It's 2018, I'm browsing the bargain section of a big UK candy importer's web site, just feeling the life leave my body. I decide that the time has come to take a break, not least because I still have a mountain of the freakin' stuff still left over from the last couple of years that I'm still trying to get through, like an idiot! So while I focus my energies this Halloween converting slightly softer and staler fare than usual into yet more body fat (:D), what better time to catch up on the last couple of years of Halloween candy consignments?
Well, providing that my impeccable and through notes, usually scrawled down in the middle of the night while watching some random horror movie, make even a lick of sense at this point at least. There seem to be a lot of them at the very least, so let's give it a crack!
Mr. Kipling Toffee Terror Whirls
Starting off with some of the more seasonally-appropriate fare, or hmm, well, maybe not. What is it with UK companies and Halloween variations on their products? Toffee apple, say, would have been a great Halloween-themed flavour here. Toffee on it's own though, I really don't associate with this time of year at all. I don't get why you'd go to the effort of producing a limited edition flavour of your regular Viennese Whirls for Halloween and make it toffee.
As for the Terror Whirls themselves, they're pretty much just regular old Viennese Whirls - a lovely, buttery shortcrust pastry with a a nice, creamy buttercream filling, but this time with a barley noticeable toffee syrup under that buttercream. As good as these still are, for a limited edition Halloween product, they're a real let down. 3/5
Cadbury Screme Egg Biscuits
Speaking of disappointing seasonal variations, we covered standard Screme Eggs all the way back in 2010. Now here they are, finally in biscuit form! So, these are basically shortbread chocolate biscuits - nice texture, good chocolate flavour. You don't really notice the Screme Egg filling too much though, which is a good thing. I pealed off the top of one of these and licked that filling, purely for scientific purposes, and ick! It's sickly and unpleasantly sweet. It has a slightly different texture to the filling in the actual Screem Eggs though - it's thinner and more gelatinous, which somehow makes it even less palatable. Still, the biscuit itself is pretty good, so partial credit. 3/5
Cadbury Pumpkin Patch Cakes
"Orange coloured creme" - I'd love if Cadbury would just once make something with a unique flavor for Halloween. Much like the Screme Egg biscuits above, these are just a recolored and reconfigured version of an existing Cadbury cake product. Well, at least they're upfront about it. :D, These are still pretty good though: you get a decent amount of that creme - which is a nice, rich buttercream; a chocolate coating that's almost, but not quite Dairy Milk chocolate; and a good-quality, soft sponge cake holding it all together. 4/5
Mysterious Halloween Chocolate Coins
Strangely there's no brand on these - they're made in Italy and that's about all the info you're given: somewhat worrying. The designs an the wrappers I think are really cute here though - I especially like the witch. The chocolate is of a pretty decent quality too, so, you know what, I'll take the risk that these are probably some kind cursed Halloween candy that someone left on a store shelf, designed to inflict endless pain and suffering on anyone who consumes it. Having already forced myself to sit through most of the Leprechaun movies though, I'm pretty sure I can handle it. (Oof!) :D 3/5
