Riesens are chocolate-flavored caramels (or toffee, in Brit-speak; because I bought mine in Britain, I shall refer to them as toffees) covered in chocolate. The chocolate coating, which could have gone horribly wrong and been made of fake vegetable oil chocolate, was lovely, dark, and rich. The chocolate-flavored toffee inside was just the right blend of creamy and chewy and sticky. It managed to glue my teeth together a bit, but none of it got stuck in the nooks and crannies of my mouth, so no embarrassing post-candy teeth picking necessary. I have no idea how Riesen got their toffee texture teased to perfection, but it was wonderful.

The flavor of the toffee inside was quite nice - a round, mellow cocoa - but wasn’t anything revolutionary. What really sold me on the Riesen’s was the texture, which can be so crucial for creating a candy that constantly surprises the tongue and makes one want to reach for more. I polished off my pack super quickly, making me wonder what took me so long to try them in the first place.

If you want a second and third opinion, check out reviews from Cybele at Candy Blog and Jamie at Candy Addict.

Boston Fruit Slices are pretty easy to find on Amazon.com, yet I don’t recall ever seeing them in stores. They’re a soft, sugar-coated fruit pate/jelly type candy. I think they fall in that category of candy that people are inured to (Boston Fruit Slices have been around for a while) and will eat if they happen upon it but won’t go out of their way to buy. They’re okay but not exceptional.

I managed to find five flavors in John’s gift basket. Lemon was bright, sweet, and tangy. Orange tasted like a less tangy version of lemon, so much so that it didn’t really taste like orange anymore. What I thought was grape (the purplish red) may actually be raspberry because it carried a slight bitterness, though I could be wrong. Red was cherry, with a strong candied cherry finish. And last and least was watermelon (pink with a green rind), which was so artificially sweetly watermelon flavored that I couldn’t finish it.

I’d eat the lemon and the raspberry again, but didn’t much care for the others. If you’re looking for a cheap fruit jelly/pate fix, I suggest Sunkist Fruit Gems (now made by Jelly Belly) instead.

Even though my shipment was completely free, it still arrived carefully packaged and in great shape. I was a bit concerned about them sitting around my apartment’s mailbox (indoors, but right by the front door) in the New Haven summer, but I needn’t have worried. The box was insulated with styrofoam and included several still cool gel packs. The candies arrived in Oh! Nuts branded resealable zip bags (greatly appreciated) with a content label on the back.

I specifically requested the pumpkin spice malted milk balls because I love pumpkin pie and pumpkin spiced things. In the fall, the Cheesecake Factory has a seasonal pumpkin cheese cake that I think is to die for, and I once made pumpkin oatmeal cookies that I couldn’t stop eating. So I had high hopes for these guys.

At room temperature, they were a bit of a letdown, as they tasted more of the spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger) that go into pumpkin pie than of pumpkin. They were good and texturally wonderful, with a light, malty, crispy center, but I wished for more pumpkin-ness. Then I had the good fortune to stick the remainder of my bag in the fridge. Once chilled, the spice flavor grew stronger, and a bit of pumpkinness came through, making them much more enjoyable.

The coconut malted milk balls arrived without my specific request for them. I was a bit dubious about them, as I generally don’t like coconut flavored things. They tend to be too waxy and artificial tasting for my taste. I was also suspicious of the white coating, as I also tend to dislike white chocolate. The coconut malted milks balls, however, turned out to be divine, which just goes to show that you shouldn’t discriminate against candy by making generalizations (though I think I’m safe with saying I’ll never like black licorice).

Like the pumpkin spice malted milk balls, the coconut ones had crisp and crunchy centers. The coconut flavored coating didn’t taste fake like that of a Mounds bar. Instead, it was fresh and creamy and reminded me of the coconut milk I used to love to chug down until I learned that coconut milk is chock full of saturated fat. I could not stop popping these.

Both 1-pound bags of malted milk balls quickly disappeared into the bellies of my friends, but the coconut ones disappeared first (though to be fair, I did talk them up more than the pumpkin spice ones), making me wish I had set aside more for myself before I brought them out to share. Thanks, Oh! Nuts, for making me popular with my friends and keeping them happily fed and entertained (they kept shouting “Oh! Nuts!”).

The MozartKugel is shaped like a traditional chocolate truffle, a little dome. The bottom layer of chocolate was winey and smooth. The white top was marzipan, which was rather grainy, like a soft cookie. I usually don’t like marzipan, as it’s a little too sweet for my palate. This marzipan was also on the sweet side, but it paired well with the chocolate and pistachio that was snuck in there. Finally, the outer coating of chocolate was slightly greasy. Overall, a great mix of flavors and textures.

The medallion shaped MozartTaler was prettily decorated with Mozart’s face and inscribed with the chocolate’s name. The milk chocolate was smooth, creamy, and a bit too sweet, but I really enjoyed the marzipan inside. The pistachio nuttiness came through much more and was followed by a strong, nicely nutty almond finish.

These arrived on a warm day, and my New Haven apartment doesn’t have air conditioning, so I stuck them in the fridge to keep them from melting. On the wrapper, a little cartoon version of Joel Schantz, the owner, exhorts you to “Try ‘em cold!” so I tried the Toasted Almond straight out of the fridge. It was super dense in its chilled state, and when hardened, the almond bits and crispy rice lost some of their nutty flavor. I liked it better when I let it warm up to room temperature, where it became softer and more pliable (though the texture of the bar also became a bit grittier). Then the rice crisps’ flavor became more noticeable and appreciable. In both temperature states, the thin chocolate layer wasn’t much to crow about.

The Roasted Peanut was quite similar to the Toasted Almond. I first tried it at room temperature. The nuttiness of the peanuts really came through, so I buy the roasted moniker. Here the chocolate layer was more present - I think the bar was less high than the almond version, which may have made for a higher chocolate to filling ratio - and left a slightly too sweet finish. The press release I received claimed that the Roasted Peanut and Toasted Almond tasted similar to Snickers. When the bars are at room temperature, I would disagree with that, as the Crispy Cats lack caramel, which is a big part of Snickers. But when I stuck the Roasted Peanut in the fridge, it became more Snickers-like. Or at least more chilled-Snickers-like. The rice crisps lost their airiness and somehow took on a surprising resemblance to rock-hard caramel in both texture and flavor. A glance through the ingredients showed that organic molasses was a rice crisp ingredient, which solves that mystery.

I liked the Mint Coconut Crispy Cat much better than its two counterparts. That same press release said that it would be reminiscent of a Girl Scout Thin Mint. Again, I disagree, but this time I’m going to do Crispy Cat one better. The Mint Coconut is like the love child of a Thin Mint and a Caramel Delight. The mint and coconut flavors were both light, yet just present enough, at least on the first bite. After that first bite, when the taste buds are a bit inured to the flavors, the successive bites are less exciting, but still pretty good. This bar was soft and melted at room temperature while the other two held firm, probably because all the coconut in this bar gave it a rather frighteningly high saturated fat count (9 g, 45% of your RDA).

As candy bars, these don’t quite fit the bill, for they contain such a thin layer of chocolate and are so chock full of wholesome that they make me think of energy bars or meal replacement bars (though these days, the distinction between those and candy bars can be hazy; usually it’s the meal replacement bars that are too much like candy bars to be healthy). I’d consider chomping one of these in place of my usual Clif Bar snack.

Crispy Cat’s mantra of “sustainability, health, and wellness” is clearly defined in their product, and they make a sweet splurge that’s not as bad for you, or for the earth, as traditional candy bars.

I like the cartoony sushi chef guy on the packaging and the clearly illustrated instructions on how to eat sushi gummies. Just in case you couldn’t figure it out for yourself. And I liked the little pictures of fruit - an apple, a cantaloupe melon, and a strawberry - on the bottom to help those of us who love Japanese candy but can’t actually read Japanese.

The gummies themselves are sealed inside a second bag and arrayed on a plastic tray so you can marvel at the cuteness of the gummi shrimp and rice and things. The gummis are sweet and fruity smelling, with a scent that reminds me of those little lychee gelatin pots.

The gummis are very soft and slightly greasy to the touch. And they’re so cute! Red is strawberry, white is apple, and orange is cantaloupe. While the apple and strawberry go well together, the melon flavor of the cantaloupe is so strong that it’s not so good for pairing. A sweet concept with a sweet and tasty execution.

Got a spare $1,250 lying around? Who doesn’t, right? Clearly you want to spend that money on a dozen chocolates: 4 covered in 22-carat gold, 4 covered in pure silver, and 4 accented with diamond. You can find the Royal Collection at Cocoa Gourmet.

Kind of makes the gold-flake covered pralines (photo above) that Melissa from Viva Chocolato gave me look like small potatoes.

Their batches are “cleverly” (or obnoxiously) named based on what phase of testing it’s in, what flavor profile it is, and where the beans are sourced. Blame the fact that the company got its start-up money from the founder of Wired.

I’ve never tried TCHO, but Cybele did. You can also read more about the company at The Chocolate Life.

If you did, you thought wrong, as I seem to be overly willing to waste perfectly good money on candy that I know will turn out to be perfectly unappetizing.

The Idaho Spud is made by the Idaho Candy Company. They have a link to the Idaho Spud Fan Club on the site; I find it difficult to believe that people actually like this stuff, but I suppose someone is buying them and keeping them in business. I think quite a bit of their business must come from people succumbing to Candy Nostalgia Syndrome, in which they associate terrible-tasting candies of their youth with the joyousness of youth and therefore actually want to eat said terrible-tasting candies.

The Idaho Spud has been around since 1918, so it’s high in the nostalgia factor. According to the website, “the popular Idaho Spud Bar is a wonderful combination of a light cocoa flavored marshmallow center drenched with a dark chocolate coating and then sprinkled with coconut (Sorry, no potato!). The potato shape and unique blend of ingredients appeals to both young and old, making the ‘Idaho Spud’ one of the top hundred selling candy bars in the Northwest.”

Don’t you love that “top hundred selling candy bars in the Northwest” bit? Not exactly a jaw-dropping statistic there. Basically, the Idaho Spud is this weird sugar/coconut goop with a chocolate coating, which is then covered in bits of coconut. The inside goop is strange in texture and flavor. It’s sort of foamy, like a marshmallow, but also dense and gooey, making it unlike any marshmallow I’d want to eat. The whole things tastes like bad chocolate and waxy, fake coconut and has the most unappetizing mouthfeel. I’m not a big fan of coconut, but I can tolerate and even enjoy it when it tastes fresh. The Idaho Spud definitely did not taste fresh.

Points off for texture, points off for flavor, and points off for appearance (I’m not even going to go there). Sometimes a confection can be so bad that you just have to try it to believe it. Trust me, it’s bad, and you’re better off having never tried this.

I would call these candies vanilla creme over a light chocolate cookie with a thin chocolate shell, all dusted in cocoa powder. J-List describes them as “a Hershey’s Kiss shaped snack that is filled with a finely whipped white milk chocolate and covered with a delicious chocolate, with a air-infused layer of chocolate on the bottom and powdered with cocoa powder.”

The vanilla layer is sort of weirdly textured. It’s not creamy or foamy, but it does melt on the tongue. That must be the “finely whipped” part. It tastes of fresh, sweet cream. The chocolate cookie layer is super airy and crunchy. I loved it, but my roommate thought it a bit stale. The cocoa powder that dusts the outside is sweet, not bitter like I expected.

My box had 12 individually wrapped candies inside. I shared a few and ate the rest, and I wish there were more. The deliciate flavors and the great textural combination made them a delightful treat.