Skittles Orchards

Huge disappointment. I love Skittles. Probably my all time favorite candy. But there was something off about the flavors, especially the peach.

Cherry: basic "red" flavor. Different from the standard Skittles strawberry flavor. Different and inferior.

Orange: I don't know why Skittles would make two different orange flavors, but I feel like it is different.

Lime: Again, lime is in the standard Skittles lineup, but I feel this one is different. And worse. But that seems crazy, so I think I might revisit this review as a face off between Skittles Original and Skittles Orchards.

Peach: Not good. There's some kind of tropical flavor going on. Tastes very little like peach.

I'm not sure what happened with Skittles Orchards. Maybe they were trying to use less expensive flavorings. I'd say they taste more artificial than original Skittles.

75/100

Peeps Lemon Delight

Peeps Lemon Delight "Flavored Marshmallow Dipped in Lemon Fudge.

I'm not generally a fan of Peeps, so you can consider that along with my review. That said, I found them to be mildly pleasant. Upon first opening the package I was hit with a nice smell of lemon (not quite fresh lemon, but not overly chemical), but the flavoring didn't quite get there. The marshmallow is supposed to be flavored, but my test for that (biting off the heads) was just mild sweetness. The lemon "fudge" has a mild but pleasant lemon flavor. I would say it is more like the coating on yogurt covered raisins than fudge. Certainly a step up from the regular peeps, but not something I'd seek out.
58/100.

Selma's Treatsickles Coated Crisped Rice Treats

Rice crispy treat on a stick, partially dipped in white chocolate. The coating adds some sweetness, but in the cloying way of cheap white chocolate. The ingredients list agrees: there's both "white confectionery wafers" (no cocoa butter) and "cocoa confectionery wafers" (has cocoa). But the cocoa variety comes after the coloring ingredients, so I think it's just used for the "seeds". There's no flavor to it beyond the vanilla flavor already in marshmallows and the coating. The low quality of the is a bit of a detriment. For such a great looking treat, the result is a disappointment.
Also, "Treatsickles" in the product name is spelled as it is on the package. I'm not sure if I'd put the word "sick" in my product name (and popsicle does not have a 'k'). I do see they've dropped the 'k' on their website description.
44/100

Russel Stover Lemon Cake Egg

A 1oz egg shaped chocolate truffle. The "lemon cake" flavor is present, but mostly just in giving a muted lemon flavor. Not like fresh lemon at all, kind of how bottled shelf stable lemon juice can't compare to fresh. Like the "Wedding Cake" variety, the interior is a paste, not spongy cake at all. This wouldn't necessarily be bad, but it was unexpected. The filling is wrapped in dark chocolate.
48/100

Russel Stover Wedding Cake Egg

A 1oz egg shaped white chocolate truffle. The filling is "wedding cake" flavored. I have a bit of a problem with this since whatever kind of cake is served at a wedding is wedding cake (e.g. red velvet). But the graphic shows a slice of white cake with white icing. Pretty boring. Which is about how the truffle tastes. The interior does taste a bit like white cake. There's sort of a vague artificial vanilla flavor about the whole thing.
The texture of the interior is unexpected given the "cake" naming. It's about the texture of the filling of peanut butter cups. Not like spongy cake at all.
58/100

Russel Stover Cookie Dough Egg

A 1oz egg shaped chocolate truffle. Ostensibly it would just be chocolate chip cookie dough enrobed in chocolate. The ingredients mostly agree with this, with chocolate, sugar, and chocolate chip cookie dough being the first three ingredients. It somehow loses most of the cookie dough flavor though, possibly due to the additional sugar as the second ingredient; it mostly just tastes sweet. You can detect the cookie dough flavor if you look for it, but you'd be hard pressed to name it if you hadn't been told what to look for. 51/100

Starburst Crazy Beans

Starburst Crazy Beans are a variety of Jelly Beans from Starburst (Wrigley). Jelly beans typically start with a jelly bean-shaped core, then are panned with sugar to develop the shell. Cheap beans usually have sweet but unflavored cores with the flavoring and color only added to the shell. These Starburst beans have color and flavor in both the core and shell, and the "crazy" part is that they don't match. That is, the core has one flavor, and the shell has another. You can taste this by sucking on the bean for a while without biting into it (which would expose the flavor of the core). However, each core flavor is paired with a shell flavor. You don't get all the flavor combinations possible.

There are six flavors:

1. Grape-Ade: The grape flavor dominates, but you can pick out the lemon flavor as well if you look for it. Kind of like eating lemon and grape PEZ at the same time.
2. Peach-A-Palooza: A bit of a muted peach flavor. The paired flavor is hard to pick out, but possibly orange. Maybe they were going for Fuzzy Navel flavor here.
3. Tropical Cherry Splash: This one stood out before I started tasting them individually, and not in a good way. "Some weird tropical flavor" I said to myself. The cherry flavor is totally drowned out. Tastes like tropical sunscreen smells (not entirely unpleasant, but strong with tropical artificiality).
4. Razzin Watermelon: The watermelon flavor doesn't come through all that much, but then neither does the "Razz".
5. Banana Berry Blast: The banana is mild which is probably a good thing since I'm not a fan of artificial banana flavor. The berry is fleeting; like I got to lick a Haribo Raspberry once and that's all.
6. Strappleberry: Green apple with a hint of strawberry Bubble Yum.

The package promises "2 flavors in one", but fails to deliver any which are actually good. "Grape-Ade" is probably my favorite here. "Tropical Cherry Splash" is certainly my least. "Starburst Crazy Beans" are an improvement over the generic beans I used to get in my Easter basket as a kid (with flavors like mint), but there are much better ones out there, including regular Starburst jelly beans. They're okay if you want to try a few, but not worth seeking out.
65/100

Sweedish Fish Eggs

These came as a 9.5oz bag of "fun size" 0.5oz smaller bags. The smaller bags could fit in a plastic Easter egg. The candies themselves are standard mini-size Swedish fish (all red) with the addition of hemispherical "eggs" about half the size of "Dots" candy, and in orange, green, blue, and yellow flavors. Yes, I know those are colors, but the Swedish fish flavors are so indistinct that identifying them by flavor is impossible. They do have slightly different flavors, I just don't know what they are (best guess: orange, lime, raspberry, lemon). Despite that, I enjoy Swedish fish, so I like these.
81/100

Twix Egg

Twix in an egg shape for Easter. I usually don't go for "X Egg!", but I was curious how Twix would do it. Would it be the bar shaped cookies? No. It is an oval cookie, topped with caramel and enrobed in chocolate. Pretty much identical to regular Twix, which is why I usually don't bother with egg shaped varieties of other candies. But I do think there is a bit more caramel to cookie ratio in this. Possibly due to the domed top.
75/100

Warheads Sour Dippin' Pucker Packs

Warheads branded Fun Dip. Warheads is known for their sour candy and indeed, the word "sour" is used to describe both the dipping sticks, and the powders themselves. The sour level is just on par with Fun Dip. Also like Fun Dip, the flavors are cherry, sour apple, and grape, but with the addition of orange. The orange is similar to the orange flavor Runts. The flavored dipping sticks are something different, but don't add much until you chew them up at the end.
Overall I'd say it's about the same as Fun Dip, but the sticks are shorter and the powder packets more narrow making it a bit harder to eat without making a mess.
81/100

Strawberry desserts

 

Three types of strawberry desserts. Each the same size, about the size of the mini Hershey's bars (Hershey's, Mr. Goodbar), but with a square base. Like a pyramid with the top cut off. The coating of each seemed about the same, like a strawberry flavored white chocolate or yogurt.

Strawberry Mousse: A think layer of the strawberry coating with a thin patty of something chewy in the middle, possibly marshmallow (especially like the belly of gummy frogs).

Mille-feulle: This seems to be puffed rice (like Nestle Crunch), dried strawberry bits, and the coating also acting as a binder.

Strawberry Tarte: A small biscuit in the middle, topped with little "crystals" of freeze dried strawberry, and enrobed with the coating. My favorite of the bunch since it had the most strawberry flavor.

These were pretty good, and rather unique. Probably not a frequent purchase item (even if I lived in Japan), but certainly worth trying. I'll probably look for them again the next time I'm in Japan since I think their uniqueness makes them a great gift. 86/100