The weird thing is that I didn’t know what to call these. The label just refers to them as Smarties with no reference to the size. The Smarties.com website doesn’t say anything about Mega Smarties even existing.)
POSTED BY Cybele AT 5:53 am |
Meticulously photographed and documented reviews of candy from around the world. And the occasional other sweet adventures. Open your mouth, expand your mind.
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