Bazooka’s Bubble Gum Filled Pops have a lot going for them. They’re a nice compact size, kind of like Blow Pops, but perfectly spherical. They have a plastic stick, which is great if you’re a moist person. The flavor varieties are pretty normal and bound to please: Grape, Orange, Green Apple and Cherry.

But I hate to say it, they just don’t live up to this promising conceptual start.

First, the hard candy isn’t that flavorful. While it’s nicely dense and doesn’t have too many sharp holes, it just doesn’t taste like much. The orange, which was by far my favorite, was rather like weak orange-ade. Cherry in this case was also weak and a lot more pleasant. I kind of liked the Grape in it’s mild form here, even though it in no way rivaled the Blow Pops.

Second, the stick was very close to the top of the candy sphere. With these hollow plastic stick it means that once you dissolve a top layer, the hollow stick makes it hard to “suck” on the sucker without taking in air through the stick.
Third, the gum center is hard. Seriously, frighteningly hard. I’m not sure how that happens, but it’s not hard all the way through, just on the first bite, like it’s been coated with cement or something. (I’m guessing it’s just a gumball that has one of those polished coats instead of being a lump of gum.

The gum itself is okay once it warms up and softens. It seems like a smaller portion than a Blow Pop. It’s very sugary, which I rather like, but once the sugar is gone it’s too stiff and such a small piece that blowing bubbles isn’t easy.

If you’re going to come late to the “gum filled lollipop” genre, you’d better get in with a top notch product that offers something either better or significantly different. This just doesn’t do it for me. They’re attractively packaged and come in a smaller “mini” version that I had similar issues with. I think I’ll stick to what I think Bazooka does best ... bubble gum. 

Related Candies

1. Topps Baby Bottle
2. Bubble Roll Message Maker
3. Smarties Bubble Gum

I’m not quite sure what’s going on here. I first saw these at the 99 Cent Only Store (but only in Strawberry). They’re billed as “candy and chocolate flavored pops” which I thought sounded kind of fun. Like a chocolate toffee lollipop.

The commercials aren’t really helpful, they call it half-crazy. And they have freaky & disturbing animation. Who are they aiming these at?

So maybe the wrapper will be helpful. There’s a little drawing of the candy on the package. But I don’t know what I’m looking at. Smacking the candy on the corner of the table reveals that one side is hard and the other isn’t. How about a look what they use to make them.

Ingredients: Sugar, Corn Syrup, Hydrogenated Palm Kernel Oil, Cocoa, Dry Whey, Natural and Artificial Flavors, Cocoa Processed with Alkalai, Skim Milk Powder, Buffered Lactic Acid, Soy Lecithin, Salt and Artificial Colors

Well, after opening up the little packet it’s much more obvious what this is. One third of the pop is a swirl of hard candy with a boat of mockolate stuck to it.

Cookies and Cream - this has nothing to do with cookies and cream. Things can’t be cookie flavored. What makes cookies cookies is the texture, not the flavor. The mockolate boat here is mild and cool on the tongue. Sweet and not very chocolatey, it tastes more tropical, a little like coconut and a little like fudge. The sliver of candy is rather nice. Super smooth and a little tangy like yogurt. It’s sweet and bland but perhaps a little creamy.

Chocolate Caramel - well, this is not caramel flavored. The mockolate is the same on all of them. The candy part is tangy and sweet but missing all the caramel notes I would expect. I’m getting tangy, I’m getting maple or pecan, but definitely not caramel.

Chocolate Strawberry - finally the tangy bite works with the flavor. The strong and fake strawberry flavor completely overshadows the mockolate.

The long narrow shape is pleasant for a pop, it certainly fits in the mouth better. The candy part is actually really good. It’s superdense so it’s great for a pleasant and smooth feeling on the tongue and if you’re a cruncher it’s also really easy to chew.

The quality is apparent here with just about every element. They’re nicely packaged, the metallic plastic wrapper protects and is easy to open. The sassy plastic stick means that the stick doesn’t dissolve while you’re still eating the pop. Even the name is pretty good, the swirly colors support the name Vertigo (which is a fancy way of saying dizzy).

But the candy quality goes astray with the mockolate. It’s just ghastly. I ate it, but I’m certainly not happy about it.

I would certainly buy this if it was just a hard toffee pop, like the See’s Pops (except these are actually smoother). But as a mostly mockolate product, I just can’t get behind it.

Note: Topps is an American company, but these candies were made in China.

Folks are obsessed with Peeps around this time of the year. As I’ve stated before, I love the idea of Peeps, I just don’t really enjoy eating them. So I thought I’d try to improve my experience by creating some Peeps Mash-Ups. These aren’t full-blown recipes but more of a “dry fondue” with some items I had lying around:

Peeps Rocks - here I’ve mashed my Peep into some Strawberry Pop Rocks.

First, when mashing a Peep, it helps to pull it apart. This way you have two sticky halves for picking up other candy goodness as well as alleviating the issue of “double dipping” if you’re mashing with a buddy.

When I mashed the Pop Rocks into this fresh Peep, the rocks started snapping immediately. (You can’t see the noise in the photo, but it’s cracklin’ away, trust me.)

The cotton-candy-like flavor of the strawberry goes really well with the flavorless Peep. Light and refreshing. The pops give it a little sizzle.

Peeps Nerds - when you look at it, a Peep is really just a giant spongy Nerd with a pointy nose. Oh, and eyes. Nerds may have eyes in their little cartoon versions on the packaging, but not on the real candies like Peeps do.

I wasn’t really fond of this flavor combination, or the colors. The red and green (cherry & watermelon) looked too Christmasy. The taste combo was pretty good though. The crunch of the Nerds gave the spongy marshmallow a good texture and the zap of tartness also balanced out the sweetness of the Peep.

Peeps & Mini M&Ms - this is a natural combo and the colors couldn’t look better together if I tried. The little M&Ms adhere really well to the Peep’s exposed marshmallow. The sweet chocolate has a good crunch though it might be a little too sweet.

You could probably try mini dark chocolate baking chips for a less sweet experience (though you’d lose the crunch). The little tube they come in is especially easy for mashing on the go, just press the stickiness to the opening and tip the M&Ms Minis into it.

Peep Tarts - I have to admit that I was especially proud of the name for this one. Originally I wanted to use Pixy Stix for the powder, but I couldn’t find any (I try not to keep them in the house, for sanity’s sake). So I took the powder from an extra Topps Baby Bottle Pop. The Citrus Craze powder is already less sweet because it’s also intended to be “mashed up” with the lollipop top, so it adds flavor and tartness without more throat-burning sugar.

I’m not really sold on the combo, but after eating everything pictured here within about 15 minutes I had a stomach ache. Gah, I’m getting another one just typing this up!

So, what are your ideas for Peeps Mash-ups - either theoretical ones, or ones that you actually do?

(See previous Marshmallow Mashing: Marshmallow Mash-ups & More Marshmallow Mash-Ups.)

So I’m reading Technology Marketing magazine last month (okay, not really, I just found the article because it was about candy and it came up on a Google News Alert) and there was an article about Topp’s and their new products. But what shocked me, seriously shocked me, was the first part of the opening paragraph:

Baby Bottle Pop—Topps’ biggest brand and the No. 2 sweet in the kids non-chocolate candy segment ... (link)

Say what? The Baby Bottle Pop is that popular (I have no idea what holds the number 1 spot in the adults non-chocolate segment ... I’m guessing something from Jelly Belly)?

So why haven’t I had them? It appears that they were introduced in the late 90s, a bit after my candy experimentation stage. But I have a duty to Candy Blog to keep up with the kids, you know. First, I had to find them. This involved stooping down and looking at the bottom racks in the candy aisle at the drug stores and finally at 7-11 where I was able to find the “classic” version in a flavor combo that seemed good to me. I picked up Citrus Craze and Strawberry.

You may be wondering what a Baby Bottle is. It’s a little bottle, about the size of a small baby food jar, filled with a powdered candy topped with a hard candy nipple top. The top unscrews and has a “stem” that allows you to hold onto the top as you lick it to get it sticky and then dip it into the bottle to coat it with the sour, flavorful powder. The nipple pop has a plastic dome to keep it clean when you’re not eating.

I was expecting a grainy powder like Pixy Stix. Instead it’s much finer and more flavorful.

The Citrus Craze powder is quite tart and actually has a lot more flavor than I expected. Instead of just sour, it had some orangey flavors. It still tasted pretty much like Tang. It looks like Tang, too. The pop itself is rather bland and sweet, with a swirl of yellow and orange. The combo of the two is really good! The tangy powder seems more zesty because of the bland background of the sweet pop. Having the dipping pop made of hard candy makes far more sense than the Lik-a-Maid which had a compressed dextrose stick that got soggy pretty quickly.

As you eat the pop and there’s less powder, it gets harder and harder to coat the pop with it. I eventually just dumped the powder onto my tongue. Here’s a tip ... don’t inhale at the same time. Seriously, this is weapons-grade powder and the sour crust in your lungs is not a happy thing. Is there a disease called Pixe Stix Lung?

The Strawberry wasn’t quite as interesting to me, except that I have to say that the clear red nipple pop on top was pretty alluring. (Read into that whatever you like.)

In this version the pop is actually the flavorful sour part and the powder is just sweet and fruity. Not bad, but I preferred the tangy zap of the Citrus Craze. As a grown up I find eating this a little cumbersome but I’m pretty sure this would have been my favorite candy as a tween. As a treat for kids, yeah, it’s a mixed message, but it’s also rather labor intensive to eat and only 120 calories.

For the record, as a kid I didn’t buy Pixy Stix or Lik-a-Maid. I would buy cans of lemonade mix or boxes of Jell-O and just eat that by licking my finger and dipping it in there. I don’t know why it never occured to me to use a lollipop.

Note: this product was made in Thailand.