Christopher's Big Cherry

This is my first time trying Christopher's Big Cherry...

Does this mean I have popped my cherry cherry?

Christopher's Big Cherry has apparently been around since the 1940s, but aside from the CVS near me I have never seen them before. The company is based in Los Angeles, and much like many other things in this town, its luscious mounds were fake. Yes, folks, this is a mockolate product. BUT, I will at least give them points for not even claiming that the product is "chocolaty" on the label.



It's not the prettiest candy ever. It kind of looks like a really rough meatball (well, a chocolate-covered meatball). Hiding under the mockolate shell is a deeper layer of mockolate, which is studded with chopped peanuts.



Under that mockolate is a thick creme that is best described as Barbie doll pink in color -- if Barbie's face had gotten slapped raw in a catfight after an all-night bender -- and in the dead center is a glossy maraschino cherry.



Maybe it is just a testament to how pervy my mind can get, but without my immense self-restraint, this review could have been A LOT worse. (I am a 13 year old boy at heart, I swear.) Let's just say they could make a South Park episode about what these candies look like...and undoubtedly Butters would get grounded.

Before it gets too hard for me to continue (that's what she said!), let's get to the taste. The mockolate tasted like a candy version of Cocoa Puffs, and the texture is oddly similar. It's crumbly, and there is no smoothness or hint of a creamy texture. The peanuts add some crunch, but not much in terms of flavor.

The creme...egads! The center is very, very grainy, and the only way to describe it is to say it tastes like sickeningly sweet cherry cough syrup. And not even a name brand cough syrup, at that -- more like one of those horrifying overseas knockoffs they sell at 99-cent stores; the kind that gets pulled from the shelves when they discover it contains recycled transmission fluid. At least the cherry itself was moist, and...well, let's face it, it's hard to screw up a maraschino cherry.

I love chocolate-covered cherries, so for this to go so horribly wrong was a shame to me. I wonder if anyone who has sampled them over the years can tell us if they have changed, or is this the way they have always tasted? I would be interested to know if this is the sad case of an old classic stripped of all its former glory.



PURCHASED FROM:
CVS