Tropical Skittles

New flavoured Skittles are few and far between, most recently have been Confused in 2013, Orchards and Wild Berry in 2014 and Darkside in 2015. 

There seems to be a bit of confusion on the flavours included in the bag as a Tropical mix are sold in the US too but with very different flavours than are named in the UK press release. 

The bag had a generally fruity and quite tropical scent and there were five different coloured and so flavoured sweets. 

Orange was, surprise surprise, Orange flavoured. O.K orange can be quite tropical but its a bit of a safe choice and ended up being probably the most boring. It was very nice actually but I'm not sure how much more I can say about it, the least imaginative of the bunch. 

The dark purple sweet turned out to be Passionfruit, which isn't a flavour I'd usually choose but it was absolutely delicious - very juicy and fruity tasting. 

The blue sweets were Tropical flavoured and were again another very tasty flavour.  I didn't notice any outright single flavour but they tasted just like a sweet, juicy, fruity cocktail, minus the alcohol, sadly! 

I wasn't sure which flavour pink would be as its normally reserved for berry type flavours and there were none but it ended up being Watermelon. I've been disappointed by too many watery tastless real watermelons to bother with them but I do like a watermelon flavoured sweet and these were no exception. They weren't ridiculously strong or artificial tasting like American sweets or the Pick'n'Mix style Fizzy Watermelons but it had a clear and distinct watermelon flavour. Lovely!

Last but by no means least was yellow,  I knew that it was supposed to be Pineapple thanks to the internet but I'd have guessed anyway. They too were good and tasted just like pineapple juice! 

Rating:

All were very good alone but eaten together is where they really shine as a Tropical mix. I could well have been sitting on a hot beach somewhere with a very large cocktail sunning myself. 

These are by far the best flavour Skittles have released in a while!

8/10 

Casa Adelitan Gourmet - Dulce Tradicional Envinado

I've had a right result. Not only did my mum and dad listen to my not so subtle hints to bring me a souvenir home, but they bought me chocolate and sweets and both contain tequila! I guess my teenage rants of "you'll never understand me!" couldn't have been more wrong, they've read me like a book... 

Step forward the first of the boozey treats..

Casa Adelita Gourmet, Dulce Tradicional Envinado - Traditional Liquor Candies 

And thats about as much information as I have on the sweets! 

They have a small ingredient list:

Sugar, Glucose, Cornstarch, Alcohol (1.99%), Whole Cow Milk and Food Flavour. 

There are 24 things (?) inside, 2 pieces weigh 30g so if my maths is correct 7 pieces have around 1.99% alcohol. Not bad but it's not too much in the grand scheme of things! 

As it is Mexican its Tequila flavoured, not one of my most favourite drinks but one I no doubt find myself knocking back at the end of a night out so I'm more than familiar with the taste! 

I call them things because I'm not sure I've ever had a sweet like them before. They looked like mini Churros if I'm honest and taking them out of the box threw me completely. They are extremely soft, if you're anything more than very careful, the shape would be lost and it would have been no effort at all to squish them. 

Mexico has a reputation world wide for a love of real sugar and these were no exception, I'd

 shaken most of the sugar off before I plated them, but as you can see they are still covered. 

After touching them, I half expected what they would feel like in my mouth but they were even softer than I'd anticipated. It feels like there should be some sort of chew but they are like the softest jelly you can imagine. They melted in my mouth, I could have eaten these whole without taking a single bite if it wasn't for the sugar on top which added a little something sweet as well as a pleasing crunchy texture. 

Despite sugar being the number one ingredient and the thick coating they didn't taste as sweet as I'd thought they would. Truthfully, I don't know what they taste like! (Mr.1T thinks they taste like doughnuts but I don't know WTF he's taking about, maybe he had too many...) It's not really plain but there is nothing I can pinpoint as being the flavour - it's tasty anyway! So I was sitting there, trying to figure out what they tasted like, when suddenly.. TEQUILA! 

Oh my! They have a seriously strong tequila aftertaste! Literally as if I'd just taken a shot of the good stuff - except, there was none of that harsh, make you pull a face sharpness you get with Tequila. It's like they'd taken the good bits, and the actual flavour and put them in each sweet and left out the harsh alcohol taste. 

Rating:

I'm still not a huge fan of Tequila and it's not something I find myself fancying after a long day like wine or Vodka so I don't think these would be something I'd sit in front of the telly eating. They would be absolutely perfect for parties or for a drinking session though - I wish Tequila the drink tasted like these sweets!

7/10 

Bassetts Santa Babies Berry Mix

I don't think today's review, Bassetts Santa Babies Berry Mix, are new but they're new to me and it's nearly Christmas - I've got to blog about Santa Babies! 

Obviously they're a seasonal product, a Christmas version of the Jelly Babies Berry Mix and I like that they've changed the name to Santa Babies, even though it means I've got the song stuck on a loop in my head now! 

I'll keep the review short and sweet just like yours truly ;-) There's no difference in the flavours, they're your standard blackcurrant, raspberry and strawberry. I've just found out they aren't necessarily called flavours - each has a name but I'm not going to write them all out because it weirded me out eating things with actual names, I'm no vegetarian but I don't want to know if my steak was from Colin the Cow either thank you very much! 

That wasn't the only thing that gave me the heeby-jeebys. Look at them, forget Santa Baby they're creepy stalker Santas!! I didn't mind biting their heads off so much after I'd had a look at them...

I love Jelly Babies anyway but creepiness aside, I especially liked these as there were no green or yellow - they're alright but strawberry is the king of Jelly Babies and blackcurrant his queen. So for that these get a decent 

8/10  

Jolly Rancher Chews

A while ago the lovely Lucy (@R4Rreviews & her blog) sent me the most amazing package, it was filled with a lot of my favourite things - fudge, chocolate, 4 of my long searched for Triple Chocolate Otis Spunkmeyer muffins, a couple of her favourite flapjacks and this box of Jolly Rancher Chews - she knows me so well! 

The box contained five flavours; Blue Raspberry (apparently a standard flavour in the US, it's been included in near enough every mixed flavoured bag of sweets I've had), Cherry, Green Apple and Watermelon. 

The box was all sealed up and I had to physically tear it to get it open so I was a bit suprised to find the chews all individually wrapped - surely if the box is sealed and airtight it shouldn't need it? The chews were quite sticky and so it was a pain in the backside getting the wrappers off, half still had a bit left on but eating a sweet wrapper has never killed anyone before.. 

The sweets have quite a hard chew, harder than a Chewit or Starburst but they do soften up. It's a strange type of chew actually, my mouth was seriously watering while I was eating them but they left me feeling like I needed a glass of water as well. 

Blue Raspberry had quite a strong raspberry flavour at times, it was pretty artificial tasting but weirdly at times tasted like Bubblegum too. I worked out the reason for that after I'd tried them all though.. 

Cherry was very subtle by American standards. At times it was quite plain tasting but had random bursts of a clear and quite strong cherry. 

Green Apple was the saviour of the box. Juicy, strong and delicious - it doesn't taste like you're eating an actual apple by any means but there's no mistaking it. 

I was looking forward to Watermelon after trying it in the Lemonheads Redrific last week - it was near enough a perfect watermelon flavoured sweet so I hoped this would be the same. It wasn't. It tasted like watermelon sure, but it was clearly made with a bunch of chemicals rather than real flavourings. I haven't looked at the ingredients, I didn't need to - I could taste it. Strong but not nice at all. 

Apart from Green Apple I wasn't keen on the flavours in the Jolly Ranchers Chews. All of them ended up tasting like bubblegum or chewing gum. I thought that was what I tasted initially in the Blue Raspberry, but I realised that they all taste like flavoured gum when the flavour has worn off. 

5/10 

And it's only a 5 because I liked the Green Apple

Sorry Bakey! 

Warheads Sour Chewy Cubes & Charms Blue Razz Berry Blow Pop - Taffy Mail

Warheads Sour Chewy Cubes 

The thing I liked about the Taffy Mail box was that it included smaller packets of sweets that I'd have liked to try but let's be honest, who's going to pay import prices on Amazon and the like, for small bags of sweets and lollipops! 

They wouldn't be American if there wasn't at least one neon blue sweet! 

I definitely wouldn't be paying for these from Amazon no matter how tasty they might have been once I saw how many were in the pack. That's all of them! 

I couldn't pick out a particular smell in the bag and there's no indication of flavours. 

They have a weird, very thick texture. It's chewy but a weird chew - like an extra thick, super solidified jelly. 

The orange cubes had a good strong flavour which I'm guessing was orange. It was strong but not instantly recognisable. The red had strong flavours at first which faded to nothing while chewing then left a sharp, sour aftertaste. I don't know what the blue or purpley-grey were supposed to be, they were quite plain and just tasted like sugar mainly. No real flavour I could pick out. 

None of these were sour enough to be called sour cubes, to be fair the packet has a little scale on the back ranking Tart-Sour-Super Sour-Extreme and these rate at just sour apparently, but 3/4 had no sourness at all. Coming after the strength of the previous sweets I was dissapointed. 

6/10 

Charms Blue Razz Berry Blow Pop

Last but not least was the blow pop, I didn't google it or pay it much thought as its a lollipop right? 

And more blue! 

The wrapper had come open a little but it still smelt quite strong considering. At first it had a pleasant blueberry taste that wasn't as artificial as I expected but the more I sucked (now now) the crazier it got. This was exactly what I expected and hoped for with the blow pop, very sugary, very fake tasting but very strong. The only thing I wasn't too keen on was the sugary film it left over my teeth - I was looking forward to brushing them while I was still eating it. 

Once you get through the lollipop the centre becomes a bubblegum, it was very juicy and incredibly strong but not even a minute after I started chewing the raspberry flavour was completely gone and it had that horrible flavour you get after you've had chewing gum for about 10 minutes - you might as well be chewing rubber. 

Such a shame as it was good up until that point! 

6/10 

Remember if you go to the original Taffy Mail post, there is a code for readers of the blog for 15% off your first box - I definitely reccomend! 

Chewy Lemonhead Redrific & Skor - Taffy Mail

Chewy Lemonhead Redrific 

How do they come up with these names? Next out of the Taffy Mail box were these Lemonhead Redrific sweets, chewy sweets with four flavours: Raspberry-Lemon, Watermelon, Wild Cherry and Strawberry. 

The sweets are chewy but not necessarily a good type of chew - the kind where you're picking bits out of your teeth for a while after. 

Wild Cherry was amazing. Very strong like eating 100 Sour Cherry Haribos at once without the sourness. I don't know if anyone else had the ridiculously cherry smelling cherry lipgloss when they were younger, but the flavour was how I imagined they would have tasted! The strongest (and probably nicest) cherry flavour sweet I've had. 

I didn't realise that I ate the strawberry until I'd had the other flavours. It had a nice, but quite dull flavour and was surprisingly weak for American standards. 

Watermelon was ridiculous. I actually "wow"ed out loud when I ate it - it tasted like I was eating actual watermelon. Delicious. 

Raspberry-lemon was the black sheep of the box. Initially all I could taste was the lemon, there was a slight raspberry aftertaste but I could have missed it had I not been waiting for it. A nice flavour but not really a 'red' one. 

8/10 

Skor 

Skor is a milk chocolate bar with crisp butter toffee. 

I liked the sound of this bar as I thought it sounded like Riesen and I have a slight addiction to those little chewy, chocolatey toffee cubes! 

The bar already earned bonus points in my eyes for actually smelling like chocolate. And not only that but it smelt good too! 

It's long and thin and I got a sharp knife to cut it in half expecting a hard job like with the 100 Grand Bar. 

I didn't need to though as this was another very brittle bar. I literally touched the knife to the surface and it snapped clean in half. I should have realised then but I took a big bite expecting soft chewy toffee and bit through to my tounge and ended up with a mouthful of blood! 

It's a very crisp, hard toffee and there are little almond pieces dotted about that I could both taste and feel, so that made it nice and crunchy too. It has almost a burnt toffee taste and was very nice actually - buttery and rich to compliment the crisp and crunchy texture. 

I once had a bag of mini Halloween chocolates that I just threw in the fridge and there were Crunchies in there, I don't know if you've ever tried a refrigerated Crunchie but that's the closest thing I can compare the texture to - albeit a thicker, buttery toffee version! 

I thought I'd like this as I like Riesen but you can't compare the two, they're completely different. I liked this quite a bit - it is on the sweet side but the chocolate is pretty good (looking at the ingredients they used non fat milk then added milk fat... Why!?) and the toffee has a delicious buttery rich flavour. The crunchy almonds are the icing on the cake! 

7/10

Dads Root Beer Barrel & 100 Grand Bar - Taffy Mail

Dads Root Beer Floats 

The next 'treat' (and this is entirely appropriate just before Halloween as it was more of a trick!) to come out of my Taffy Mail box, were a bunch of these strange little barrel shaped Root Beer flavoured sweets. I'd read about Root Beer before, never tried it, but knew most people in Europe really don't like it - it's the Marmite of American flavours apparently. And so I tricked Mr.1T, he always steals my sweets so I left these somewhere he could see them. It worked. He shoved a couple in his greedy mouth and spat them out again a minute later, so I went into these hoping to prove his tastebuds wrong. 

They didn't smell too bad, they actually smelt of something I've had before but at the time I couldn't put my finger on what. Until I tried one. Throat lozenges. These taste like medicine. They weren't that bad to begin with and I was laughing at Mr.1Ts pathetic tastebuds until I started getting further through the sweet. It was taking too long to suck and I was getting bored of the taste so I crunched into it and what a mistake that was. The medicinal like flavour intensified and I didn't want to spit it out so I chewed some more. The centre was God awful. These aren't nice at all - they'd be nicer than a Black Halls if I had a sore throat but as a 'food' I'd rather eat coconut dipped in peanut butter. Disgusting . 

0/10 

100 Grand 

The 100 Grand bar is "Chewy $ Caramel $ Milk Chocolate $ Crispy Crunchies" and apparently uses dollar bill signs instead of commas. 

Toffee Crisp is one of my favourite cheap everyday chocolates and I have a 1 Kilo bag of the chocolate fudge crunch from Pick'n'Mix in my cupboard so it's fair to say I was quite looking forward to this. 

There were two medium sized bars in the pack and strangely a complete lack of the scent of chocolate. Maybe I should have expected that as there's "still 30% less fat!" But more on that soon. 

It took some work cutting it in half, and that was down to the extremely thick caramel lurking in the middle. It has a strange flavour which I realised was what I could smell too. It doesn't taste like real caramel if that makes sense - very, very sweet and artificial tasting. 

As well as not smelling of chocolate, it didn't really taste of it either. I had a look at the ingredients and I'm pretty sure this is down to the fact the chocolate is made with what Americans call non fat milk. Why would you make chocolate with skimmed milk? There was no milky,creamy flavour just a waxy brown block of (fake) sugar. 

The texture was very good, as I said the caramel was very thick and chewy but the Rice Krispy cereal pieces are a bit smaller than in Toffee Crisp so provided a nice crisp crunch against it. 

It wasn't bad, especially as I ate it after the Root Beer sweets but it's just a poor mans Toffee Crisp. I'd say it's like a supermarket own brand version but in my experience they use chocolate that tastes like chocolate.. Sometimes! 

6/10 

Annabelle's Rocky Road S'mores & Sour Apple Laffy Taffy - Taffy Mail

Handmade milk chocolate coated marshmallow with real Graham Cracker and cashews. 

First out of my Taffy Mail box and the one I was looking most forward to was the Annabelle's Rocky Road S'mores. A s'more is "a traditional nighttime campfire treat popular in the USA and Canada consisting of a roasted marshmallow and a layer of chocolate sandwiched between two pieces of graham cracker" and a graham cracker from what I can see online is like a thinner slightly sweet digestive biscuit. 

It's a big old bar that smelt delicious, a sweet mixture of marshmallow and chocolate and it had a real handmade authentic look to it. 

The marshmallow had a lovely sweet flavour and is soft, fluffy and gooey - stretching between the two halves when I snapped it. It isn't like chewing a proper marshmallow though, it's much lighter than that but it is thicker and chewier than marshmallow fluff. 

The chocolate isn't so much of an aftertaste, it has a stronger flavour than that but I couldn't really taste it until the marshmallow had melted in my mouth. It's not bad chocolate actually - one of the better American chocolates I've tried though it's still mega sweet! 

One of the three ingredients in S'mores are the Graham Crackers so I expected them to be more prominent here and I probably would have noticed it more had there been two layers, both on the top and bottom of the bar rather than just the top. 

Once I got a mouthful with sufficient marshmallow, chocolate and biscuit/cracker though, it was amazing. Sweet, chewy, chocolatey, crunchy goodness! The marshmallow stood out the most which I expected as it takes up easily three quarters of the bar. I forgot until writing this review that there were supposed to be cashews, I'm guessing they are what gives the bar it's nobbly appearance and what made some parts a lot crunchier than others but they weren't very noticable and I didn't really taste anything nutty. However I'll let that slide as they're all handmade apparently so the consistency of the cashews can be forgiven! 

The marshmallow itself is very tasty, the chocolate and crackers are nice enough but all three together were pretty damn good. If you aren't a bit of a sugar fiend like me though be warned, this is a very sweet treat but one I recommend! 

7/10 

Next was another from my Amazon wish list - Sour Apple Laffy Taffy Rope. Apologies for the terrible photo, this was so long it was impossible to photo the whole thing. I'll hand it over to Wikipedia to explain what Taffy is. 

Taffy, or chews, are a type of candy similar to toffee. Taffy is often sold alongside bubblegum and hard candy. Taffy is made by stretching or pulling a sticky mass of boiled sugar, butter or vegetable oil, flavorings, and coloring until it becomes aerated (meaning that tiny air bubbles are produced, resulting in a light, fluffy and chewy candy.

Laffy Taffy get their name from the fact jokes are printed on the wrapper, I won't bother telling you what they are - they're worse than the Penguin wrapper jokes! 

The photo doesn't so justice to how neon green this was and if smellovision existed, I have no doubt I'd still be able to smell the super strong apple even now hours later - I know I can from the wrapper in the bin!! 

Wikipedia may claim it's similar to toffee but I've never had such a soft toffee in my life, not that it's a bad thing - I really liked the texture. It was extremely sticky, smooth and soft but was still nice and chewy. Once I'd chewed a section (seriously it's longer than my placemats) it seemed to melt away in my mouth. 

The apple flavour is intense; very strong and although it wasn't scrunch my face up sour, still sour enough to be called sour apple. I dread to think what crazy E numbers are used but this is what a proper sour sweet should taste like. The banana flavour is already in my shopping basket. 

8/10 

Fruit Shoot Sweets

I'm having another one of my phases, this time it's sweets! I really wanted some Monty Bojangles Bon Bons and their website is the only place I can seem to find them, a delivery charge seemed silly for 1 small box of Bon Bons so I treated myself to these three bags of Fruit Shoot sweets as well as the J20 Bon Bons and Robinsons Squash gums. 

Funky Fruits 

These are an assorted mix of fruit jellies and as with the Robinsons packet are vegetarian and made with natural colours and flavours. The little blurb says "We are so fixated with Fruitiness that for our new Fruit Shoot Funky Fruit jellies we are using the most lusciously mouth-watering soft and fruity recipe to create these fantastically fruity flavours".

Well they smelt lusciously fruity but I disagree with the description of soft jellies, they had more of a wine gum consistency; a pretty hard chew and were some of the stickiest sweets I've had in a long time - I was picking bits out of my teeth for ages! 

Summer fruits flavour is "all the sweet and sharp flavour of succulent strawberries & raspberries" and had a nice actual summery taste to it. The strawberry is slightly stronger but overall had a good mix of the two. Apple has "the sharp flavour of yummy apples" but really I found it to be quite mild to begin with. It had more of a sweet apple taste while chewing but to be fair there was a sharper aftertaste. Tropical is "bursting with the sun-soakingly delicious flavour of a pineapple and orange punch" and for some reason there were 2 different shapes with this flavour in my bag. It ended up being the plainest tasting of all but it did have a mild cocktail like flavour to it. I couldn't clearly taste the pineapple and after trying the orange in the bag realised I couldn't taste that either. Moving on to the actual Orange - "the zingy, zesty flavour of the fullest, juiciest oranges". I'm not a great lover of oranges and so the strong, natural flavour of these didn't do much for me. They were very sharp, very citrusy and almost bitter or tart at some points. A very clear orange flavour and while I wasn't too keen it was a good, long lasting one. Blackcurrant and apple "capture all the flavour of bucketloads of beautifully jammy blackcurrant a & apples" but really tasted just of blackcurrant. I couldn't taste the apple at all but I wasn't moaning - the blackcurrant is good! It's not too strong but has a natural, juicy flavour. 

Despite being made by Robinsons with, I'm guessing, the same natural flavours and colours these were a lot better. The flavours were stronger and tasted real, I was just annoyed at how sticky these were - it's a good job I have all my own teeth! 

7/10 

Fruit Shoot Mega Sour Mix 

The flavours in this bag are exactly the same as the Funky Fruits - just sour, apparently. 

They smelt better than Funky Fruits though, the same blend of fruity scents but a lot more vibrant and despite again only using natural colours or flavours. Nothing artificial again but these aren't suitable for vegetarians. The sweets have much more of a jelly texture than before and are very soft and fizzy feeling, nice and chewy and are so juicy I felt like they would burst if I gave them a squeeze. 

Summer fruits had a much better mix of the two flavours this time round, neither were stronger and it was very tasty. For a 'Mega Sour' mix, it was distinctly lacking in the sour front though. Tropical was as dissapointing as before. The plainest of all, neither flavour used is strong at all and it's generally quite mild. This flavour tasted like the worlds most watered down cocktail. Dull. 

Blackcurrant & Apple was another that was different from the Funky Fruits bag, the blackcurrant was nowhere near as overpowering as before and it's more of an even mix of the two. Sadly this meant it tasted a lot milder as the apple, which I could actually taste this time, just seemed to tone it all down a bit. There is a strong blackcurrant aftertaste but I preferred it previously, as the stronger, dominant flavour. The Apple alone seems completely different, it's quite strong and a nice apple flavour, just like with the Summer Fruits flavour and the apple in the Funky Fruits bag, is quite sweet rather than sour. It's very nice though. I left Orange till last again, and one again it's a sharp orange flavour. I much preferred it here though, the taste suits the fizzy, sugary texture much more and it ends with a slightly sour aftertaste. A lot better in this bag. 

I preferred this bag a lot and I think the texture and type of sweet is the reason why, it suits these flavour a lot more. All of them (except tropical) have a really nice flavour but none are mega sour as I was expecting. Tasty though. 

7/10 

Juicy Jellies 

Again the third and final Fruit Shoot bag, Juicy Jellies is (meant to have) the same five flavours in the bag however, while this bag is still made with natural flavours and ingredients, it doesn't say that no artificial flavours are used so I was interested to see how these would shape up against the purely natural ones. 

I noticed a difference before I'd even tried one, they had an overwhelming, very strong tropical scent to them - nothing like the previous bags and a bit ironic considering the tropical had no flavour in those! Although the name is Juicy Jellies, these are a mixture of completely harder gummy like sweets and half gummy half foam sweets. 

I ran into a problem with these sweets that I hadn't before, the other two had a good mix of all the flavours but with these I had 12 (yes I counted) Summer Fruits flavour, 2 and 4 Apple & Blackcurrent and Apple, 1 Tropical and no Orange! I know there's no guarantee of what sweets are inside each bag but at least one of each would be nice! The half foam sweets are quite soft like all sweets of this texture are with a nice chew and the others have a firmer, more solid chew. Again more like a slightly softer Wine Gum than a jelly. 

The half foam Summer Fruit tasted like a diluted version of the same flavour in the last two bags, all I could really taste was the foam bottom of the sweet - not that I can put into words the flavour but just plain. The same flavour in gummy form wasn't much better, there was a mixed berry aftertaste but to be truthful I only knew what flavour it was supposed to be because it was red and shaped like a strawberry. The half foam Apple was the complete opposite, the apple was very strong and was the nicest apple out of the three. It was very sweet and juicy - a very nice apple sweet. I ate the gummy version immediately after a foam and gave up trying to work these bags out. I'm assuming the same ingredients are used for the half foam but these tasted so plain, there was a slight lingering apple taste but nothing while I was actually chewing. The strength of the foam apple might not have helped but these just seemed dull. Blackcurrant & Apple in the half foam sweet was very plain again, like the summer fruits all I could taste was the marshmallow like foam on the bottom. Dissapointing. The same flavour in the gummy was slightly better, it was stronger tasting than the Summer Fruits was but still mild. It had an even mix of the two flavours but nothing impressive. I can't comment on Orange as I didn't have any but I did have one lonely Tropical half foam sweet - hallelujah! At last, this is how tropical was supposed to taste in the other bags. Fresh and fruity with a slight tart aftertaste - this one sweet had enough flavour to provide the tropical smell when I opened the bag! Lovely. 

I liked a couple in the Juicy Jellies bag but the rest were rubbish. It seems Apple and Tropical benefit from artificial flavours as these were the only vibrant, juicy sweets in the bag. 

5/10 

The Fruit Shoot sweets are pretty good - especially the first two if you're looking for natural sweets rather than lots of added nasties and they're only £1 for quite a big bag too. It was interesting to see that (with the exception of the Juicy Jellies) the same ingredients were used but the strength/tartness/juiciness varied so much between bags, it seems the type of sweet used really affects the flavour. 

The all round winner for me was the (not very sour) Mega Sours! 

Robinsons Squash Gums

Confession time. I have what you might call OCD but I prefer to call quirks.. Food has to be sorted - whatever I have most of gets eaten first (chips or the cherry flavoured sweet in a bag for example) and then in order of preference. So if I'm eating a fry up, I'll have a mouthful of everything until I'm left with a little of each and the last two mouthfuls will be sausage and bacon because they're the best. Obviously! There are little exceptions to my rules but I'll be here for hours explaining them so let's leave that there. Why am I telling you this? Because my bag of Robinsons Squash Gums were my worst nightmare. 

A range of Vegetarian gummies made with fruit juices, natural colours and natural flavours that recreate the classic family favourite Robinson squashes, including apple & blackcurrant, lemon, apple & pear, tropical, orange and summer fruits. 

Ok great that sounds like a bit of me, I opened the bag and they smelt generally fruity, took the obligatory  photo of all the sweets together then got to sorting them. 

The back of the bag shows which colour sweet corresponds to which flavour but mine were wrong! It wasn't even just the reddy pinky sweets that had the wrong names on them, they all did! I tried to sort my sweets into some sort of groups by how they were labelled but I gave up and hoped they tasted right. 

All the sweets have your usual wine gum like consistency, nothing amazing but nice enough.

Firstly I tried the white bottle which was supposed to be lemon. There is supposed to be a white Robinson logo shaped sweet but I didn't have any of those. The white bottle didn't have any discernible flavour at all, it was fruity but lemon it wasn't. So I tried the pinky red sweet which had lemon printed on it, and that didn't taste of lemon either!? It was supposed to be summer fruits which I suppose I could taste, it was nice enough anyway. 

Next I tried the orange bottle which, suprise suprise are supposed to be orange. The bottle has a definite orange flavour - Wahey! It's not very strong but is noticable and quite tasty. My yellow logo sweet (supposed to be tropical) had orange printed on it so I tried that next, it tasted vaguely orangey but could easily have passed for tropical too, it certainly wasn't as orange tasting as the bottle. 

  I tried the green bottle next, apple & pear apparently, and pleasingly for my OCD it was! At first all I could taste was apple but the pear appeared halfway through the sweet and it was very tasty, eventually ended up as my favourite flavour in the bag. 

I had three dark red sweets that were supposed to be apple & blackcurrant but two were printed apple & pear so I tried those next. Well it turns out they were another correctly coloured sweet but while the apple is nice, I wasn't a fan of the blackcurrant flavour. 

I then had the rest of the pinky red bottles and sweets - the ones that were actually marked summer fruits. They tasted the same as the one printed lemon, mildly fruity, a bit berryish but no stand out flavour. An OK flavour. 

Lastly was the orange shape marked tropical. It tasted the same as the first yellow shape I'd tried that was printed orange. Another mixed vaguely orangey but not completely orange flavour that could get away with being called tropical. 

These sweets were OK. A little on the mild side for strength of flavours but my freak out over the wrong flavours could well have clouded my judgement. Mr.1T had a bag and really enjoyed them but he eats like a normal person. 

6/10 

Monty Bojangles Bon Bonanza

Am I the only person who seems to get addicted, for want of a better word, to certain things? I'm on a bit of a Bon Bon binge at the moment - next week it will probably be all chocolate!

After the two J20 Bon Bons (which are advertised and sold by Monty Bojangles) I didn't have high hopes for the Bon Bonanza box, this coupled with the fact I had some truffles from Monty Bojangles last year that I never got try try as they melted into a lovely messy puddle meant I wasnt very excited. 

An assortment of Salted Caramel, Clotted Cream and Strawberry flavoured traditional toffee centred Bon Bons. 

Well they look much nicer than the J20 ones! 

There was an uneven mix of the three in my bag, about 15 Strawberry, half that of the Clotted Cream and one lonely Salted Caramel. They smelt mainly of strawberry but despite the smaller numbers, I could still smell the other two flavours too and all three smelt delicious. 

Minus one or two baby Bon Bons, these were very large - much bigger than I'm used to and they had a brilliant texture. There is an 'outer shell' of a thick powdered sugar that crumbles away and leaves a hard, chewy toffee center. I loved this, I know I've said before that I want Bon Bons to just be hard and chewy but that's all changed after trying these. 

The Strawberry is beautiful. A lovely, natural, fruity strawberry that tastes real. It's obviously still a sweet flavouring so there is still that sugary taste but nothing like the crazy, artificial, sickly sweet or sour strawberry Bon Bons I've had previously. High praise here - probably the nicest strawberry Bon Bon I've ever had. 

The Clotted Cream were new to me and more a flavour I associate with fudge or proper toffee than a Bon Bon. After tasting these, that shouldn't be the case! They have a lovely sweet, creamy flavour that at times was almost milky. Again the taste was real and to my untrained tongue could probably pass for homemade rather than mass produced. They're quite mild while I was waiting for the sugary coating to melt away and have a strong clotted cream aftertaste. This isn't a bad thing at all, the lack of overpowering, fake flavours made this feel like a more grown up sweet and a bit of a luxury. Very, very nice and if the strawberry wasn't included, would have jumped straight to the top of my all time leader board. 

Last but not least I tried my one lonely Salted Caramel. I thought that only having one to try would mean I wouldn't get much to go on for the review but I couldn't have been more wrong. The flavour is spot on. It was a little strange having such a concentrated salted caramel flavour in a hard chewy sweet - it tasted like it should have been a liquid center in the middle of a chocolate bar. Rich, slightly salty but still sweet, beautiful caramel. I was absolutely gutted I only had one.   

I didnt expect much from these three and it just shows I should never listen to myself as they now occupy first, second and third place in my Bon Bon rankings. 

I ate these 10 hours ago and I've already ordered another bag. 

9/10 

Sorry Monty, you'd be 10/10 if I didn't only get one Salted Caramel... If the next bag has more you'll get a revised rating!

Edit - the next bag had plenty of salted caramel so up you go Monty!