For the sake of you, my readers, to benefit your lives, I will spare no expense, I will spend countless hours, and brave all obstacles to be able to bring you my opinions and commentary on the news and the state of the union – whether you want to hear it or not.
And now, as an additional service, I am offering product reviews. I decided to bring this new (probably monthly) feature to you after binge-watching “The Food That Built America” on the History Channel about a week ago, specifically the episode called “Candy Revolution [1].”
I realized while watching the show that there are a LOT of candies out there that I haven’t tried. And why is that? Overall, I think it’s because, like the rest of you, I get in my comfort zone and I stick with the candy staples of my youth and adulthood.
My go-to candy staples include peanut M&Ms, Whatchamacallit candy bars, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Skittles, Rolo candies, Hershey’s Kisses, Almond Joy candy bars, Kit Kat candy bars, Starburst, Snickers candy bars and (at Easter time) chocolate/coconut nests.
Although, before I begin my candy reviews (which cost me about $16), I want to use this article as a platform of protest. I LOVE the Russell Stover chocolate/coconut nests that appear at Easter time but they are not the same as the ones that were sold when I was a kid.
The older ones actually looked more like a bird’s nest and HAD JELLY BEANS ON TOP. The new ones are more flat and are sans-jelly beans. I have been ticked off about this for years.
And now, on to the reviews… I went to a local gas station and bought a bunch of candy that I have never tried before and put them on a plate for lunch (because if I was to open wrappers in front of my cat and dog, I wouldn’t get any work done). My scoring is done on a 1-10 scale with 10 being the best. Here are the results…
LEMONHEAD LEMON CANDY – SCORE: 5
I like lemon. I like candy. So this offering didn’t seem too strange or outside of the realm of possibility for me to like. It’s very sour though. It’s a semi-hard candy, a ball that’s a little over 1/4” in circumference and it will melt in your mouth if you leave it there long enough without chewing it.
Lemonheads [2] are made by the Ferrara Candy Shop and were featured in the Candy Revolution episode. The company describes the candy as “Delightfully tart. Brightly sweet” and “Round and lemony. A sweet, hard candy core inside a tart, soft shell. Made with real lemon juice for the perfect pucker.”
I scored this candy as a 6 – it’s okay, but not fantastic. Probably not something I would buy again unless I have a lemon craving and can’t find a lemon cake or a lemon bar.
BOSTON BAKED BEANS – SCORE: 6.5
The Boston Baked Beans candy [3] is a little smaller than a lemonhead, it’s more oblong and is reddish in color. It is made by the Ferrara Candy Shop as well. The package describes the candy as “candy coated peanuts.”
They are pretty easy to bite into and I didn’t see a reason to suck on the candy so I bit into it immediately. The peanut was good and so was the candy coating. It reminded me of something I should eat at a baseball game. I would probably buy them again if I had a craving for a peanut with candy on it. The company website describes the candy as “peanuts dressed up in a sweet, crunchy candy coating and always ready for a movie.”
I don’t go to the theatre very often anymore, so I’m assuming that this is one of those candies that they sell in their display cases.
ZERO CANDY BAR – SCORE: 9
This candy bar is unusual because when you open the wrapper, you see white instead of a chocolate color. The wrapper makes it sound good. It has one of my favorites – caramel. It says “Caramel, peanut and almond nougat covered with white fudge.”
It’s surprisingly good and I’m not sure why I’ve never tried it before. But like I said earlier, we are programmed to buy the candy we like and the candy that we’re used to when we browse the candy aisle. We don’t usually look around at the other stuff. Except kids. Kids probably stand there for hours trying to figure out what they want – and experiment a lot more than us adults do.
The Hershey Company makes the Zero candy bar [4]. Their website says they’ve been around since the 1920’s but I just discovered them on March 21, 2023. I will definitely be buying one of these again. YUM.
WHOZEEWHATZIT CANDY BAR – SCORE: 6
This Whozeewhatzit [5] candy bar isn’t something that’s been around a while. It’s not a candy that I’ve missed like the other ones. It’s a “new” candy bar. Because of the name, I assumed it was made by the same people who produce the “Whatchamacallit” candy bar and yes, that is the case – this new candy bar is from the Hershey Company. The wrapper bears the name “Lisa M” because she is the one who submitted the winning name.
The wrapper says it’s chocolate, chocolatey crisp and peanut butter whereas the Whatchamacallit is listed as having a chewy caramel, peanut flavored crunch and rich chocolate flavor. It’s okay tasting but I miss the caramel of a Whatchamacallit so I’ll just stick with that.
SOUR PATCH KIDS – SCORE: 3
I have to be honest. I was dreading trying these. I’m not much of a sour or tart candy person. The Sour Patch Kids [6] are about an inch long and a little more than 1/4” inch in width. The package that I purchased came with candies in four colors: green, orange, red and blue. They are shaped in the form of a kid (kind of creepy) and are a soft and chewy candy with what appears to be sugar on the outside. Their appearance reminds me of one of my favorite childhood candies that I got as a treat once in a while that you can never find anymore – Chuckles [7].
I started off with the orange candy which appeared to be the safest. It had a strong orange flavor and I immediately started chewing it to get rid of some of the tartness on the outside. It wasn’t too bad. I moved on to the green. That one was definitely a stronger taste than the orange – some sort of lime flavor. Like the other one, it got better as you got towards the end of it and it got sweeter. The blue one is some kind of berry. WHOA! That was not something I want to try again. The red one was pretty strong. Tastes like strawberry. Wasn’t really that great at the beginning or the end.
According to the website, they have some new flavors including peach and grape and are owned by Mondelēz International. No, I won’t buy these again – except maybe for my crazy grandchildren.
GOBSTOPPERS – SCORE: 3
I’ve stayed away from this kind of candy all of my life purposely because I have never liked “jaw breaker” kinds of candies that will either chip your teeth or they have to stay in your mouth forever until they dissolve. Back in my day (when I had to walk four miles in the snow up and down hills) jaw breakers were pretty popular. And they were HUGE. I remember seeing ones that were about four inches in circumference although he popular ones were about an inch. The Gobstoppers [8] I bought in a box at the gas station were pretty little – about a 1/4” circumference – so easier to deal with and I wouldn’t have to suck on one for the entire day.
I tried the red one but it doesn’t really matter what color/flavor you start with since they all go from one color/ flavor to another as you suck on them. That’s the point. This candy was also featured on the Candy Revolution episode and made by Ferrara Candy Shop. I suppose you could bite into the candy if you wanted to but I didn’t even try because they are as hard as a rock. Their website says that the “flavor keeps coming” – and the TV episode showed how that happens with layer over layer being added to the candy. As you suck on the candy, it changes color and flavor. And then you end up with a tart center.
It took a while for the candy to dissolve in my mouth and I wasn’t very impressed with the flavors. I like stronger flavors (unless they are tart) so this candy wasn’t very exciting to me. It tasted like a cheap candy I would have won out of a candy machine when I was 10-years-old. Definitely not something I would buy again.
NERDS – SCORE: 9
Okay, I have to be honest about this one and let you know that I’ve tried Nerds [9] before. In fact, I’ve tried them several times (maybe dozens) when I was a kid and a teenager. They were one of my favorites. So when I grabbed the other candy above, I also grabbed some Nerds. The box I bought is the grape & strawberry combo.
Nerds are hard to describe. The TV show Unwrapped had a factory worker who said they start off with a sugar crystal and they just keep coating it with more sugar. They are weird shaped and they are tangy and crunchy and tiny. In a nutshell, they are irregularly shaped tiny sugar nuggets coated in different flavors.
The box appears to be the same size as it was when I was a kid and it has the sale slide mechanism on top to release the different flavors of candy (one on each side). The candies themselves seem smaller though – I think the pieces were bigger in the past. The grape is still my favorite.
You can also get a box in a watermelon and cherry combo. And all the packaging has the cool little Nerd characters on them. They also have Gummies. And Nerd Ropes. I’ll pass. And, you guessed it, they are made by the Ferrara Candy Shop. They aren’t something I’m going to buy all of the time, but I’ll definitely enjoy the experience when I do.