REVIEW: Favorite Day Peelable Tropical Banana and Sweet Mango

/ / Reviews / Leave a Comment

Peelable candy has been around for a few years, and it went viral a couple of years ago in the US when Walgreens’ Nice brand peelable mango candy was trending on TikTok. If you’re not familiar, the candy features a chewy edible exterior that peels off to reveal a super soft interior. Despite it being as popular as it was and knowing of its existence all this time, Favorite Day’s Peelable Tropical Banana and Sweet Mango are the first ones I’ve ever tried.

Why now? I’d have to say this was an impulsive buy as I passed the Easter/Spring section at Target on my way to checkout. I’m a sucker for artificial banana flavor (see my love for banana Runts), so the bright yellow banana on the bag beckoned me to buy it. After grabbing the bag, I decided it wouldn’t hurt if I also picked up the mango one.

After peeling, I was underwhelmed with what seems to make them so appealing. (Nope, I will not swap the second A with an E in “appealing.” My conscious will not let me do it.)

These are harder to peel than actual bananas and mangos. I used my fingernail to dig into the skin or bit an end off to be able to start to peel the exterior off. I’m not sure if other brands are easier, but I was surprised I had to use a little brute force to rip off the peel. But once you get past one side, the rest becomes easier. After, you’re left with a payoff that might make you think you’re a contestant on Survivor and participating in a bug eating contest. The banana one looks like a tropical worm larva, while the mango one looks like poisonous tropical worm larva. Mmm…larva?

The skins are edible, with the flavors of their respective fruits, and they seem to have almost the same fruity intensity as the worm larva looking things inside of them. While they look bug-ish, the interior candy has a delightful softness that puts Albanese gummy bears to shame. Both flavors are splendid, and I liked them equally. Although, if you find banana Runts repulsive, you’ll think the same about the banana one. As for the mango one, it has a delicious flavor that tastes more natural than the banana.

While I do love their flavors, I’m not a fan of the peeling. But there’s no rule that I have to do it. So as I’ve been going through each bag, I’ve just been popping them into my mouth, skin and all, like I’m a hippo being fed watermelons at the zoo.

Purchased Price: $3.00 each
Size: 7 oz pouch (Mango), 4.5 oz pouch (Banana)
Purchased at: Target
Rating: 7 out of 10 (both)
Nutrition Facts: Mango (4 pieces) – 90 calories, 0 grams of fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 10 milligrams of sodium, 21 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fiber, 15 grams of sugar (including 15 grams of added sugar), and 1 gram of protein. Banana (5 pieces) – 100 calories, 0 grams of fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 10 milligrams of sodium, 23 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fiber, 16 grams of sugar (including 16 grams of added sugar), and 1 gram of protein.

REVIEW: Burger King Frozen Strawberry & Nerds Candy

/ / Reviews / 1 Comment

If I were the King, Queen, or Royal Advisor of Burger King, I would’ve sprinkled Nerds candy on top of a vanilla soft serve cone and put it on the menu before a Nerds-topped strawberry slush. But, despite the ill-fitting BK Crown on my head as I type this, I’m not in charge, so we have Burger King’s Frozen Strawberry & Nerds Candy.

The simple concept puts Rainbow Nerds on top of a Frozen Strawberry Fanta. Honestly, I’m a little surprised BK chose the Rainbow version instead of the classic and best Nerds flavor — strawberry. But I guess using the Rainbow one is more visually appealing because it looks like my cup collected hail made from unicorn tears.

Actually, now that I’ve had time to think about it. Maybe Nerds sprinkled on a vanilla cone isn’t a good idea. Perhaps it should be Nerds Gummy Clusters topping the ice cream. Creamy ice cream. Crunchy candy pieces. Chewy gummy candy. Sigh. I NEED to be The King of Burger King.

And this dessert NEEDS to come with a spoon.

The candy-topped slush came with a regular straw. At first, I didn’t want to destroy the colorful layer by mixing everything, so I just poked my straw into it. That forced enough Nerds into the long cylinder so that I could get a bit of flavor and crunch with a straw sip. I did this a few times, but decided to finish the rest with a spoon to get different candy-to-slush ratios. It was a more satisfying way to consume this.

The Nerds enhanced the slush’s strawberry flavor with a nondescript fruitiness and tanginess. But the red slush stood out no matter what candy-to-slush ratio I dug out. Its tanginess also amped up the strawberry-flavored slush’s tang. I also liked how the candy’s crunch gave this a texture that was reminiscent of ice crystals.

Burger King’s Frozen Strawberry & Nerds is a fine sweet summery treat, but it’s not as mind-blowing as Nerds Candy was to me in the 1980s. Adding it on top of a slush is unique, but it’s not exciting enough to consider this a must buy.

Purchased Price: $2.29
Size: Small
Rating: 6 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: 160 calories, 0 grams of fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 45 milligrams of sodium, 43 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fiber, 42 grams of sugar, and 0 grams of protein.

REVIEW: Butterfinger Salted Caramel

/ / Reviews / 5 Comments

I’ve always liked the “crispety, crunchety, peanut-buttery” vibe of Butterfinger bars. But despite their incomparable texture and delicious flavor, I often forget that they exist.

I’m sorry, Butterfinger bars. You’re always a solid option. I enjoyed your underrated peanut butter cups. When a social media account I follow teased the return of Butterfinger BB’s—only to reveal the announcement as a cruel April Fool’s Day prank—my heart shattered like your flaky candy filling. I’m just too easily lured by the new and exciting, and I take for granted your steadfast presence in the candy aisle.

Butterfinger Salted Caramel, the brand’s first new flavor in ten years, proves that the brand may be steady, but it’s anything but stagnant. When it comes to limited edition novelty flavors, I’ve tried a lot of varieties from more prolific brands, including M&M’s, Kit Kat, and Reese’s. Butterfinger Salted Caramel ranks among the best in recent memory.

The Butterfinger Salted Caramel bar consists of its original crispy, laminated peanut buttery core enrobed in salted caramel-flavored crème coating. The coating smells and tastes like the caramel coating of kettle corn, but mellowed by creaminess.

The salt is the unsung hero of the bar. It makes each bite a sweet and salty lover’s dream: it gives a nice salty zing, it prevents the crème from tasting too sweet, and it enhances the flavor of the core, which I swear tastes even more peanut buttery than the original Butterfinger. The salt in this bar has accomplished more in one bite than I have all week. While the flavor of the caramel itself gets a little lost in all this excitement, the bar maintains a unique sweetness that avoids tasting simply like salty peanut butter.

So, is the Salted Caramel variety better than the original Butterfinger? While it’s hard to beat peanut butter and chocolate as a combination, I’d argue the two bars are close rivals.

Butterfinger Salted Caramel is available for a limited time, now through June. At my local Walmart, the bars were relegated to a far corner of the self-checkout area, almost impossible to see until the last leg of the shopping journey. Maybe, like me, the store failed to fully appreciate Butterfinger, but at least one of us has already learned a lesson.

Purchased Price: $1.34
Size: 1.9 oz (54 g) bar
Purchased at: Walmart
Rating: 9 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: 260 calories, 11 grams of fat, 5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, less than 5 milligrams of cholesterol, 150 milligrams of sodium, 39 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 23 grams of sugar, and 4 grams of protein.

REVIEW: Reese’s PB&J Big Cups

/ / Reviews / 12 Comments

I’m a big fan of the current Renaissance Reese’s is having these days. It feels like we’ve had more peanut butter cup innovation over the last 12 months than the previous 12 YEARS, and I, for one, am there for it. I have to admit, I’ve had mixed feelings about some of the newer creations, but on the whole, I am just happy for all the new treats.

In addition to some heavy hitters that dropped recently, like the Caramel Big Cup and Red Velvet, we now have PB&J with strawberry and grape flavors! Honestly, the only real surprise is how long it took Reese’s to come out with such a classic peanut butter pairing, especially as we’ve had things like cereal, sugar cookies, and pretzels featured in peanut butter cups. But the wait is over! It’s peanut butter jelly time sans baseball bat.

Let’s start with the grape, if only because it comes first alphabetically.

After opening the package, there is a whiff of chemically grape and then the familiar peanut butter and chocolate combo. That fruity scent almost brings to mind the grape flavor of Big League Chew. I cut the first cup in half to get a view of the inside and was disappointed at the ratio of peanut butter to jelly inside. If this were a sandwich, it would absolutely not pass muster. This is disappointing for two reasons: 1) It throws off the flavor balance in the candy. 2) I KNOW Reese’s can and has done better! The ratio in the recent Chocolate Lava Cup and the aforementioned Caramel Cup was much better.

The chocolate and peanut butter you know and love are the same as you’d expect, with the artificial grape flavor playing a distant third. It tastes very fake when my tongue could pick it up. I even pulled apart the cup to get a better taste, and it was hard to get much flavor, even with a finger swipe of just the sticky purple goop itself. What is there is very reminiscent of grape Kool-aid with a bit too much water mixed with it.

Now, onto the strawberry.

The initial scent upon opening these is oddly both stronger *and* weaker. Stronger in that there’s definitely more there, more present than the grape, weaker in the sense that it smells less like the intended flavor. It’s less of a specifically strawberry fragrance and more of a generically sweet, fruity candy scent. That didn’t bode well.

As with the grape, the strawberry layer is pitifully thin and utterly lacking. Interestingly, it had a stickier consistency though. It reminded me of the squeeze tube-type candy like Ooze Tubes.

Just like with the grape, the flavor was faint and very artificial. It reminded me of mixing green gummy bears into Sprite and letting them sit long enough to start dissolving. It was like someone turned down the flavor without turning down the sweetness.

All in all, both flavors are good for peanut butter cups but really weak if you’re specifically looking for peanut butter AND JELLY cups.

Purchased Price: $3.19 each
Size: 2.8 oz
Purchased at: CVS (Grape), Cumberland Farms (Strawberry)
Rating: 5 out of 10 (both)
Nutrition Facts: (1 cup) 190 calories, 10 grams of total fat, 4.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, less than 5 milligrams of cholesterol, 105 milligrams of sodium, 24 grams of total carbs, 0 grams of dietary fiber, 22 grams of total sugar, and 3 grams of protein.

REVIEW: Hershey’s Cinnamon Toast Crunch Kisses

/ / Reviews / Leave a Comment

Cinnamon Toast Crunch has been having a bit of a moment with a host of new-ish to hot-off-the-presses products and flavors (including Strawberry and, if you were lucky/crazy enough to win a recent sweepstakes, a collaboration with TOTINO’S freaking PIZZA).

Hershey’s Kisses is also an iconic snack brand that has recently been flirting with souped-up special editions (Butterbeer, anyone?) So, it might not be surprising to learn that these two powerhouses have gone ahead and teamed up for Cinnamon Toast Crunch Hershey’s Kisses—and if you’re like me, an aficionado of both overly sweet cereal and white crème candy, this is a total dream come true.

I had a good feeling the moment I found these on proud display at Target. The indulgently enormous Share Pack size promises luxurious abundance, and the appealing design of the bag—a crisp white with friendly swirls of star-studded bright green, purple, orange, and blue to mirror the cereal’s box—is a harbinger of the high quality and attention to detail ahead. Even the wrappers, another riff on that psychedelic color palette, are delightful, suggesting much more whimsy than the classic staid silver of the OG Kiss.

I might be establishing a high bar for the candies to live up to, but when I unwrapped my first one, I wasn’t disappointed at all. They’re beautiful little morsels of white crème run through with rich butterscotch-colored stripes, reminiscent of a lighter-colored Hershey’s Hug. Oh yeah, and they smell fantastic! The cinnamon aroma is strong; more specifically, it really does seem like a Cinnamon Toast Crunch aroma, as there’s a slightly-cloying-but-not-quite-overwhelming, powdered sugar-esque sweet undertone that specifically evokes cereal rather than any old cinnamon-y baked good. Clearly, I was extremely pleased with everything I saw and sniffed, so I barely made it two steps past the self-checkout before sneaking a snacking.

They say don’t meet your heroes, but you know what? This flavor actually lived up to all of my expectations, tasting exactly as delicious as it looks and smells. Food science really is magical—if you asked a wizard to conjure up the perfect blend of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Hershey’s Kisses, this is exactly what I imagine they’d poof into existence. (Does Hershey’s have actual wizards working for them? Come to think of it, that would explain the Butterbeer Kisses…)

One more neat touch, which the product image on the packaging exaggerates but which you can’t quite see on an actual Kiss until biting into it, is the crunchy bits on the inside. According to the Hershey’s website, they’re graham-flavored, and while I didn’t immediately identify that (they seemed to me more like a fun textural enhancement with the added bonus of slightly cutting the sweetness), it made sense, doubling as both a satisfying explanation for their more subdued taste and an additional nod to the cereal inspiration.

If you’re the type of Cinnamon Toast Crunch fanatic who’ll have a bowl for breakfast, a Creamy Cinnamon Spread sandwich for lunch, and a Cinnadust-seasoned entrée for dinner, Cinnamon Toast Crunch Hershey Kisses would make the perfect dessert… and even if you like CTC just a normal amount, I promise you’ll still love these. (If you somehow don’t, don’t worry; I’d be happy to take them off your hands.)

Purchased Price: $6.52
Size: 9 oz bag (Share Pack)
Purchased at: Target
Rating: 10 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (7 pieces) 170 calories, 9 grams of fat, 6 grams of saturated fat, 0 gram of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 40 milligrams of sodium, 21 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fiber, 17 grams of sugar, and 2 grams of protein.

Scroll to Top