Tic Tac Fruit Adventure

(I heard about this new release through another Aussie food blogger, Junk Food Journal - go and say hello!)

Tic Tacs (according to the brands website, the name is both singular and plural, but I will add an 's' anyway!) were launched in Australia in 1974, and are manufactured in NSW. The brand is known worldwide, but is distributed in Australia by Ferrero (yes, the Ferrero Rocher brand, as well as Kinder products and others).

The last new flavour we saw from Tic Tac here in Australia was the Green Apple variety that launched in August last year. I never got around to reviewing that flavour, unfortunately, but luckily for us, the new Fruit Adventure medley contains green apple flavour, alongside orange, cherry and passionfruit. Orange is a favourite of many (although it is usually white here in Australia), but I don't believe we've seen the passionfruit or cherry flavours before. Cherry does exist in a single-flavour pack in the US. They also have a Fruit Adventure pack with the same flavours, but it's curious to note that the packet I have in hand has been made in Australia - so it's not imported stock.

Along with our four flavours we have some super bright colouring that takes the Tic Tacs away from the original 'mint' idea and more into lolly territory. A pack is 24g, and my four flavours were not inserted evenly. I have a huge number of passionfruit, but only a few cherry.

Orange tastes exactly the same as the orange found in the single-flavour packs; it hasn't been modified except for the addition of a coloured shell. The flavour is refreshing, bright and bold, tangy and undeniably citrus, but it does have a bit of that faux flavour behind it. Unfortunately the flavour is only really noticeable upon biting into the Tic Tac, and dissipates quickly. These are still my favourite (and now I want to go out and buy a pack of Orange and relive my childhood.)

I only had a few bright-green Apples in my pack. I love the shade of green. It reminds me of Granny Smith apples. Unlike the orange, I got a surprising amount of flavour just from sucking the shell. It's like a brighter, juicy version of apple juice. It's also slightly tart as well, and quite realistic for a product that likely contains only artificial flavours. I didn't think I would like this at all, but I was surprised and pleased to find that I did. They were also more satisfying.

Cherry was rather disappointing. Like the orange, I got little flavour from the shell, and on biting in, I found the flavour very artificial. Thankfully it didn't stray into medicinal territory, but instead headed towards Cherry Coke. There was some depth to it, but this would never fool anyone into thinking it tasted like a real cherry.

Passionfruit is bright yellow, and has quite a strong flavour behind it. I've never eaten a real passionfruit so can't tell you how real the flavour is, but it is very bold and bright. It's a lot like having a mouthful of Passiona (passionfruit flavoured soft drink for our non-Aussie visitors). Like the Orange, it doesn't last long, but is surprisingly refreshing and sweet with a bit of a kick behind it. This would actually make an excellent energy drink flavour. (Drink manufacturers, are you listening?)

This flavour isn't yet on the Tic Tac website, but the FAQ notes that they "contain corn gluten but not gliadin gluten from wheat, barley or rye grains. The source of the maltodextrin is corn."

Mod Post: Should Lolly Addict have a star score for each review?

I've added a poll over on the left side of the blog as I've been thinking about introducing a star score or rating at the end of each review.

Please take a moment to go and vote! The poll ends in two weeks and I look forward to seeing the results!

Gossip: New Cadbury Packaging and Blocks Land, New TNCC Chews and More

First up: The new 220g Cadbury blocks, complete with new foil wrapper and new piece shape have landed in stores. I spotted these in Woolworths. The new rounded square seems to be consistent across all varieties (nut-filled, soft centre, etc), although the Mousse varieties were still in their cardboard wrappers.

The Old Gold range is also included in the new packaging, and the designers seem to have given that range's layout a bit of a shake-up in general.

Also in Joyville, Cadbury has released another new Marvellous Creations flavour alongside the Clinkers, Raspberry Chips and Marshmallow bar I reviewed a few days ago. The other new flavour is Clinkers, Gummi Bears and Choc Biscuit. Sounds good - keep an eye out for it!

Next up, I spotted the Aero blocks have changed the shape of their bars. Previously, the bars were wide and stubby, and marked in 'strips', and now they seem to have adopted a square piece with a domed bubble on top. (Sorry for the blurry picture.)

I also spotted the brand new 'Aero Bubbles' in Woolworths, which I will be reviewing shortly, so no picture yet. ;)

The Natural Confectionery Company have been busy and have added two new products to their range: Smoothie Chews and Sour Chews. These were also spotted in Woolworths and I'll be reviewing them when they go on special.

I spotted these Limited Edition Double D Sugar Free Gummy Bears on the shelf as well at Woolworths. I don't know how long they have been on the market so far. I may not get around to reviewing these, but they looked nice and squishy.

Finally, I saw these bags of Fino Premium Confections at Coles last week. They seem to be gourmet sugar-covered jellies (also known as jubes). They come in two flavours - citrus and berry. The price tag was also at a premium (around $5.50 for the 120g bag) so it's unlikely that I will be reviewing these. Perhaps one of our readers would like to review them and share a guest post with us!

Cadbury Marvellous Creations Clinkers, Raspberry Chips & Marshmallows

I was out on a mini road trip with a dear friend this morning when we stopped at the servo. Since I don't drive, a servo is not usually a place I visit (especially since there are no 7/11s here in WA!). I took the opportunity to go have a poke around as the petrol and convenience (P&C) market is often the first place where new products are launched. And luck was on my side today!

Opposite the frozen drinks we were look at was a stand of a brand new addition to the Cadbury Marvellous Creations range that Cadbury launched last year with great fanfare. Surprisingly I hadn't heard any whispers of a new flavour, so that just made the find all that more exciting.

Cadbury Marvellous Creations Clinkers, Raspberry Chips & Marshmallows in the 50g block is the newest edition to the range. In keeping with the MC vibrant packaging, the matte foil wrapper has purple and cream stripes in the background, and is decorated with chunks of coloured confectionery. To help identify it as a new product, it also has a bright yellow 'New!' on the left side, and a lime green border around the centre panel. The green is different enough to the teal of the Peanut Toffee Cookie Marvellous Creations product that you would be able to pick it out instantly.

So let's talk about what we've got inside. Clinkers are a Pascall product, which is a brand owned by Cadbury, and they are normally large oval-shaped chalky pieces covered in thick milk chocolate. They come in three colours/flavours: yellow, green and pink, and are very sweet and rich. In the block, where there is far more chocolate than Clinker, they don't seem to have any flavour at all, but seem to be mostly included for texture purposes. They're light and crunchy and crumble well, and there are a lot of them in the bar as well (although according to the ingredients list, they only account for 2.6% of the bar). The pieces are disappointingly smaller than they appear on the wrapper though. I forgot to take a picture of the underside of the bar, but the textured bottom is most due to the Clinker pieces.

Then we have the raspberry chips. I would predict that these are the same as the chips used in the Cadbury Black Forest block. It's important to note that although they look similar to popping candy in the pictures, they are not. The pieces are small and varied in size, but are translucent, hard like a boiled lolly, bright red and have a strong raspberry-cordial flavour. Like the Clinkers, there are many of these spread evenly throughout the glossy Dairy Milk chocolate.

The final piece in this Marvellous Creations bar is the marshmallows. Pink or white, sticky and in chunks about the size of a pea, the marshmallows taste genuine, but the texture is slightly off; it feels like they have been compressed slightly (quite possible, to fit enough in the bar but still keep to the weight).

Together, the three ingredients and the Dairy Milk chocolate combine to give the bar a bit of a rocky road taste - albeit a rather modernised one. The raspberry and marshmallows combine to give a a taste that is reminiscent of making rocky road. The Clinkers stand in the background to provide a wonderful chalky crunch alongside the raspberry pieces, and the thick melt of the chocolate binds it all together very nicely. All the products are spread nicely throughout the bar too. The whole mouthful is rather cloying and sweet, so keep some water at hand for afterwards.

A word of advice: when snapping the bar into pieces, watch out for flying chocolate crumbs and raspberry chips. The marshmallow pieces holds everything together really well.

Cadbury Marvellous Creations Clinkers, Raspberry Chips & Marshmallows contains 26%  cocoa solids and 28% milk solids. It contains milk, wheat and soy, and may contain traces of egg, peanuts and tree nuts.

Edit 29/04/13: This new flavour will also be available in the larger 290g block as well, and it's not far away! See the empty shelf space I discovered at Woolworths.

Gossip: Cadbury 10% More Blocks

According to Cadbury's Facebook page, their large chocolate blocks are being upgraded 10% in size. The 200gm blocks will increase to 220gm (up from 200gm); other sizes will go up as well. Yet it was only four years ago that Cadbury made the change from 250gm blocks down to 200gm, so you can make the decision whether this is a nice change! There's no word if the sizing change is permanent or just a promotion.

In addition, the blocks will have new packaging (a plastic/foil wrapper instead of cardboard and foil), and the pieces in the block will also have a different shape (as shown below). It will take some sampling to see if the new shape is used consistently over the different varieties, or if Cadbury will continue to do as they have done in the past and use different shapes for different varieties.

For nut lovers, you will be pleased to note that along with these other changes, Cadbury will be using whole nuts instead of nut pieces in their blocks that contain nuts.

Sources:
http://www.adnews.com.au/adnews/cadbury-ups-chocolate-size-or-does-it
http://www.facebook.com/CadburyDairyMilkAustralia
http://www.woolworthsonline.com.au

Lindt Lindor Caramel Block

Another of Lindt's phenomenally popular products is the Lindor range. Available in both balls and blocks of pieces, each little piece has an incredibly smooth flavoured centre just melts into molten delight in your mouth. The balls come in a wide range of flavours, while the 100g blocks are constrained to three flavours: milk, white and dark chocolate. Until now. Lindt has just released a brand new caramel block to join the ranks.

Housed in a lovely yellow-amber coloured box, the caramel block is made from 'Swiss milk chocolate with caramel with a smooth melting filling'. I found this a little ambiguous - was there a caramel centre? Was the chocolate just caramel flavoured, or was there something else going on? Time to investigate!

The Lindt Lindor blocks aren't a block as such, but rather 18 individual pieces on a cardboard tray. The top of each piece is emblazoned with the Lindt dragon and crest logo (I think this is new; the last time I bought one of these blocks they used the word 'Lindt' instead). As expected, the chocolate is a light milky brown, slightly glossy and each piece is perfect with very little damage. (Mine are the weeniest bit heat affected, but we all know that doesn't affect the chocolate at all!) The block smells divine - very warm and rich with toasted notes of toffee and burnt sugar.

I wasn't too far off with my guesses: the caramel is mixed in with the chocolate, in both the exterior and interior. Surprisingly it's not an overly sweet combination, but it does have lots of depth and it invites you to sit and taste and concentrate on the flavour mix. I bet this would be delicious with a hot chocolate on a cool evening.
 

Definitely don't eat the whole block - a serving is just 25g (four pieces) and eating the whole block will cost kilojoule counters 2600kj. The milk chocolate in this block contains 31% cocoa solids, and 20% of milk solids. It may contain traces of hazelnuts and almonds.

M&M's Crispy Mint

The Crispy-Mint seasonal M&M's flavour is one we've seen before - it was first released in 2006 in Australia, also as part of the seasonal rotation. I for one am glad they are back as I've missed them!

If you're unfamiliar with this flavour combination, the Crispy-Mint M&M's have a crispy green centre (made from rice, I believe), which is surrounded by a layer of plain milk chocolate, and that is then surrounded by a mint-flavoured candy shell. Unlike the original plain milk chocolate M&M's, these ones have candy shells coloured to fit the theme- two shades of green and white. More interestingly, the M&M's are not uniform in size. Have a look at the comparison photos before and you'll see. The smallest size is similar to the plain Crispy M&M's (in the blue bag), while the largest of the ones I found in my pack rivaled the Peanut M&M's, so there's quite a difference in size there.

The M&M's still feel relatively light, however, but the bright green bag feels quite substantial given that it only contains 160g. Inside, the M&M's are not strong in their mint-chocolate scent, but enough is there to make sure you know you're eating a mint-flavoured product.

Biting into one, I found the mint flavour got somewhat stronger, complete with a faint cooling sensation on my tongue from the shell (there's no peppermint oil or similar in the ingredients list, so maybe I'm just imagining it). There's a lovely combination of textures - the crunch of the shell and the rice centre, plus the smooth  layer of chocolate to balance it out. It's a little like eating chocolate and pretzels and chocolate, without the salt! (If you haven't tried it and like a bit of sweet/salty mix, I highly recommend Pretzel M&M's - unfortunately only sold here as imported stock, but still worth a shot!)

The mint flavour doesn't hang around long, and neither do I find the centre getting stuck in my teeth either. But I wouldn't go and eat an apple or drink juice after eating these, as you might get a bit of the toothpaste effect! I will, however, continue to pick these up as they are perfect for snacking in front of the TV (or computer), and aren't nearly as sweet as some other M&M's flavours.

M&M's Crispy-Mint contain milk, soy, barley, wheat and peanut, and may contain traces of treenut.

Lindt Creation Velvety Vanilla Almond

It is so not chocolate weather here in Perth, but Lindt has just released a brand new range of 100g blocks called Lindt Creation. Created by Lindt's master chocoletiers, the range includes three flavours: velvety vanilla almond (milk chocolate), sumptuous orange (dark orange) and divine hazelnut (milk).

I've picked up the velvety vanilla almond flavour for review, and the box-type package describes as: 'deliciously crisp almond pieces in a vanilla flavoured truffle with a caramel layer, coated in dreamy milk chocolate.' Everyone knows that Lindt milk chocolate is most definitely dreamy, but how about the rest of it?

The block is just shy of 16cm long, 7.5cm wide and each gently domed piece is 0.8cm high at the centre. There are ten squares (they're really rectangles) in the block, and each piece is large enough to satisfy the largest mouth, but will sit comfortably on the tongue. Each piece also includes the pretty Lindy logo carved in the top.

As with all Lindt milk chocolate, the first note that hits is the creamy milk scents in the chocolate. It's warm and it's inviting. Just behind it comes the warm and somewhat spicy scent of vanilla to round out the sweetness of the chocolate.

Inside each bite there is a layer of vanilla flavoured truffle, which takes up a significant proportion of the piece, and then a layer of caramel across the top. The almond pieces studded through the truffle are not large, per se, but they are visible and will definitely make their presence known when you bite in. Unfortunately, all of the pieces on my block seemed to be filled at a slant - the truffle was sloped up against one side. I don't know if this is standard or if my block is just weird.

As expected, the caramel was the first to burst out and make its presence known when I bite into a piece. It was quickly followed by the strong vanilla flavour though, and together I found they made an interesting combination that reminded me a lot of creme brulee. The chocolate definitely takes a back seat to the sweet and tasty centre, but that's A-OK with me! I found that the almond pieces did not make a huge infringement on the taste; they added texture interest to the chew but not a whole lot of flavour (in fact I couldn't taste them at all), and I don't think the block is any worse off because of it. Texturewise, the chew did feel the slightest bit gluggy and the truffle a touch stick-to-your-teeth-y, but I was happy to work through it for the delicious flavour.

This is most definitely 'absurdly good'!

The milk chocolate contains a minimum of 30% cocoa solids and minimum 20% milk solids. The block may also contain traces of hazelnuts.

Spotted in the Wild: M&M's Crispy Mint

Mint lovers rejoice: the newest seasonal M&M's release is out and about! Keep your eyes peeled for the Crispy Mint variety, in bold emerald green packaging.

This one was spotted at an IGA in WA.

If you spot a new release, please email your photos to the blog at this address here.

Cadbury Boost Max Choc

Cadbury has been busy. Among their latest releases is the next seasonal release for Boost: Max Choc. (The last Boost seasonal product was Max Caramel, which you can still find on some product shelves at the time of this review.)

With distinctive silver packaging, the Boost Max Choc immediately stands out both from the other Boost products, and most other products on the shelves. Although I don't know what silver has to do with chocolate, it is a unique choice, and I can't really think of any current confectionery products that use silver as the main colour. The bar itself is described on the packaging as  "chewy choc caramel, surrounding smooth choc flavoured centre and crispy choc biscuit all covered in cadbury milk chocolate". Now that's a lot of chocolate-flavoured items!

It weighs in at a hefty 58g, which is on the large side for a medium-sized bar, but the weight and physical size is the same as the original Boost bar. It's quite a solid bar, and the Cadbury chocolate coating is around 1.5mm, so quite thick compared to many other chocolate-enrobed products these days. The chocolate on mine formed a solid seal, with no voids or holes into the interior.

The 'choc caramel' was interesting. Mine was soft (although it was in the mid-30s degrees (centrigrade) when I reviewed) and the softness allowed me to sample a little bit by itself. I found strong cocoa notes, but that was quickly tempered out by the rest of the bar. The choc cream centre was very soft, sweet and was almost like icing. I did find that it was very smooth with no grit. That smoothness helped the crunch of the little biscuit balls in the centre stand out quite a lot.

Unlike an original Boost bar, this one doesn't seem to contain the wafer-like tube that separates the caramel from the centre cream. I find that tube adds a nice element of crunch, so I missed that in this bar. Overall I found this bar extremely sweet - so sweet I couldn't eat more than half - and I found that the sheer amount of sugar overwhelmed my taste buds to the point that I had trouble recognising the chocolate flavour until I had been chewing for a while. Only then did the warm notes of the choc caramel come through and make things a little tastier. As much as I enjoyed the choc caramel, it didn't redeem the bar.

This bar contains wheat, milk, barley and soy. It may also cintain traces of peanuts and tree nuts.