Candyrageous - Page 34 of 35 - A Blog about Candy

October 24, 2008January 10, 2021 Michael

Crunch Crisp – An Uninspired Twist on a Classic Bar

Candy Bars

There was a time, a few years back, when new candy bars were a fairly regular occurrence. It was always exciting to walk into the store and see a brand new candy bar you’ve never heard of before. I guess at some point the candy manufacturers realized that they could make more money by releasing variations on existing bars rather than introduce something completely new. So now whenever there’s a new bar, it’s always some twist on a currently available candy, no matter how tenuous the connection is with the original product.

The original Crunch bar, containing milk chocolate and puffed rice, is a classic. Crunch Crisp adds wafers filled with “chocolate crème” to the mix, and replaces the milk chocolate with fake chocolate (i.e. the dreaded mockolate). I generally don’t mind when a candy bar like this is coated with mockolate; it’s not exactly my preference, but there’s usually not a whole lot of it, and it tends to take a backseat to the other ingredients.

The mockolate here doesn’t necessarily hurt the bar, but it certainly doesn’t help it either. The main problem with this bar is that it doesn’t really taste like anything. It has an amorphous sweetness, but none of the ingredients really contribute any particular flavour – the wafers and puffed rice add crispiness but don’t taste like much, and the chocolate crème is sweet without having a strong chocolate flavour. The whole thing is covered in mockolate, which is also lacking in the taste department, and of course has that slightly waxy texture all mockolate tends to have.

That’s not to say that this is a horrible bar, simply one that epitomizes the word “meh.” If there’s one lying around, I guess I’ll eat it, but it’s not something that I’m going to be running to the store to buy again.

Manufactured by: Nestle
Calories (49.3 g bar): 240

October 23, 2008January 10, 2021 Michael

Kinder Surprise – A Tasty Chocolate Egg with a Toy Inside

Easter Candy

I recently found out that Kinder Surprise isn’t available in the U.S. thanks to a rule about food items containing non-food items inside of them.This strikes me as kind of sad. Growing up, Kinder Surprises were always the thing that I looked forward to the most every Easter. My parents would always get my brother and I about a dozen eggs each. Eating the chocolate eggs while assembling all the little toys was an Easter morning tradition I always treasured.

The nice thing about Kinder Surprise – aside from the toy inside – is that the chocolate egg is actually good. This may seem obvious, but considering the questionable quality of most of the ubiquitous chocolate bunnies you see around the holiday, it’s not exactly a given as far as Easter candy is concerned. However, Kinder Surprise is manufactured by Ferrero, makers of quality stuff like Ferrero Rocher and Nutella – so it’s no surprise that it’s tasty.

Kinder Surprise is basically just a chocolate egg, featuring milk chocolate lined with white chocolate. It’s sweet without being too sweet, and is really creamy with a fairly pronounced milky taste. If you’re normally on the fence about white chocolate then this is probably the treat for you, as it tastes mildly of white chocolate while still maintaining its milk chocolate taste.

As you can see here, every Kinder Surprise comes with a toy, this one being some kind of strange alien creature inside of a saxophone. I have no idea what it’s supposed to do, if anything. That’s the exciting thing about the toy inside a Kinder Surprise; you never know what you’re going to get. Sometimes it’s good, but then sometimes… it’s a weird creature inside a saxaphone. It’s a crapshoot. It’s fun.

Manufactured by: Ferrero
Calories (20 g egg): 110

October 22, 2008January 10, 2021 Michael

Cadbury Fudge – A Slap in the Face to Fresh Fudge

Candy Bars

In my experience, fudge is generally something that has to be eaten while it’s reasonably fresh. I’ve never had a prepackaged fudge that I’ve been particularly fond of; this, unfortunately, is no exception. Actually, this may just be the worst fudge that I’ve ever had.

Cadbury Fudge is, as the name implies, just a stick of fudge. It’s also coated with a thin layer of milk chocolate, but I’m not sure if that adds much, if anything, to the flavour. My first impression, upon taking a bite, was that this bar definitely has the texture right – it has that thick, slightly grainy consistency, almost like a really thick peanut butter, that you expect from fudge. That’s pretty much the only thing that this bar has right.

The bar is ridiculously sweet – burns the back of your throat sweet. There’s really not much to it other than the extreme sweetness. It has an underlying artificially fudgey taste, but mostly it’s just sweet. Eating a handful of sugar straight from the bag would probably be less sweet, and would probably taste better, too. The bar also has an unpleasant aftertaste.

This is another candy I bought from the import shop, and boy am I glad Cadbury saw fit not to inflict this upon North America. Wow. I’m generally pretty easy going when it comes to candy, but this was awful, and certainly not up to Cadbury’s generally higher-than-average standards.

Manufactured by: Cadbury
Calories (1 bar): 115

October 21, 2008January 10, 2021 Michael

Lion – Crispy, Chewy, and Delicious

Candy Bars

This is another British bar that I purchased at the import store I mentioned in my Time Out review. This one’s called Lion, and it’s essentially a denser version of a Mr. Big bar (which, I suppose, will mean little to most Americans as neither bar is available in the States, as far as I’m aware). Basically, it’s a filled wafer, topped with a rather thick layer of chewy caramel, and coated with milk chocolate and bits of crispy puffed rice.

It’s good. The caramel is very chewy – it takes a while to fully chew, even after the other stuff is long gone. This gives the bar a satisfying richness. It helps that the caramel is surprisingly subtle, and not very sweet at all (by candy bar standards, at least). The whole bar is actually a bit less sweet than the usual American offering. The crispy rice and wafers provide a nice contrast to the soft caramel, making the bar texturally interesting. The wafer adds some sweetness to the bar, as well as the usual mildly wheaty/wafery taste (What’s that you say? “Wafery” isn’t a word? Sure it is! Don’t look it up, though. Just take my word for it).

I think I might prefer Lion to Mr. Big, as it seems to have a bit more substance, though I’d have to try a Mr. Big again to be sure. It’s definitely a shame that this isn’t available in North America outside of specialty stores.

Manufactured by: Nestle
Calories (55 g bar): 277

October 20, 2008January 10, 2021 Michael

Big Turk – An Odd Mixture of Gummy Candy and Chocolate

Candy Bars

This has always been a candy that, alongside stuff like Eat More and Bridge Mixture, I can’t say I fully understand. It’s one of those things you never actually see anyone eat, but always seems to be in there with the rest of the candy bars at the store. So who’s buying these? Older people, I guess? The packaging proudly proclaims that it’s low in fat (with “60% less fat than the average chocolate bar”) so I suppose that it might appeal to dieters or people who are trying to cut down.

This is actually only the second time in my life that I’ve eaten a Big Turk; it definitely isn’t one of the first bars you go for when you’re a kid, but once you realize that you’ve tried everything else at the store, you start wanting to try something new – even if it looks suspiciously unappealing. Well, the kid version of me took a couple of bites, deemed this completely inedible and never looked back.

This definitely isn’t quite as bad as I remember it being – I think part of the reason I hated it so much as a kid was the shock of finding gummy candy inside of a chocolate bar, which still seems incongruous to me, but which completely horrified me when I took my first bite, completely unprepared for what lay within (the wrapper in no way indicates that’s it’s gummy candy inside there, and if you’re a kid and you have no idea what Turkish Delight is, you’re in for quite a surprise). This time around, knowing what it was, I didn’t find it to be offensively bad, but I don’t think I’ll be running out to buy another one anytime soon.

In case it’s not clear from the picture, the Big Turk consists solely of a piece of gummy candy coated in milk chocolate. The gummy is extremely chewy, and is of the sticks-to-your-teeth variety. I’m not sure what the flavour is supposed to be; there’s no indication on the packaging, and the ingredients list yields no clues other than the presence of citric acid. There is a mild tartness to it, but other than that it just has a generic fruity/gummy flavour. The milk chocolate is fine, but not necessarily the best accompaniment to the fruity candy.

I think this is essentially just a case of two good things that shouldn’t go together. I like chocolate, and I like gummy candy, but cram the two together and I’m not so sure you have a winner.

Manufactured by: Nestle
Calories (60 g bar): 230