There are some candies that are placed very low on the shelves at drug stores and grocers for a reason, they’re appealing to little people. And until I started shopping the bottom shelf, there was a lot of stuff that never even entered my candy radar.

This little baby bottle filled with compressed dextrose tarts is one such candy. It’s made by a small company called Imperial Toy and they haven’t even bothered to name the product. So I’m just going to call them Baby Bottle Pacifier Tarts. Once I took off the clear plastic shrink wrap, there’s no branding on here at all.

The little bottle is an actual toy baby bottle, complete with a rubber nipple with a hole in it, so as to make a mess with your little baby doll that actually drinks, or maybe it doesn’t. (Here’s a tip, don’t put actual milk in your doll that actually drinks. It’s fun at first, but then your doll smells like spoiled milk.)

The bottle holds 1.5 ounces of candy, so it’s a nice size and of course refillable with candy or kids can use it as a toy bottle for their dolls.

The candies come in cherry, orange, lemon, lime and ... um, I think the blue one is pineapple.

The little compressed dextrose candies are cute, a great size an the pacifier shape is nicely done. The flavor isn’t very strong, certainly not as strong as SweeTarts. I’d liken these to Smarties, but perhaps a little harder and a little more flavorful (well, and a little more colorful).

I think these are called “Oh Baby! Pacifier Candy” and made in Canada by Concord Confections. I’ve seen them in bulk at candy stores and advertised as a favor-filler on sites that specialize in baby shows and the like. Since you can buy them in bulk, I suppose you can make your own little filled favors for parties. Since this was $1.09 at the drug store, it may be a less expensive way to go. (Concord also makes the super-fun Candy Blox.)

As a novelty item, this doesn’t really do much for me, but then again I don’t recall actually having a doll when I was a girl (I know I must have had one, but I don’t remember her ... I remember my sister had that doll that grew her long blonde hair when you pushed a button on her tummy). I see this as more of a “favor” item or stocking stuffer. As a candy container, it’s cute but of course once you take it out of its plastic wrap, it doesn’t work very well to keep moisture out because there’s a hole in the nipple.

I dunno why I bought these, but I’ve seen then online a few times and when I was at Munchies a few weeks ago, I just had to give them a try.

They’re a compressed dextrose candy (what I call chalk candy) shaped like Lego building blocks. They’re about the same size and work the same, only without the firm snap to keep things together. Some of my little candies were actually missing their nubs, but they had enough to build little walls and stuff.

They were actually different flavors:

White - Pineapple - tart and a little bitter, but really tasty.
Blue - Raspberry - not much to recommend it. More like the flavor blue.
Orange - Orange - kind of like Tang, tart and less than zesty.
Yellow - Banana - yum. I have a soft spot for banana flavored candies.
Red - Cherry - yeah, you know I’m not gonna like this one.
Purple - Grape - the color was strange but the taste as okay.
Green - Lime - nice and vibrant but not really that tasty.

They were very hard and very dense, so crunching on them wasn’t really that easy. They were more for sucking, but of course they’re kind of pointy.

I know I don’t sound excited by them, but I actually liked them quite a bit. I would buy them again, but probably only for a project. Or maybe just because I want something to play with on my desk. If I got them from a bulk bin I’d probably pull out just the yellow, white and orange ones. I think by the pound they’re cheaper than Lego.

How cool would it be if they made candy Lego-ish mini-figures?

Razzles are an oddity. They seem to be the jack-of-all trades of the candy world. Billed, “First it’s Candy ... Then It’s Gum!” I have to admit it doesn’t do either particularly well.

The package for these Razzles is particularly attractive, and that’s often enough to get me to buy something. That’s the wonder of candy, even if you’re disappointed, you’re rarely out more than a dollar.

The package, of course, makes the Razzles look better than they actually are. They’re not the sassy looking, colorful pieces on the package. Theyr’e rather grainy looking and kind of crumbly. Chewing them gives a burst of sweetness followed by some tart. I chose three orange ones for my first Razzles in probably 20 years. They were disappointingly bland, but did turn into gum more faithfully than I remember when I was a kid. The gum has a nice lingering essence, but little sugar to jazz it up. This is not bubble gum either, in case you were going to make some attempts.

Orange: bland and lacking in any zesty punch. Lemon: Solid, good mix of essence and tart. Grape: not as chemical as some others, had an odd sort of ginseng/root flavor to it. Blueberry: pretty good, kind of grapey and kind of like raspberry. Raspberry: nice and flowery tasting with some good tart bite to it and a little hint of cotton candy but it doesn’t wear well, the flavor is gone before the sugar is.

The color when it becomes gum is far more vibrant - the lemon became a lusturous saffron yellow and the dirty looking grape became, um, inky and the blueberry was positively turquoise.

These had a pretty powerful smell of chemicals. And they are SOUR. This package had more defects in it - three of the candies were noticeably darker than the others and just didn’t seem “right” so I didn’t eat them.

Lime: puckeringly sour with a good hint of lime essence. The sour stays with the gum well after the rest of the flavor is gone. Blue Raspberry pretty much like the regular raspberry but intensely sour with a rather salty taste to it as well (I know there’s no sodium in there). Orange: straight up sour with some nice fruity flavors. Lemon: I figured this one was going to be really sour after those lime ones and I wasn’t disappointed. Much better than the regular Razzle, if you could just buy these, I think they’d do very well. I didn’t get any Cherry ones in this batch for some reason, so I can’t comment on that flavor.

I don’t think Razzles have won me over. They’re a nice novelty and the gum part isn’t bad, but the candy part is pretty awful. It’s not smooth and the flavors are uneven. The appearance is also kind of off-putting. I wonder if they’ve ever considered candy coating them like a Spree or Chicklet.

UPDATE: for even more confusing “candy/gum” see CandyAddict’s recent review of Japanese Wata Gum