This review comes courtesy of Shmoel over at Maison de Gumball, she has the honour of being the first person to ever write a guest review for this website, and it’s obviously a gumball review. Most interesting.

You put a cherry on top of a sundae, but what do you top an Ice Cream Sundae gumball with? A Very Cherry gumball perhaps? Well, I ordered a case of the Ice Cream Sundae gumballs from Gumball.com to get my answer.

The gumballs came in 4 different flavors: pistachio, strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate. At first, some of these flavors were a tad off-putting. The gumballs I grew up with were fruit flavored or simply infused with high quantities of sugar. So, I had my doubts – could a gumball truly capture the complex and varied flavors of a pistachio or the richness and pure pleasure of chocolate?

Sort of.

I’ll break it down one by one. First, the strawberry. It was fruity and creamy, capturing the essential elements of a strawberry ice cream. Its speckles, while certainly not visually appealing, provided the necessary flavor boosts of fruit to complement the cream. This gumball was tasty and accurate (well, as accurate as a gumball could be). But, a fruit-flavored gumball is certainly not the most challenging flavor to capture – it has been refined over the long history of the gumball.

Content with the first ball, I ventured for a second still more nervous and perplexed by the difficulty of the mission that this set of gumballs had set out to accomplish. Next up was vanilla. While certainly a more difficult task than its predecessor, this gumball had some leeway in my mind. While I am certainly no connoisseur in vanilla flavor, I am sufficiently experienced to state with a good deal of confidence that so-called “vanilla-flavored products” can, in fact, vary a good deal in taste. Vanilla is by no means a constant beacon of flavor – a metaphorical “golden arches” that will (no matter where one may be) serve up a deliciously average, low quality hamburger with a set number of seeds and meager quantity of pickles. So, while my expectations were high, they weren’t too high due to the flexibility of what one may classify as “vanilla.” Upon first chew, my taste buds immediately detected “vanilla.” Was it vanilla ice cream? Well, not exactly. It lacked that creamy texture necessary to simulate the melting, pleasurable feel of ice cream on the tongue. Despite the tad of inaccuracy, it was an enjoyable chew with superb texture and chewability and an excellent after-taste.

Next, I reached for a beaming, bright globe that was an almost lime green in color. It was pistachio, and I was mighty skeptical. I was especially worried that the brilliant taste of the pistachio nut with just a tinge of sweetness and an explosion of flavorful nut-ness would be lost in translation – from a nut to an ice cream to a 25 millimeter sugared orb. Surely such an inappropriate site for the unleashing of pistachio flavor would erupt into flames of failure. Ah, how wrong I was. The pistachio was beyond words. It was TERRIBLE. Yes, gumball and chocolate fans alike, this nutty ball was not meant for consumption. It was not meant for a game of marbles or as a stylish centerpiece. This beyond unholy, globular, scatological piece of chewing trash was, well, the absolute antithesis of deliciousness.

My hopes and dreams for the gumball now mutilated, I limped toward the finish line – the chocolate ice cream gumball. My expectations trashed, my mood ruined, and my mind focused on finishing the remainder of the tasting as quickly as absolutely possible, I inserted the gumball into my mouth.

I bit into it. Chewed it once, … twice, … three times. Stopped.

Ecstasy.

The plight of the now forever tarnished gumball had been lifted. The gumball had been restored to its once lofty position of prominence among candies and sweets. This gumball was good.

But, not great. It was an accurate interpretation of chocolate ice cream and a tasty one at that. But, it was nothing special. It was not the best gumball I’d ever chewed (far from it, in fact). But it was good, and that was all this humble gumball reviewer needed – reassurance that the gumball will live on.

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“Candy coated mini kisses” from Hershey, how lovely sounding. This little 42g silver foil packet comes full of miniature versions of the Hershey’s Kisses, the difference being that instead of being chocolate and then filled with something, these are now just chocolate and coated in a candy shell.

Sound familiar? Yeah, just like M&M’s and Smarties, right? A sign of things to come I assure you. The pack looks quite nice, relatively plain but I like silver so it gets bonus points there. The Kisses brand seems to be pretty huge and I’ve barely scratched the surface, there are plenty of others I’d rather try first but beggars can’t be choosers.

So I poured these out and there’s our result, a few handfuls of these cute, little things. They look nice enough, lots of pretty colours (and colourings - Yellow 5, Red 40, Blue 2, Blue 1 and Yellow 6), in fact, let’s not look at the rest of the ingredients because it’s just not good reading.

As for the taste, oh yeah, M&M’s and Smarties. I think in a blind test if I were to have these and the others (and they weren’t kiss shaped, duh) I could probably still taste the difference, as these had just the slightest hint of that infamous Hershey’s chocolate and vomit aftertaste. It wasn’t bad, but it was there, most definitely.

Overall, I see these as being both the weak link in the candy coated chocolate market, and the Kisses market, they’re not bad, but they’re boring, unless these are on a good offer, I don’t really recommend them over their rivals. Each bag has 200 calories (90 from fat), 1g Protein, 30g Carbohydrates (28g of which sugars) and 10g Fat (6g of which saturates).

Here we have what I do believe is only my second limited edition Peanut Butter Cups review, the first being the Elvis cups last summer. These are caramel and peanut butter, with not much else in terms of information given on the package.

Well let’s see, first off, the normal orange Reese’s theme, it’s then been splashed with brown caramel. They have a cartoon PB cup on the front which looks as if it’s oozing caramel, there are two cups in this pack (I’m used to the 3 pack variety with the normal cups), and is a rather lightweight 39g.

So not wanting to waste anymore time (i.e. being bloody hungry) I opened these up and peeled the cups away from their wrappers. The first thing I noticed was that there was no peanut butter residue left on the wrappers, on one of them a tiny bit of caramel oozed, but that was all.

And biting into the cups revealed that at the bottom of them was where the caramel resided. It took up the bottom bit of space between the chocolate and the peanut butter, which of course sat on top. The caramel didn’t ooze, but it was certainly soft and yielding, sweet and sticky and dark.

What the caramel did was take flavour away from the peanut butter, and replace it with something that wasn’t altogether that great. They’re delicious, but the ordinary cups are so much better. The caramel is nice but plain, there’s nothing to it, it adds a nice texture and takes away some of the grease of the peanut butter, but I wouldn’t recommend these over the ordinary PB cups.

I’ve been very cautious over the past year as to what I review. Should I review biscuits with chocolate? Should I review those chocolates that only come in multipacks? I was never too sure, but I back at home for a bit and saw that dear mother had got some of these, mint flavoured Echos from Fox’s, a famous biscuit manufacturer here in Britain, and I thought “what the hey”.

The Echo comes in a few varieties, as far as I’m aware there’s a milk chocolate one and I’m sure there used to be an orange one, though I may be wrong there. The Echo is a long milk chocolate stick, with a biscuit base and bubbly, minty chocolate on top, quite akin to the Peppermint Aero in appearance.

So, a small peppermint Aero with a biscuit base? Well, yep, that’s just about what you get here. As you can see the milk chocolate is very thin, it’s really just holding everything together. The bar doesn’t crumble at all, it’s a lovely looking work of art that stays firm in the mouth though crumbs are to be expected when the bar is bitten. The bubbly chocolate is delicious, I love this kind of minty chocolate, it just tastes so good.

Overall, very impressive. It’s tiny, no weight here but I’m guessing around 20-25g, it’s only a snack for kids really, but we can eat them too and it’ll be our little secret.

So here is our third Snickers bar, the first being the original and the second the being the Snickers Xtreme. Here we have an almond variety from America, with the phrase “Snickers satisfies!” on the front, something which is usually true.

So looking at the ingredients, I would assume this is exactly the same as a regular Snickers, only with almonds replacing the peanuts. It still says “may contain peanuts” on the back, but that’s because these will no doubt be on the same assembly line, so it makes sense for Mars to cover themselves.

The wrapper is decent looking, an off-white theme, there are a few cartoon almonds on the front with the normal Snickers logo. 49.9g bar (1.76oz) makes it fairly dense, and one thing to remember is that American chocolate uses corn syrup. Yum.

I tried to take a good picture of it but that’s the best I could do, because of how thick and dark the caramel is. The almonds aren’t small by any means, it feels like there’s not as many in here as there are peanuts in the regular Snickers, but there’s still a fair amount.

The almonds and the caramel take up the majority of the taste, and for me it was usually caramel I was tasting unless I hit a particularly nutty section (which I did at the end of the bar). It’s a nice bar, it’s just that the almonds lack that real flavour punch that peanuts do and this results in the bar being a little bit lacking. Overall I enjoyed it, but I’d take the normal Snickers over it, even though I’m a bigger fan of almonds.

Each bar has 230 calories (100 from fat), 3g Protein, 32g Carbohydrates (26g of which sugars) and 11g Fat (4g of which sugars).

Crispy AND crunchy? Oh Reese’s, you spoil us! “Made with chocolate, crispy peanut butter candy, creamy peanut butter [and] chopped peanuts”, Reese’s know their forte, this is peanut heaven, or hell, depending on your personal tastes.

That’s pretty much all the information given on the wrapper, other than a picture of the bar, which looks complex. So I’ll move straight onto this 48g (1.7oz) beast.

So opening it up, and…it’s pretty complex indeed. It reminds me a bit of the Nutrageous on looks alone. So here we have a wafer, which is brittle and riddled with very finely chopped peanuts, with thick amounts of peanut butter in between the layers. The entire thing is then covered in peanuts and milk chocolate, giving it the strange shape it has.

And overall it is delicious. There is a clear difference between the peanuts and the peanut butter, both adding different, subtle and strong flavours. You know where you are with Reese’s, and as a fan I adored this, and recommend it to other fans. Definitely one I would want to try again.

Each bar has 260 calories (140 from fat), 5g Protein, 26g Carbohydrates (19g of which sugars) and 15g Fat (5g of which saturates).

The Almond Joy is another in a long line of well established Hershey’s chocolate bars in America. This particular bar consists of a coconut-based centre, topped with an almond and coated in milk chocolate. Somewhat akin to an English Bounty, this is the sister product of Hershey’s Mounds bar, which uses dark chocolate and also has no almond.

The Almond Joy has a number of limited editions, such as Pina Colada and Double Chocolate released in 2004, a white chocolate key lime and milk chocolate passion fruit released in 2005 and a toasted coconut released in 2006. It was first introduced in 1946, and after a number of mergers and transformations, was finally purchased by Hershey in 1988.

It reminds me of the PayDay in that it’s rather plain to look at. It’s sorta like a Bounty in wrapper appearance, only a bit less flashy, nothing really jumps out at me. They also have “Peter Paul” written above the logo, the original creator of the Almond Joy. I guess it’s nice they give him recognition, but I don’t see the point of it unless his family had that written into a contract or something.

So, opening it up and look what you’re presented with, it’s a Bounty with an almond on the top! Two small chocolate pieces here, each weighing 22.5g each. And with two almonds on each piece, it’s obvious how these are meant to be eaten.

So, 4 bites then. My first bite and the sound was what hit me first. The wet, sticky coconut peeling away from the bar and into my mouth. Sounds disgusting? Well actually, it was strangely…nice. It was a juicy sound, the bar wasn’t dry even with the almond as the coconut gave it plenty of flavour and moisture.

The almond is just pointless, I couldn’t taste it, it seemed gimmicky and reminded me of the Walnut Whip with the idea of just sticking a nut on top and hoping for the best. It got stuck in my teeth, it felt weird due to the crunchyness of it mixing with the soft, yielding coconut, it just confused me. Overall though, it’s a nice bar. The chocolate is decent, the coconut is delicious, the almond I guess does nothing wrong. I really enjoyed it, coconut fans, look out for this, though if you’re British, just get a Bounty.

Each 45g bar (both pieces) has 220 calories (120 from fat), 2g Protein, 26g Carbohydrates (20g of which sugars) and 13g Fat (8g of which saturates).

The PayDay from Hershey is one of those American bars that I’ve always wanted to try but never really got around to, as the price almost always put me off. I finally sucked it up though and got a few of the bars I’d been wanting to try, and here we are.

Described as a “peanut caramel bar”, the PayDay feels heavy, and at 52g I guess it is. There’s no mention of chocolate here, and for good reason, considering it has none, though a limited edition milk chocolate coated PayDay (the PayDay Chocolatey Avalanche) was released in 2007.

So what we do have is possibly the stickiest bar ever. It wouldn’t come out of the wrapper for me, which I had to peel off like some sort of second skin. One peanut fell off in the wrapper removal which I then ate, and winced at just how salty it was. Hershey don’t specify what kind of peanuts they use, but they’re quite heavily salted at any rate.

When I did finally get it out, it reminded me of a peanut brittle bar, only a lot thicker, and with caramel, in other words nothing like a peanut brittle bar. Now the caramel is there to hold together the peanuts and to also combat the saltiness of them, it only fulfils one of its tasks.

And that was to hold them together, this bar is just so salty. Sweetness hits every so often when the caramel touches your tongue, but for the most part I found it to be slightly odd. The caramel, unsurprisingly, has very little flavour, this is all peanut, and I’m not a big peanut fan.

Overall, I’m fairly sure this bar is pretty institutionalised in America, so nothing I say will put you off. I didn’t really enjoy it though, it tasted ok, but no better than that, maybe the chocolate version is better, but I’ve not been tempted enough here to go searching for it.

Each bar has 250 calories (120 from fat), 6g Protein, 28g Carbohydrates (21g of which sugars) and 13g Fat (2.5g of which saturates).

I would have ordinary called this the Chocolate Orange bar, but they have “Milk” printed on the front too, perhaps suggesting there’s a dark chocolate version of this? Where have they been hiding that then? Terry’s do have a habit of hiding their bars so whilst I don’t think there’s a dark chocolate bar, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was.

I’ve always had somewhat of a soft spot for Terry’s, and yes, it is simply because my name is Terry. So I have almost always received Terry’s stuff for Christmas and birthdays as almost joke presents. Thanks mum, hilarious still even on the 10th time of trying.

Now this is a milk chocolate bar “flavoured with real orange”. Real orange? Well, the ingredients suggest flavourings, with orange oil in brackets, and it’s right at the bottom of the list too. Meh.

It’s an ok bar. The orange is surprisingly overpowering and not really that nice. It’s a bit overly sweet too, and I would have preferred it if the chocolate came through too but I guess I shouldn’t be expecting much from a bar with an RRP of 38p.

Like I said, it’s ok. Nothing more, nothing less. If you don’t have much money and you need a chocolate orange craving, bam, here you are. Each bar has 210 calories, 2.9g Protein, 23g Carbohydrates and 12g Fat.

So I’m in a strangely good mood while reviewing this, I usually start off on a negative slant and let the candy or chocolate or whatever try and lift me up, but I’m going into this with a smiley face as shown below, or at least that’s what I tried to do there.

So, Barkleys, an American company, and an obvious rip off of Altoids. “Tastefully intense mints” is their tagline, and it made me laugh for some reason, I’m not sure why. I guess the idea of there being a difference between intense and tastefully intense made me laugh…nevermind.

The tin is nice, I had some problems taking a picture at night with the overhead light but it’s not a big deal. So opening up their nice looking tin reveals the paper wrapper and small circular mints, again just like Altoids.

This is where they go wrong though. There are a few problems, the first being that the mints are far too sweet. Not surprising when sugar and powdered glucose are the first two ingredients, but still annoying all the same. Also there’s nothing intense about these mints, they’re tastefully weak in taste with absolutely no kick to them at all.

Overall, lame. If you’re American you have Altoids and all sorts of other mints to keep you happy, these are just a cheap rip off, leave them in the bargain bins where they belong.