Cadbury Marvellous Creations Jelly Zingers

We're chugging along on the train to Joyville, steadily checking Cadbury's new additions to the Marvellous Creations range. Next up are Jelly Zingers.

Like its relative Toffee Nutters, Jelly Zingers are a simpler version of the Marvellous Creations blocks and bars. Instead of using three or more ingredients mixed through the chocolate, the bagged MC products have been on the more sedate end of the scale, using only one or two. Jelly Zingers do that very well. They are described as 'a mix of zingy fruit flavoured jellies, covered in Cadbury Dairy Milk milk chocolate'. I think that is about as simple as the Marvellous Creations know how to go!

To their credit, chocolate-covered jellies aren't exactly common here in Australia. Commercially, Robert Menz is a brand that produces a range of chocolate-covered snakes, frogs and lolly bananas (you can find their bags in Big W), though I believe they use compound chocolate rather than the real thing. There's also a brand I've found in Big W that does jelly rings in a white bag, although their name escapes me at the moment - I'll have to come back and update. But to my knowledge, no one does their jellies as little peanut-sized pieces.

The gusseted plastic bag holds 150g, but as we saw with Toffee Nutters and Caramel Shakes, there is quite a large amount of bitesize pieces in there. They are a similar size to the other bagged MC products, but more uniform in size like Caramel Shakes. All of my pieces were nicely panned and had a bright gloss finish. The bag smells sweet, but with less chocolate and more sugar.

On the back of the pack is a listing of the different jelly flavours to be found: banana, blackcurrant, raspberry, lime and orange. The thick chocolate coating makes it difficult to tell colours from one another, but biting into each piece reveals the centre pretty well. (Of course I didn't think to do this until after I'd taken the photos.)

The flavour of the centres by themselves are nicely done, although not very strong. Raspberry is lightly sweet and a touch tangy. Lime is good and tangy; the only sweetness in the flavour was from the chocolate coating. Orange was a bit of a disappointment; it's weak like cordial, and overpowered by the chocolate. Banana is also weak. The final flavour, blackcurrant, was pleasant, with sweet jammy notes. I had very few of these in my bag (that I could tell). When eaten whole, it was a little difficult to tell the flavours from each other. Plus, I found that some of the jellies seem to retain a few grains of sugar (though they didn't seem to be coated on their own), which added a bright pop of sweetness. Eating a handful just turned into flavour chaos, in a good way.

I strongly suspect the jelly flavours are from The Natural Confectionery Company's portfolio (not a far fetch, given that Cadbury owns TNCC). The colours and the actual flavour choices are very similar.

I found that ignoring the flavours and just enjoying the chaos was the best way for me to enjoy these. These are a strong contender, alongside Toffee Nutters, for my favourite Marvellous Creations flavour combination.

Score: 4.5 out of 5 jelly beans.

Cadbury Marvellous Creations Jelly Zingers are made in Australia. They contain milk, wheat and soy, and may contain traces of peanuts and tree nuts.