Wonka Exceptionals Fruit Jellies: Red Apple

Nestlé has really gone all out in the last few months pumping some new life into the Wonka line of products. Why they didn't go this far when the Tim Burton/Johnny Depp version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory came out a few years ago (which would have been a natural tie-in) is beyond me, but in any event they are doing it now.

I opted to start with the Exceptional Fruit Jellies because they just seemed different -- and you just don't see a lot of red apple flavored candy.



As you can see above, this candy has a lot of packaging. While it is very colorful and fun looking...well damn, there is just a lot! There's a sturdy cardboard sleeve that houses another cardboard box, and then inside of that box the candies are sealed in a foil packet. Why so much? These candies are not that delicate. Is there some sort of Oompa-Loompa packaging don who demands so much be used or Willy sleeps with the fishes? Does Al Gore know about this?! I mean, I love the purple -- can anything bad really come out of a purple box? It is cool packaging, but c'mon, there's like 40 pounds of it...

OK, regardless of Wonka's obvious hatred for trees, how about the candy that you get to after the oodles of packaging?

Each candy is the size of a sugar cube, each square is sugared, soft, and brightly colored. The box has a slight apple scent to it (What? Doesn't everyone smell their candy boxes?), but the individual candies are pretty much without any smell at all.



The chew is soft. It's not as as firm as a gummy type product, but it is softer and less sticky then most jelly/gel candies.

I both chewed them and simply let them dissolve in my mouth. I found I liked the flavor and texture more if I let them dissolve.



So how was the flavor?

Really good! It's not overly sweet, despite the outer coating of sugar. The apple flavor reminded me a lot of apple juice, rather than the "green" sour apple that most apple candy tends to be flavored with. They are quite juicy, and it is entirely easy to eat a handful or two and wonder where they went. I really liked these little cubes.

Cybele reviewed not only this flavor but the grapefruit and goji berry as well. Be sure to check out her review here.



PURCHASED FROM:
WalMart

PRICE:
$2.96

CALORIES:
130 calories per 14 pieces.

ADDITIONAL INFO:
Made with 25% real fruit juice. Fat free, sodium free.

OFFICIAL WEBSITE:
nestleusa.com

Rowntree's Randoms

My thanks to the great Cinabar of Foodstuff Finds for once again sending me some yummy U.K. candy to try.

Amongst all the wonderful things Cinabar packed into my latest box of goodies was this little pack of gummies (or "jellies," for those of you on the other side of the pond). What caught my attention -- besides the bright colors -- was how soft the gummies felt through the package. Also, the shapes on the package reminded me a lot of some of the fun Asian candies I have seen online at sites like J-List or at stores like Ranch 99 or Kam Man. My package also had this little gnome guy on it (has to do with a contest the company is running) that reminded me of the Travelocity "Roving Gnome." I was really hoping there would be a gummy gnome in the package because I liked the idea of posing him Flat Stanley style next to random objects.

Part of the fun of the candy is that each bag is a random mix of gummies and you never know what you are going to get in any given bag. Sadly, there was no gnome in mine.



There were lots of fun shapes and several different flavors. I picked my favorite shapes to represent each flavor:



Purple: This one had a taste that was sort of grape, sort of raspberry, sort of...currant, maybe? It's a good, juicy, fruity flavor even if I couldn't pin it down entirely.



Green: I was hoping for green apple -- but instead, it's lime. I give Rowntree points here. It's a completely artificial lime, but they still manage to avoid that industrial cleaner taste most fake lime has. Instead, it's like a gummy version of green doctor's office lollipops.



Orange: Zesty, but a little bit sour. Sort of like a gummy version of unmixed orange juice concentrate. That probably doesn't sound great, but it tasted really good.



Orange/White: This one is a combo of gummy and "foam" or cream base.



It has the same great flavor as the orange in the orange part (big stretch there). The white foam/creme has no taste as far as I can tell.



Yellow/White: The yellow is lemon. This may be the best gummy lemon ever. It's fresh and vibrant.



Granted, it's not quite natural, but it isn't completely fake either. Once again, the white base is tasteless.



Red: This was the lone flavor I didn't like. It was cherry, and it tasted like cough syrup and "red." But the color was quite pretty.



Lighter Red/White: I think this was supposed to be strawberry.



The strongest flavor was simply "red" from the food dye, but it didn't have the same cough syrup taste that the plain red had. The white base, again, is tasteless.

The texture on all of the gummies, regardless of flavor, was a very soft, chewy gel. The only difference with the gummy/cremes is that the creme base is harder and less chewy.

As a whole, this is a really fun candy. The shapes are cool, and they're very well molded. The flavors (besides the red) were really good and the texture was perfect. Hey Nestlé, we need our version of these!

Be sure to check out Cinabar's review here.



PURCHASED FROM:
Gift from Cinabar of Foodstuff Finds.

CALORIES:
164 calories per bag.

ADDITIONAL INFO:
Contains gelatin, and may contain traces of dairy.

OFFICIAL WEBSITE:
rowntrees-randoms.co.uk

Savion Fancy Fruit Flavored Slices

I have always been indifferent to the allure of the fruit sliced jelly candies. I don't dislike them, but I certainly don't go out of my way for them. In fact this is the only box I think I have ever purchased specifically for myself.

But they always seem to be present at a Passover Seder. I understood, from an ingredients standpoint, why the candy is a popular Passover treat. It's sweet, and contains no chometz. It's not that they don't taste good enough; it's just that I just wanted to know why they were so popular.

As I sadly have no wise and all-knowing bubbe to ask, I turned to the warm, loving arms of Google.

According to several different blogs -- though no real reference site like chabad.org, etc -- the reason that jelly candies are so popular with American Jews is that they stem from the preserves and candied fruit slices traditional in their ancestral lands of Russia or Eastern Europe. Heck, it makes sense to me.



I know that the kosher foods giant Manischewitz makes what is, at the very least, the most commonly available version...and wouldn't you know it, my local store didn't have them. Not figuring that I would eventually have to make a trip to Gelson's market (which is a fantastic Jewish-oriented store for many reasons, but unfortunately not close to me), I settled for what my local store did have...

...And that would be the box in front of us. Savion may not have its own website, but it is apparently a part of the Kedem food products empire. (Kedem is another huge name in the world of kosher foods -- sort of the Pepsi to Manischewitz's Coke)

There are four flavors of fruit slices:

*Lemon
*Lime
*Orange
*Cherry

Bet you can't guess which is which.

Each slice is about two inches across at the widest point. The slices are sprinkled with coarse sugar. The colors are all bright and the jelly is clear. The outer crusts of the slices may feel dry and sandy from the sugar, but the inner jelly is moist and slightly sticky. The texture is the same on all, so we'll just talk about the flavors individually.

Lemon:



It can't help but be sweet from all the sugar, but it also has a great zesty zing. The flavor is one of the most natural lemon flavors I have ever had. It's sour, but it avoids that foul aftertaste that fake lemonades can have. It's almost as if they'd made candy from those little plastic bottles of lemon juice. You know, the ones that almost-but-not-quite taste like fresh squeezed?



Anyway, this was a great flavor and I would buy it on its own.

Lime:



Lime always seems to be the hardest citrus flavor to pull off. If done right, it's reasonably close to the real thing. If done wrong, they taste the way lime-scented household cleaners smell.



All I am going to say on this one is that I suddenly feel like mopping.

Orange:



If lime is the hardest citrus to pull off, then orange is the easiest.

Let's be fair -- even the worst orange isn't all that bad. This one is just sort of there. It's not bad, it's not good. It simply exists.



It's a little too sweet, yet also bitter in a non-natural way that somehow doesn't offset the sugar. There is some zest to it once you get all the sugar off. Again it's not bad, but there are far better version out there.

Cherry:



This was a tough one. The very first taste was good. It was a tangy cherry that reminded me of the best part of fruit punch...



...and then the unwelcome bitter aftertaste of the red dye wormed its way in. I personally couldn't get past the taste of the dye.

Bottom line: the lemon is actually pretty good, but the same can't be said of the other flavors. As stated above, I'd happily buy the lemon ones again if they were sold alone. Sadly, that doesn't seem to be an option.




PURCHASED FROM:
Vons Supermarket

PRICE:
$2.99

CALORIES:
140 calories per 3 pieces.

ADDITIONAL INFO:
Kosher, parve, fat free.

OFFICIAL WEBSITE:
None for Savion specifically, but their parent company is at kedem.com.

Sweet's Candy: Cabernet Dark Chocolate Wine Gels

I love gel/jelly candy. There is something about the texture that always seems to rock my world...sort of like an edible Hugh Jackman, rising glistening from pristine blue water. (Sorry, Gigi just really likes the image.) I also really like Cabernet, but for various uninteresting health reasons I don't get to drink as much of it as I might like to. The idea of getting the flavor of the wine without the aftereffects really appealed to me.

These candies are long sticks of Cabernet wine flavored gels, enrobed in dark chocolate. The domed box opens from its side, and reveals the sticks ensconced on a protective bed inside a decorative plastic bag.



Each stick is thin and about 2.5 inches long. The sticks are a dark, rich brown and smell sort of like weak wine and chocolate. The candy is in fact made with wine. However, there is no actual alcohol in the sticks.

When you bit into the candy, it is very soft and a little sticky. It's incredibly smooth. The chocolate layer is thin and quickly flakes away when bitten into.



Honestly, I am glad the chocolate is so thin -- because while it's not bad, it's also not great. It's waxy and kind of grainy. It seems too sweet for a dark chocolate. It actually reminded me more of the type of chocolate coating you'd find on ice cream bars rather than a good dark chocolate. (There also a milk chocolate version as well. I had planned on picking that one up too, but by the time I got this box the milk chocolate boxes were gone.)



Really, this candy is all about the gel center. The gel is a shade of stained glass red -- and set against the darkness of the chocolate, it does make for a pretty candy. And woohoo! The gel in fact does taste like Cabernet!

OK, you wine snobs out there probably won't be impressed. No, it's not the most high end cab out there, but it's not the worst either. And we shouldn't expect it to the finest. After all, it's just candy, not a cherished, dust covered vintage from a French wine cave. It's sweet, but there is no mistaking it was meant to taste like deep red wine.

In my never ending quest to be as thorough as possible I discovered that there is however, a very real, very interesting aftertaste. Once the chocolate flavor wanes and the wine flavors back down the jelly that's left (this is assuming you are simply letting the candy melt in your mouth rather then chewing) tastes remarkably like sugared beets! Granted this flavor come up long after most people would have just swallowed and been done with it, so it is not something you will probably notice just casually eating the sticks. I don't know if the taste is caused by the wearing off of the wine flavoring or if perhaps the candy is made with Beet sugar or maybe it's just a subtle tribute to Dwight Shrute. In any event if you wait long enough it's there.

So-so chocolate aside I really liked these gels. It's a nice to have a gel option that isn't merely fruit flavored. The texture was addicting and it made me think about Dwight Shrute so how good that be anything other then good?

Cybele recently reviewed the Dark Chocolate Port wine version. Be sure to read her review HERE


PURCHASED FROM:
Albertsons Supermarket

PRICE:
$2.99

CALORIES:
160 calories per 5 sticks

ADDITIONAL INFO:
Made on equipment shared with nuts. Kosher, gluten free, contains sulfites.

OFFICIAL WEBSITE:
sweetcandy.com