Halloween Candy 2016 X 2017 Part 1: Cross Generation of High-fructose Corn Syrup

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




Brach's Candy Corn Vampire Teeth & Witches Teeth

I do love me a bit of candy corn, and these are both quite good. I slightly prefer the Witches Teeth, which have a really tasty green apple and fudge flavor. The Vampire Teeth have that same candy corn fudgey flavour, but the alleged strawberry? It's more like a slightly weak, vague red berry flavour - not a bad one, just not quite strawberry.

Vampire Teeth - 4/5
Witches Teeth - 3/5



Chick-O-Stick Ghosts

These I've got to say are one of the more unusual candies I've encountered in a while. On the outside of these you have this thick, orange-coloured layer with a kind of dry texture and a vaguely coconut-ey flavour. Once you chew into that, it gives way to a peanut brittle-like center, which isn't bad. As you work on these, they get kind of chewy; while the peanut and mild coconut-ey flavours combine, which I'm not sure really worked for me as a combination. Even after going through more than half a bag of these, I'm still not quite sure what to make of them. Still, to have gotten that far, I guess they're doing something right. *shrug* Three out of five it is! :D 3/5



Milky Way Candy Apple Minis

The makeup and texture of these are pretty identical to a UK Mars Bar, but with a really delicious, sweet apple-y flavour. Especially in this bite-sized incarnation, these were super more-ish; easily one of the best things out of either batch of candy here. I'm not sure if it existed/exists, but I love to see a full-sized bar version of these, and not just at Halloween. These should absolutely be a regular thing. 5/5



Kit Kat Triple Chocolate

Of all the novelty flavours you could do for Halloween, of all the Kit Kat flavours you do in Japan, triple chocolate is the best you could come up with, Nestlé? Nevertheless, I quite liked these. I wasn't expecting much of a difference between these and regular Kit Kats, but they were indeed much more chocolatey, I'd imagine mostly due to the chocolate creme inside. Yeah, these were quite, quite good. 4/5



Hershey's Candy Corn

We all agree that Hershey's chocolate is objectively bad, right? :D Well, I'm definitely not a fan any way. Their Cookies and Creme bar though, I'll tolerate. These are very much in the same vein. You have the same kind of, like, faux white chocolate here - pretty creamy texture with, actually, a fairly nice, fudgey, candy corn flavour. It's a little over-sweet, but otherwise, not bad. There's a few microscopic candy-corn-like bits dispersed through it too, but I'm not sure they really add anything apart from some colour here. 3/5



Flix Candy Box of Boogers

Candy boogers, how could I resist? Do they "look and feel real"? Not really. If you're pulling stuff that looks like these out of your nose, maybe seek medical attention. They are pretty good though: nice, soft gummies with solid apple and watermelon flavours. Not crazy about the lemon though: very much like the lemon flavour from Fruit Pastilles - the bane of my existence as a young kid, along with the lime ones. (Fruit Pastilles were one of the only candies I would regularly get, and two fifths of them, at least, were those abominations. Bleah!) I really like the art on the box here too - very 90's. 4/5



M&M's White Candy Corn

Boy, these are big - more like peanut M&Ms than regular ones. The shells seem much thicker too, but I kind of like it - it makes them crunchier. The filling has a chocolate-like consistency, with a flavour somewhere between a white chocolate and a fudge. In a blind test I wouldn't be able to tell they were going for candy corn here, but it's close enough I guess, and quite tasty nonetheless. 4/5

Well, that more or less wraps it up for the Halloween-specific goodies, but the true horror is yet to be unveiled!

In Part 2: actual insects, salted licorice, expired Christmas goods, and a bizarre canned-food-based interlude you won't want to miss! Coming.... eventually!

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