Heide Red Hot Dollars have a colorful past. The original Heide Red Hot Dollars were raspberry flavored, but when they were bought by Hershey’s in the 90s, they thought the name was confusing, so they changed it to Red Raspberry Dollars, which was obviously more descriptive but also lost the decades of product identification. To make things more confusing Farley’s & Sathers bought the brand (which includes Jujyfruits) and introduced these Red Hot Dollars, which are cinnamon flavored.

When I tried Red Raspberry Dollars last year I was a little frustrated because I wanted to try their spicy Red Hot Dollars. I was too cheap to actually buy them via the internet where shipping candy is often in excess of the candy cost, so I just kept my eyes open. When I was the NACS show in Las Vegas last month I mentioned my difficulties in finding them to the Farley’s & Sathers representative and he helped me out by giving me two boxes. (But no real help in finding them again.)

The box was frustrating. Dots usually have a cellophane wrapper on the boxes. But Heide candies are just a plain paperboard box with product rattling around inside. But what they lack in moisture seals they more than make up for in glue. It was impossible for me to open either box at the flap ends without tearing the layers of paperboard to bits. But fortunately this frustrating package did keep it fresh. They were soft and pliable.

The thick “coins” look exactly like the raspberry ones. They don’t smell either, so don’t throw these in a bowl together unless you love both.

They’re soft like Dots, a little softer than Jujyfruits tend to be. The matte surface doesn’t have a greasy coat like some gummi products do. The gumdrop texture is dense and firm and very cinnamony. Some were hotter than others, enough to make me sweat sometimes.

I really enjoyed them and had no trouble eating both boxes in a matter of weeks. They’re a great candy to keep at my desk because they’re not messy, easy to offer & share plus they don’t give me any sort of weird candy breath. I enjoyed the smooth texture more than the grainy jelly bean known as Hot Tamales, but they really did get stuck to my teeth.

Vegans may be able to consume these; there’s no beeswax or confectionery glaze and the colors are all artificial. It all depends on how you feel about mineral oil and sugar. They’re also Kosher.

Related Candies

1. Good & Fiery
2. Dots Elements: Earth, Air, Fire & Water
3. Cinnamon Fire Twizzlers
4. Gimbal’s Lavaballs
5. Jujyfruits & Jujubes
6. Dots
7. Hot Tamales and Hotter Tamales

I was happy to see that Brach’s was expanding its Halloween offerings beyond candy corn. I love peanut butter and chocolate and though nothing really compares to the Reese’s products, a little foil wrapped sphere sounded good.

Brach’s Peanut Butter Pumpkins say they’re Rich Chocolaty Pumpkin With a Peanut Butter Center. There’s a companion product, the Brach’s Caramel Pumpkins. They’re both sold in 9.25 ounce bags and I was a little surprised to see that they weren’t even real chocolate. (The real shock came later, as you’ll see.)

The foil on the pumpkins comes in two different “faces”, one on each side of the sphere. There’s a happy one with its teeth missing (shown) and then on the other side is a triangle-eyed one. It’s an impressive look when they’re piled in a bowl. Each is one inch in diameter.

The foil is easy to peel off. At first I though mine were dented, but it turns out there’s a little divot in each where they’re molded. (But they are easy to dent as well.) The chocolaty ball inside doesn’t have any imprints on it, it’s just a sphere with a slight texture to it (like a miniature basketball).

The smell like wonderfully fresh roasted peanuts.

Biting into it, it depended on the temperature what the filling was like. When I first got these it was quite hot, so the ambient temperature was over 80 degrees and the peanut butter center was gooey and slick. It was quite nice, not quite a meltaway, but definitely a whole different experience from the dry and crumbly Reese’s peanut butter. When the weather cooled and I tried them again the peanut butter was firmer, a bit more dry but still quite smooth. The roast of the peanuts is dark with a slight bitterness to them. It’s salty and satisfying.

The coating is mockolate. Unlike mockolate products created by Hershey’s, these don’t have a trace of cocoa butter at all in them, It’s all partially hydrogenated palm kernel or palm oil. It’s quite cool on the tongue and has a bit of a greasy melt. It lacks all chocolate power, it’s more of a cardboard version of chocolate flavor. When it’s all chewed together it’s not as noticeable, but nibbled off separately it’s quite bad.

The Brach’s Caramel Pumpkins were even less appealing. (Well, the one thing they had going for them was 20 fewer calories per serving, but of course lacking all the nutrition that the peanuts provide.)

The foil wrapping is gold instead of orange but still has the same faces & green stem for hair.

They smell like butter flavoring and sugar.

The bite is similar, the chocolate-flavored-coating tastes grainier and of course lacks true chocolate flavor. The caramel filling is interesting, it’s a little like a pudding - sweet but not actually cloying. It’s smooth and not quite flowing but not stiff enough to be chewy.

The whole thing was a dreadful mess.

The worst part though was if you look closely at the photo above you’ll notice a tiny little logo on the sphere. It’s the R.M. Palmer logo.

These are just the R.M. Palmer Creepy Peepers! And Creepy Peepers are cheap - usually about a buck for a 6 ounce bag, these Brach’s things are over $3.00 a bag in stores.

I just don’t get it. Brach’s used to distinguish itself from the bagged candy as being just a little better ... this repackaging of something most of us wouldn’t dare touch is pretty creepy. I hope Brach’s gets its act together and goes back to its core value of quality candy.

If you like these, well, skip the Brach’s middle man and just get the R.M. Palmer. They sell them year round in sports shapes (I think that’s the basketball texture).

Related Candies

1. Brach’s Gummi Candy Corn
2. Dove Peanut Butter Silky Smooth Milk Chocolate
3. Palmer Hollow Chocolate Flavored Bunny
4. Brach’s Soda Poppers
5. Big Mo’ Bars: Peanut Butter & Creamy Caramel
6. Palmer Nest Eggs
7. Brach’s Autumn Mix

Candy Corn haters probably think all candy corn is alike. And for the most part it is. It’s just a very sweet fondant lovingly crafted to resemble a stylized piece of field corn.

There are dozens of new version that are flavored, but by far the most popular and best selling is the classic stuff that comes in the Harvest Mix of mellocreme items.

Farley’s is an old company, making candy under the Farley’s name since 1891. They’ve distinguished themselves by making a huge variety of generic and popular candies such as gumdrops, candy coated peanuts and hard candies. In 1996 Farley Candy Company merged with Sathers Candy Company, a company with a strong distribution arm to become Favorite Brands International. In 1999, Nabisco bought up Favorite Brands and then within a year Kraft Foods purchased Nabisco. Then in 2002 Kraft Foods sold off Farley’s Candy Company and Sathers Candy Company which became Farley’s & Sathers Candy Company, Inc. Since then Farley’s and Sathers has swallowed up a few other candy companies, most recently Brach’s in 2007. Other brands include the classic Fruit Stripe Gum, Heide, Now and Later, Trolli Gummis, Super Bubble and Bob’s.

I found this Farley’s Harvest Mix at the Dollar Tree. The Harvest Mix (or Autumn Mix) is usually a combination of Candy Corn, Indian Corn and Mellocreme Pumpkins. This is no different. I found the bag a little odd. It’s a pretty big bag, and I think that 9 ounces for a buck is a good value, but the bar seemed barely half full. 

Farley’s Candy Corn is made in Mexico, as is Brach’s ... which as I mentioned earlier (if you didn’t skip that paragraph) is now owned by Farley’s & Sathers, so I have to wonder if it’s just the same stuff. Both are made with honey and both contain gelatin (most other brands of fondant type candies are made with egg whites).

They look very much the same (well, most candy corn looks the same). I wouldn’t call the attention to detail fantastic, some were smudgy at the margins of the colors, others were of course shortened two color or one color versions. But the general flavor of them was a smooth and sweet dissolve. The texture is only slightly grainy and satisfyingly dense with a light moisture to it to keep it from being completely crumbly.

The honey note is noticeable as is a little hint of salt, which keeps the sweetness in check.

The Indian Corn from Farley’s is definitely not the same as Brach’s or any else that I’ve photographed to date.

Instead of three color stripes, there are only two here. A deep brown base and an orange top.

The brown base has a light cocoa flavor but the orange top seems less like the traditional candy corn. It doesn’t have that little bit of salt or honey flavor. It’s just bland and sweet. There’s not enough of the cocoa to balance out all that sweetness, so this Indian Corn, though it has a nice texture, is just too sweet.

I also got a little bit of a bitter aftertaste from it, which I suspected was from the food coloring. (More orange means more Red #40.)

These little pumpkins are quite cute. They’re nicely made, I found virtually all of them to be well formed, without bubbles or uneven bottoms.

The green stem and deep creases give them a nicely stylized look of real pumpkins. (If real pumpkins were smaller than your thumb and had flat bottoms.)

Like most other Mellocremes, these are just a dense sugar fondant. The flavor isn’t as pronounced or salty as the corn, so it’s all sugar. The texture is extra smooth, as the centers are quite soft.

But the sweet is simply too electric for me. It shoots bolts straight through my teeth and into my brain, leaving me feeling weary and abused after eating a half. There’s also the orange aftertaste, a lingering metallic note.

UPDATE: I talked to a representative at Farley’s & Sathers who confirmed that the Farley’s Candy Corn & mixes are now the same as the Brach’s. (They kept the Brach’s recipe.) So there you go ... I just re-reviewed the same product.

Related Candies

1. Toffee Flavored Chocolate Covered Candy Corn
2. Halloween Dots: Bat, Candy Corn & Ghost
3. Brach’s Chocolate Candy Corn & Halloween Mix
4. Milk Maid Caramel Apple Candy Corn
5. Candy Corn Kisses
6. Gourmet Goodies Candy Corn
7. Brach’s Autumn Mix

Trolli Little Green Men are one of the newer novelty gummis from Trolli, which is owned by Farley’s and Sathers. They’re just as inventive as other gummi makers like Haribo, with a variety of shapes & flavor assortments.

The package looks like it’s geared towards kids. There’s a flying saucer behind the logo with a little bulgy-eyed alien at the steering wheel.

The bag comes with just one shape & flavor. In this case it’s a little green alien with a bulbous head and Cosmic Star Fruit flavored.

For the unfruity, Star Fruit is also known as Carmbola. It’s a strange looking creased/segmented fruit that looks like a five pointed star when sliced. The texture and flavor is something like a cross between a crunchy apple and the flavor of cataloupe and pears.

The gummis are rather startling looking. They have huge green heads and teensy little potbellied bodies. The heads are about 3/4” around and the whole fella stands only 1.5” high.

They smell fresh, a bit like melon and citrus. They’re soft and pliable, but not sticky or very greasy to the touch. The flavor is immediately lightly tangy but an overall mild berry or pear flavor.

They’re nice in that they’re a big bite of gummi. The flavor is different enough to seem distinct, but not too exotic to seem weird.

Related Candies

1. Puffy Candy Corn
2. Trolli Sour Brite Eggs
3. Trolli Sour Brite Crawlers
4. Wonka Sluggles
5. Brach’s Gummi+Plus & Tropical Gummis
6. Starburst GummiBursts
7. The Simpsons Fruit Snacks
8. Haribo Gummi Bears vs Trolli Gummi Bears

Last year I spotted Brach’s Gummi Candy Corn but it came in an insanely huge nearly two pound bag and I had to admit that I just wasn’t curious enough to bring home 30 ounces. I was hoping they’d come out in a smaller mixed bag, but I still haven’t seen them sold that way.

What’s cool though is that this 54 treat pack bag has each little portion already sealed up. (This is a general problem with most candy corn sold in stores - it’s not good for handing out for Trick or Treat.)

Brach’s makes pretty good gummis, more in the American tradition of the super-soft but also very juicy. I flipped over the package to find out about the ingredients on this one as was pleased to see fruit juice on there ... but curiously I didn’t see gelatin. These aren’t gummis at all ... they’re a jelly candy. Which is disappointing on one hand for someone hoping for some fun little rubbery candy corns ... but good news for folks who eschew those sorts of animal products.

Each little mixed package holds a random assortment of the four flavors and holds about 15 grams though I found that some had as few as 5 candies and other had more than 10.

Phantom Pineapple Orange

They’re the standard shape and size of candy corn, maybe a little slimmer and the jelly seems to hold a point. They’re a bit matte but also translucent, so it’s an odd effect, like they’re made of beach glass.

The texture is a chewy jelly, not too sticky but it doesn’t have that bite that gummis have.

Each layer is actually different flavors. The top is orange - a general light & tangy citrus without much zest. The base is pineapple. Again, a nice punch flavor but not too deep or complex. Eaten together it’s much more like a tropical punch, and not really a great effect for me.

Ghostly Grape Punch

The color of these was definitely like frosted glass. The grape flavor had a bit of a cherry note to it, but that could just be proximity.

I got a burning feeling in the back of my throat, a little effervescent note after I was done. Not my favorite of the bunch.

Like most jelly candies there were little bits left in the corners of my teeth when I was done.

Scary Cherry

This cherry seemed to dominate every package I found.

It’s like cough drops. Each layer is the same, but the top pink part is less about the food coloring and more about the medicinal woodsy cherry punch.

Honestly, I liked them more than the grape. I didn’t feel the need to pick around them.

Bizarre Berry Kiwi

I don’t know why berries and kiwi get lumped together as flavor combinations so often. This color combo is rather odd - not that I haven’t combined these colors in outfits in the past.

As a flavor kiwi is a little bit melon and a little bit citrus ... and mostly bland. The berry side is similarly like punch but has some strawberry notes.

It was the mellowest of the flavors and actually went well combined with the others.

On the whole the mixture is fun. It’s vegan (unlike actual candy corn which usually has eggs in it) so for kids who avoid gelatin/egg products, this is a fun & colorful mainstream looking product. However, the package says that it’s processed on equipment that also handles the top allergens: eggs, wheat, milk, peanuts, tree nuts & soy.

Related Candies

1. Puffy Candy Corn
2. Toffee Flavored Chocolate Covered Candy Corn
3. Halloween Dots: Bat, Candy Corn & Ghost
4. Milk Maid Caramel Apple Candy Corn
5. Candy Corn Kisses
6. Gourmet Goodies Candy Corn

At the same time I picked up the Trolli Sour Brite Crawlers, I also got a smaller bag of Trolli Sour Brite Crawler Eggs.

While I knew what gummi worms were, I never had these before and wasn’t quite sure what they were.

They certainly look like jelly beans but the ingredients, with gelatin as a key component, read like gummis.

It turns out, after just opening the package and squishing one between my fingers that they’re jelly beans with gummi centers.

(I appreciated that the package on this one had a clear best by date - which the Brite Crawlers did not have.)

Like the Crawler worms, there are three color varieties here:

Red & Yellow = Cherry & Lemon - I loved the look of these when I bit them in half, it’s like tie-dyed candy. The color goes through and through, and the flavor is virtually identical to the worms, a mix of cherry and lemon but with the added texture of the sandy candy shell.

Blue & Pink = Raspberry & Strawberry - for some reason my blue & pink ones were remarkably larger than the two other varieties. Like the worms, I liked this variation best. The woodsy berry & cotton candy with a little tangy pop goes well with the grainy jelly bean coating.

Green & Orange = Lime & Orange - because I was eating these whole instead of biting one end or the other, the combination of flavors was much more important. Lime and orange make a great citrus combo, so I’d say this one works better than the worm version.

The attention to detail and the readily identifiable flavor combos made this a really distinctive candy. As far as jelly bean shaped gummis, I’m not sure anything could supplant the Meiji Gummy Chocos. They come in a close second though. They’re not really sour as advertised, but that aside, it’s a fun, easy to share candy ... perfect movie food.

Related Candies

1. Spree Jelly Beans
2. Dr. Doolittle’s Pastilles (Lemon, Grapefruit & Wild Berry)
3. Chocolate Covered Gummi Bears
4. Wonka Nerds Jelly Beans
5. Jelly Belly Deluxe Easter Mix
6. Krunchy Bears
7. Starburst and Jelly Belly Jelly Beans

Trolli is a big gummi brand in the United States. Originally founded by a German (actually West Germany at the time) company named Mederer Corporation in 1981, they quickly established an American production facility in the United States in 1986.

Though you wouldn’t notice it as a candy buyer, Trolli has passed through quite a few corporate hands over the years. First Favorite Brands, Inc bought them in 1997, but went bankrupt and were bought out by Nabisco in 1999. Nabisco sold them off in 2000 to Kraft. Then Kraft sold all their candy brands to Wrigley’s in 2005 and within that same year it was acquired by Farley’s and Sathers.

Trolli has the distinction of innovating the Gummi Worm. Not only was it a new shape (one that kids love to play with and adults might find a little off-putting) but it also features multiple flavors in one piece.

Trolli’s Sour Brite Crawlers not only have that duo of flavors, they’re also fluorescent colors with a slightly sour grainy coating.

There are three flavor varieties in the bag, though there is no directory or description of what they are:

Orange & Green = Orange & Lime - these are not Sour Patch or Sour Skittles style sour ... they’re just a little more tart than the regular gummis. The flavor combo here is a nice mix of citrus. The lime is rather ordinary and I don’t think I’d care for it much in a plain gummi, but it goes well with the juicy and tangy orange. Some good zest notes to keep it from being all about some sort of bland punch flavor.

Pink & Blue = Strawberry & Raspberry - nice berry mix though the distinction between the two isn’t terribly clear. I liked the tangy bite to the chew and the graininess on the outside especially on this version.

Yellow & Red = Lemon & Cherry - the cherry flavor was dominant when I opened the bag, so I fully expected both ends of this worm to taste the same. Cherry is, well, a light sour cherry without the dark woodsy “black cherry” notes. The lemon side is distinctive, a good lemonade flavor though not quite sour enough for a product that calls itself sour.

On the whole, a fun candy. The colors are, as described, very bright. They’re nicely made, the bag was fresh and cheap ($1.59 at Target). The only hesitation is that these in no way qualify as a sour candy.

Related Candies

1. Albanese Gummi Butterflies
2. Super Sour Worms
3. Krunchy Bears
4. Brain Candy! (gummi brains)
5. Gummi Lightning Bugs
6. Gummi Clown Fish
7. Haribo Gummi Bears vs Trolli Gummi Bears

Besides the regular chocolate covered nuts that Brach’s has been making for about a hundred years, Brach’s has more recently branched out into more than the old fashioned pick-a-mix items.

the new Indulge gable-box line includes some boxed chocolate items (like Cherry Creme Clusters) as well as the standard bridge mixes and chocolate covered nuts.

I picked out these two from the samples that Farley’s & Sathers sent me: Coconut Almond Escape and Caramel Almond escape because they both have almonds at the center but were definitely outside of the normal panned nuts offerings.

Besides the color coding of the boxes, it’s hard to tell the candies apart from the pictures on the package ... they’ve obviously taken some artistic license or are able to produce identical candies in both dark and milk chocolate. (Click to see it a bit bigger on Flickr.)

Coconut Almond Escape is called Rich, creamy, coconut covered almonds coated in luscious dark chocolate.

They make it sound simple but it’s really not. There is an almond at the core and there is a “sweet chocolate” coating (which has lactose as the second ingredient after sugar and before chocolate & cocoa butter). But that white stuff in between goes like this:

sugar, vegetable oil (palm & palm kernel), nonfat milk, titanium dioxide, soy lecithin, vanilla, gum arabic, corn syrup, modified food starch, salt, coconut oil, natural and artificial colors

So that “coconut covering” has very little actual coconut in it ... as far as I can tell the smallest dash of coconut oil and maybe that natural flavoring.

They certainly smell coconutty - like suntan lotion. The pieces are glossy and large. The almonds are crunchy and nicely toasted. The white cream is soft and has a good melt on the tongue ... not quite fondant and rather salty. Sometimes I get a fake butter flavor from it, which turns me off. The whole effect is rather good otherwise and rather different.

I was hoping for the elusive Dark Chocolate Almond Joy experience, but without actual coconut flakes, all the chewy texture is provided by the almonds. It tastes rather fake, but the hit of salt gives them a good munchability. But on the other hand I’m hesitant to recommend a candy that has more coloring (titanium dioxide in this case) than salt. But I don’t know what my daily recommend intake of titanium is. Maybe it makes my cell phone reception better. Or makes me impervious to UV radiation.

Caramel Almond Escape is Rich creamy, caramel covered almonds in luscious milk chocolate.

I should have photographed these two candies together to show the difference in size. Most of these are about the size of a Peanut M&M.

These milk chocolate pieces look great otherwise, very nicely panned they’re shiny and smooth. I was rather surprised when I opened the package that they smell like maple.

I was hoping for a nice chewy caramel, but probably expecting a Brach’s Milk Maid Caramel.

Instead it’s more like a maple fudge instead of anything resembling a caramel. And it’s an awful like like fake maple.

The nuts are crunchy, but their tiny size leaves the proportions here a bit off as well. I’ve been eating the, but I have a hard time believing that I’d buy them.

Rating: 4 out of 10

It’s nice to see Brach’s bringing production back to the United States, but I’d like to see some less convoluted recipes ... or I’ll just stick to the Bridge Mix, Candy Corn and Spearmint Leaves that they do so well.

Related Candies

1. Brach’s Indulge Cookie Nibbles
2. Marich Easter Select Mix
3. Brach’s Chocolate Candy Corn & Halloween Mix
4. Almond Joy
5. World’s Finest Continental Chocolate Almonds
6. Sconza 70% Dark Chocolate Toffee Almonds
7. Dove Caramels & Chocolate Covered Almonds