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! 

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 

Candy Kittens - Sour Grape & Wild Strawberry

Last year I reviewed Candy Kittens Sour Watermelon and Eton Mess, the thing that let the bags down most (apart from Sour Watermelon being quite dull) was the price and the fact they were a Waitrose exclusive. I spotted three new bags in Sainsburys this week and OK they're slightly smaller but they are a much more reasonable price too. 

Candy Kittens are a bit of a fancy bag of sweets, or gourmet candy to use their own terms. The sweets are all naturally flavoured, gluten free and made using real fruit juice and natural ingredients. 

I tried Sour Grape first, Grape isn't a flavour I've noticed is used too much in our sweets, I wonder why? 

All the varieties I've tried have the same somewhat soft but still chewy texture and are quite large for this style of sweet. 

The grape sweets aren't too vibrantly coloured but that's what I'd expect with natural ingredients. 

I could smell the grape, they smelt sweeter rather than sour and the taste was along the same lines. It's quite mild and not really very sour but it's still a lovely flavour. If you're specifically looking for the grape then this isn't a sweet to be eaten a couple at a time as the flavour doesn't build up enough but by the bagful it was pretty decent just lacking the sourness, I guess that's again to be expected with all natural flavourings. 

Rating 6/10 

I tried Wild Strawberry next, I'm not sure what makes them wild according to Candy Kittens they're rarer and much more fun than the original though? 

These were much brighter than the grape but looking at the flavourings used (radish, carrot, blackcurrant, apple, tomato, pumpkin) bright red is probably a much easier colour to replicate. 

I knew these would be getting a higher rating before I'd even eaten one. The strawberry scent was evident before I'd even completely opened the seal and it was a lovely, sweet, fruity strawberry. 

The taste did live up to expectations here and it had a beautiful, naturally tasting strong strawberry flavour that was just as good from the first one I ate to the very last.

These also had a fizz to them that I hadn't noticed was missing from the grape, overall a delicious little sweet! 

Rating 8/10 

Sour Vimtoads

I don't think these sour vimtoads are new but I've had a serious craving for Haribo fizzy sour cherries this week and absolutely nowhere has had any, the bag says these are are original vimto and cherry vimto flavoured so I thought these would do.. 

I could smell the cherry when I opened the packet and they looked just as sugary as my missing cherries - so far so good. 

I bit into the first one and the first thing I noticed was the runny centre, it is enjoyable but I just wish these were a bit bigger so there was more of it. I then realised the whole reason why the liquid middle stood out . They were pretty bland to be honest, the taste was nowhere near as strong as the scent and there was a distinct lack of sour. Maybe my tastebuds are just used to super sweet and sour sweets, these are sweet - more because of the covering of sugar all over them rather than the actual flavour and I really wouldn't describe them as sour. I was expecting two clear different flavours between the two colours but they were very similar, although it is a cherry Vimto rather than an ordinary cherry, I still expected a more distinguishable difference. 

As I ate the last couple they started to get very sugary - not sweet just pure sugar which I wouldn't have minded if there was a stronger flavour to balance it out but I might aswell have just been eating sugar off of a spoon.

Rating 5/10

The start of my Christmas Chocolates (and a few I forgot about!)

Wow I was supposed to blog about these weeks ago, I've noticed a lot of blogs slowing down recently so I suppose the madness that's Christmas has taken over everyone!

First up was Maynards Sour Tricks.

Apologies for the slightly blurry stolen from Google images picture but I completely forgot I had said I would blog about these and by the time I remembered, they were gone. Oops.

This is a seasonal Halloween bag from Maynards so unless any shops have some leftover I don't think you'll be able to get this again until next year. I'll probably buy these again it was nice to have a fizzy sour version, normally I buy the plain jellies but these were good. There's no point going into too much detail as they're off the shelves now… Must try harder!

Rating 6/10

Rowntree's Randoms sweet n sour.

The packet says new, are they new? I don't know how new by my late standards but I do know I haven't tried them before.

The packet has some nice pastel coloured, sugar coated squishy sweets. I can work out a snowman, a rocket, an icecream, milk shakes, a lock and possibly a tortoise? So far so random.

It also contains some typical fizzy jelly sweets. I can't lie I didn't really try too hard to work out what these are, I think there are some crowns, roller skates, a car and chess pieces in there though.

There isn't too much to say on this bag, it's an enjoyable bag of Rowntrees who usually manage to do sweets well and this is no different. I had a feeling I wouldn't get round to blogging about these straight away and so I usually make notes on my phone about something I plan to review. All these say is good - yellow ones not sour but too tart for me. I do remember that being the only sweet I wasn't keen on but the rest of the bag gets a thumbs up from me.

Rating 6/10

 Lidl Deluxe Butter Fudge

I loooove fudge. Any kind of fudge - chocolate covered fudge, harder chewy fudge, soft smooth fudge and the crumbly grainy fudge.

I think you can tell from the photo this is a lovely crumbly, melt in the mouth, grainy fudge. It's very buttery without being too rich. The texture and flavour are spot on and being from Lidl is a bargain too. I will be buying this again.

Rating 8/10

Waitrose Christmas Cracker Selection

I'm a sucker for gimmicks and when I saw this miniature 100g box of chocolates I wouldn't normally bother, however give me the same miniature chocolates in a box that looks and opens like a cracker and I'll buy it in a heartbeat!

The box was supposed to contain 9 chocolates - I got lucky and had 10 and my extra was milk chocolate fudge, not that I got to eat it as someone else in this house is rather partial or fudge too!

Dark chocolate orange crème

Milk chocolate strawberry crème

Milk chocolate coffee truffle

Milk chocolate caramel barrel

Milk chocolate biscuit in caramel

Milk chocolate Hazlenut in caramel

I didn't bother with pictures of the plain chocolate, or the toffee or fudge, they look the same in all boxes (I did notice the toffee is the same as the big 200g bags of toffee they sell) but as you can see from the pictures they are all nicely packed out chocolates with a good ratio of filling to shell. The flavours are good and I did enjoy this little box, the caramel is deliciously gooey and unlike the next product the coffee chocolate was the one that really stood out. It has a lovely strong coffee taste and smell and is easily my favourite in this box, however once Id noticed that the toffee included is the same as the cheaper,larger bags they sell in store (and that I already have sitting in my cupboard!) I was a little disappointed. I thought they'd at least put some special christmas chocolates in. Anyway they still tasted good.

Rating  7/10

Rittersport Kaffee + Nuss

My bar came back with a friend from Germany so I don't have any English info available but I think the name is pretty easy to work out.

I love rittersport bars. The milk chocolate is always of a good quality, they're nice and thick and the fillings are normally tasty and substantial.

I enjoyed the chewiness the nuts bring to the bar, but the coffee flavour was just underwhelming for me. I do however drink my coffee black and always put an extra scoop in the machine when it's just for me so other people may well find the coffee perfectly strong enough. It was just more of an aftertaste to me and being that it's the first word in the name of the bar I thought it would have more of a presence. I'm really dissapointed as I was so looking forward to this. It is another nice bar from rittersport though, it just didn't meet my coffee expectations sadly.

Rating 6/10