Marshmallow and Easter Candy Weirdness

Well, since we got started with some marshmallow, let's just continue with the sticky stuff.

Since I'm off the evil RS (well, mostly.....), let's look at the old standard for the marshmallow egg:

These are good - but the marshmallow didn't seem as soft and fresh as it should. In fact - the chocolate covered Peeps were better!!! WAY better. Hershey - what the heck???

I've noticed that the chocolate covered Peeps seems to be sold out everywhere - I must not be the only one who LOVED them. I'm serious - I appreciate them even more now that I've compared them to the competition. (Maybe I'll get to drive that Peepmobile yet!)

These marshmallow eggs were made by Whitman's:

The colors are really pretty and festive:

And the marshmallow inside is delicious - nice and soft and creamy, but the outer shell is too sweet. I sooooo wished it was chocolate! Rats!!

From Kraft we have BunnyMallows to go with our Halloween GhostMallows:

For some reason these bunnies make me think of dinosaurs:

These are in great colors and I like the attempt at a holiday shape. The taste is perfectly average marshmallow. I have no complaints, but there is nothing really exciting here. They might be really good dipped in chocolate! Yum!

These marshmallow chicks and bunnies by Frankford Candy and Chocolate Co. of Pennsylvania are unbelievably horrible:

Are those parrots? (Why do they have pink wings? Are those wings?) The taste and texture of these are so, so, so bad. They come closest to tasting like really stale cotton candy - but that is generous. Anyone who disses Peeps should eat a couple of these. They are truly horrifying.

I can remember these from when I was a kid:

And I don't like them any more now than I did then.

They come in a bunch of colors and are festive enough. They have a thick sugary shell and something inside that looks kind of like marshmallow, but tastes weird. I'd have to say these are pretty awful.

These are an Easter staple, but are probably best as decoration. Personally I think they waste valuable Easter basket space that could be filled by chocolate!!

I'm not a big candy corn fan, but lots of people are wild about it. It is kind of cool to see it in Easter colors:

It says on the bag that this is made with real honey -and I believe it - you can taste the honey. I think honey has kind of an odd taste, so these don't set me on fire. If you like honey, though, these might be your new fav. There aren't that many candies that have a strong honey taste.

You can see the off-white color - shows the honey:

These are new this year:

and are totally weird, yet somehow fascinating. I love Brach's Nougat peppermint candies. I love their Nougat cherry chocolate candy. These are good too, but not as good as plain old jelly beans in my book. They are made out of jelly bean pieces in sugary, chewy nougat:

Some have lots of jelly bean pieces, some have no jelly bean pieces. And some are kind of mutated:

But when they get it right, they are really pretty - like a glass mosaic:

These are very sweet and have ingredients like apple cider butter, strawberry jam, grape jam, and grape jelly. If you like chewy, sweet and fruity, these are for you!! I do give Brach's huge points for coming up with something new and original, even though a lot of jelly beans had to give their lives for it. But still, sacrifices have to be made. I say - yay!!

These are from my friends at Just Born (of course, if they were really my friends I'd be cruising around in that Peepmobile right now):

These are the best jelly beans I've had this year:

This is the Americana Medley and the flavors are Savannah Strawberry, Laredo Lime, Chesapeake Cherry, Napa Grape, Indian River Orange and La Jolla Lemon. And they are all good with no weird aftertaste (like all the others reviewed below). Apparently making a good jelly bean is way harder than you'd think. Not that I've ever really thought about it. Until now.

Isn't this a great assortment from See's? We'll review the chocolate eggs soon:

See's makes two types of jelly eggs:

Regular jelly beans on the left and non-pareil jelly eggs on the left:

Now let me tell you, I love jelly beans, I really do. And these look great! But they were very disappointing. The jelly beans have a too thick outer coating and just taste crummy. And where's red - the most popular flavor??? These were so bad, I tried 'em, spit 'em out and threw the whole bag away. (I consider that a huge sin, but sometime candy is too terrible to even give away.)

The jelly eggs are no better - and the texture kind of creeps me out. Too jellyish, with those too hard non-pareils on them. Ugh. Boo to both of these!

I thought these were festive and I really wanted to see what was inside them:

This is the Harry & David Easter Candy Mix:

There are lots of little molded sugar candies - two different rabbits, an Easter egg, a duck, and a rooster. They are in white (I have no idea what flavor this is, but I didn't like it), lemon, lime, pink (cherry? strawberry? not good), and purple (grape? horrible taste!). These were MUCH better in the Jelly Belly assortment (below). They were really, really bad.

There are non-pareil jelly eggs like the See's, but with multicolored non-pareils instead of white. While these look terrific, the taste is not so wonderful. These vile things are jelly beans without the usual candy shell. Instead the gelatin bean is coated in these round sprinkles. Just creepy. The regular jelly beans were really good though!! Loved them!

The white, pink and purple balls are those great chocolate covered, candy coated mints. These were really good.

There was ONE foil covered chocolate egg which was terrible - surprising from H & D. The Jelly Belly chocolate eggs were better (see below). Although neither mix had enough chocolate. Wait - the H & D chocolate was so bad, there was too much of it.

This is the Jelly Belly Deluxe Easter Mix:

It also has pastel candy corn, but it's white and has no taste of honey. I prefer this to the Brach's, but it's really too sweet for me. Good jelly beans kick Easter candy corn's butt. If it had a butt. And if jelly beans had legs.

Both mixes have these little pastel candy shapes - this one has three different rabbits, a duck and a rooster. They are in lemon, lime, strawberry and grape. They are way sweet and way fruity. I would never crave these and plan to never eat them again. But they are weird and festive - and I love weird and festive.

There were a bunch of Jelly Belly jelly beans - but I wish they were in better flavors - hate lemon and lime, don't care for cantaloupe or grapefruit, I did like the blue (not sure what flavor it is, but it's good) and the purple had some kind of funky aftertaste. Boo!!!

There were three foil covered chocolate eggs which were fine - average.

There were also two malted milk eggs which we'll review in the next post. You're going to learn more about malted milk eggs than you ever wanted to know.

Lesson - it takes guts to try something new. Does it always work? Will honey flavored Easter candy corn become an Easter staple? Will weird Jelly Bean Nougat? I have my doubts. But I think the chocolate covered Peep is going to be a huge success! It's easy to do the same old thing - it's safe and no one will mock you in blog postings. But doing the same old thing gets boring - trying something new keeps life interesting and keeps you growing. Try one new thing this week - personally and professionally. You've got nothing to lose except stagnation. Peep, peep!