Review

I like to pop into the 99p shop in town to see if any interesting products have popped up, and on my last visit I found several boxes of Fizz Wizz, which are basically sweet strips in the same shape of those Maoam sticks. There were several varieties, but this black box interested me the most, offering me extreme sourness. They come in three flavours: Orange, strawberry and blueberry.

As I always do, I started out with my least favourite colour and devoured and orange one. I was not impressed to start with. First of all, the texture is not the same as a Maoam, it's somewhat more crumbly, less chewy, although it retains some chewiness. It's hard to describe, and it took some getting used to, but after a few sticks I figured it wasn't so bad, just different. The orange flavour isn't that great, and it doesn't have much of a sour taste to it either. But as I moved onto the others I was more impressed. The strawberry has a nice flavour, and is actually very sour, while the blueberry tastes very nice indeed, despite lacking a little bit on the sour front. It's nice to see a blue sweet flavoured with blueberry instead of the standard blue raspberry, so that elevated my opinion of these. Overall then, these are some pretty good sweets. The orange may not be great, but the other two are tasty, and a box of them for 99p is not bad at all.

My rating: 4/5

I tried out the Cadbury Crunchie spread a little while back, and found it very much to my liking. I was eager to pick up the caramel variety as well, but I figured I'd wait for it to go on offer, especially as I have about five jars of previously reviewed spreads that I still haven't finished. Apparently the wait was not long enough, those jars are still in the cupboard, but the caramel spread is finally on offer in Tesco, so I snatched it up. Quite basically, it's a Cadbury spread with both chocolate and caramel in it. Just look at those swirls, lovely. 

I had a slight complaint with the Crunchie version, in that it was a little hard to spread what with all the Crunchie bits mixed in. There's no such issue with the caramel though, it's completely smooth and a wonder to spread on whatever you fancy slapping it on. As for the taste, I really can't fault it. It has chocolate, it has caramel, and it taste pretty much like a melted down Caramel bar, and I guess that's what they were going for. There's not particularly a prominent element here, just a great combination of chocolate and caramel flavours that make for a smooth, sweet spread. I've been finding all kinds of excuses to spread this stuff on things and shove them in my face. It's quite unhealthy really, but it's a testament to how good this stuff is. Keep bringing out these spreads, guys, and by that I mean do a Wispa one already.

My rating: 5/5

Tesco have updated their bakery again with some new items, and these Oreo doughnuts interested me the most, especially when I first saw the shelf label and found they were out of stock. After getting over my initial shock, I moved on, but thankfully after a visit to Tesco Express a couple of days later I actually managed to see what they looked like. Then I bought them to see how they taste.

As you can tell from the picture up there, these do have an appearance very in keeping with the Oreo theme. There are Oreo pieces atop a white, creamy topping, smothered on a chocolate doughnut which is itself filled with creme. Creme and chocolate, it's the Oreo way. I must say, I've started to become disillusioned with Oreo themed products these days, they seem to be everywhere, so for some reason I didn't have high hopes for these doughnuts. But it turns out these are pretty good. The doughnut itself isn't perfect, it's a little dry, but it has a nice chocolate flavour and the creme in the middle goes some way to softening it up. The topping is all good, providing a proper Oreo taste with a nice crumbly biscuit texture. These are chocolatey, creamy doughnuts, which is all you could hope for I guess, and while they're not perfect, they're a good effort. Despite the dryness of the inner doughnut, I was left with a nice creamy after taste, so overall it was a pretty good experience.

My rating: 4/5

Hunting for new snacks is something of a compulsion, I'm sure fellow bloggers will agree. Every shopping trip consists of me wandering the aisles, scanning the shelves for something I've never seen before. The words "new" emblazoned on some packaging draw my attention instantly, and sometimes lead me to chuck something in the trolley that I'd never normally consider. Take these sweet potato jackets from Aunt Bessie's. I don't buy a whole lot of frozen food, but I saw these and had to have them for some reason. Well, I like sweet potatoes, and I had a day where it was only me to cook for coming up, so I guess that's reason enough. Besides, I know sweet potatoes come in a strange variety of shapes and sizes, so at least some specifically chosen for jacket purposes would be shaped for optimum filling, right?

Apparently not. I don't quite know what I expected, but this is literally two frozen sweet potatoes chucked in a box. They don't appear to be selected based on their shape, just thrown in from a generic batch. So if a convenient shape isn't a key benefit of these, what is? They're frozen, but surely they're prepared for a quicker cooking time, right? Well, the oven option calls for a 35-40 minute cooking time, while cooking your regular sweet potato will take... 45 minutes? What is this? What's the point? I mean, sure, these taste good, but so do any other sweet potatoes, Aunt Bessie's haven't done anything special to these, they just seem to have baked them a little and then frozen them, negating the point of baking them in the first place. It doesn't really matter to me that these taste good, not in this instance. Sweet potatoes are readily available at the front of the supermarket, and they're a hell of a lot cheaper than the £1 it cost me to pick up these two frozen lumps. Despite how they taste, my conclusion is that these are entirely unnecessary. Now I know why I've never reviewed regular frozen jacket potatoes.

My rating: 1/5

Flumps are an all time classic, untouched by the ravages of time. To be fair, it's a marshmallow twist in different colours, there's not much that could be done to it, and really, does anyone want anything more from a Flump? Perhaps not, but Candy Land are offering an alternative with these jelly filled Flumps. In case you hadn't guessed, these are Flumps filled with strawberry jelly. I didn't know I wanted them until I saw them, and then I immediately grabbed the bag. I found these in Wilkinson for 95p.

The first time I read that packaging, I was in American mode, so took the "jelly" to mean "jam". Clearly it's not the classic British seeded jam shoved in there, it is indeed more of the wibbly wobbly jelly variety. The consistency is somewhere in between wobbly and American jelly though, it's a smooth, fruity filling that doesn't quite possess the tenacious texture of a jelly, it's instead more of a paste. It's better than it sounds, based on that description, but I will say that it's not great. The flavour is nice enough, but I wouldn't say it's all that good. Perhaps the taste of the marshmallow threw it out of whack, but these didn't scream "strawberry" to me. Besides, there's not much of it in each Flump, which makes sense seeing as they're pretty small already. Don't get me wrong, these are still somewhat tasty, and they're an interesting variation on the classic Flump, but they could do with a more substantial and flavoursome filling. Good idea, average execution.

My rating: 3/5

Another acquisition from my candy store trip last week, these are butter rum Lifesavers. Now, I'm partial to a Lifesaver, they're a pretty good American version of Polos, and they come in fruity flavours as well as mint, which is great. But butter rum? That's an interesting combination if I ever heard of one. 

I'm torn with this one. I don't like these, at all, but I can't deny that they taste exactly like they say they would. The predominant flavour is a very strong rum, and it's underpinned by quite a smooth, creamy butter taste that would probably be alright on its own, although a little weird in a hard sweet. That rum though, man it's strong. I should probably stop buying sweets that promise a rum flavour, but my curiosity always seems to get the best of me. So what do I do? Applaud these for having a pretty authentic flavour? Or give them a low rating because I can't stand them? I guess I'll stick to the semantics. This is "my rating" after all, and while I can appreciate that the flavours are pretty accurate, I will most definitely not be buying these again. Besides, the butter part isn't too bad, just a little weird.

My rating: 2/5  

Haribo released a "Frenzy" edition of their Starmix and Tangfastics sweets last year, but apparently I neglected to review them. I did try them though, and seeing this bag for the first time I just skimmed over it, figuring I'd been there, done that. But upon closer inspection, this isn't just a Frenzy edition, it's a Frenzy Carnival edition, with different flavours all ready for consumption. So let me right my previous injustices in neglecting to review the Frenzy flavours, here's the new Starmix Frenzy Carnival.

They're still keeping with the theme of tropical flavours, well, vaguely at least. There are some interesting flavour and colour combinations here, such as the green mango eggs, the blue banana bears, and the purple and green mango & lime rings. There's a lot of mango present in these, quite a bit of peach too, but they're all pretty interesting variations on the originals. Trouble is they're not completely represented in the taste. There are some hints of the fruits that are meant to be there, but they're not all that strong. The bears pack quite a bit of flavour, and I found the banana and watermelon ones to be nice in particular. The rings, on the other hand, didn't taste all that great, and the combination of fruits didn't really shine through. Even my favourite Starmix sweet, the hearts, aren't a patch on the red originals. There's a semblance of nice peach flavour there, but it never materialises into something great. That seems to be the theme for the whole bag, each sweet possesses a certain amount of fruitiness, but didn't really impress me. I think I'll stick with the originals, they're classic.

My rating: 3/5