Ahh, Twix. The pinnacle of snackitecture. I mean, a buttery cookie draped with caramel, then cloaked in milk chocolate? And then to have not one, but two bars in each package?! Frank Gehry himself could not have constructed a more impressive confectionery structure.
Now, I usually see no reason to mess with excellence, but those evil geniuses over at Mars have a history of riffing on perfection. Case in point: TwixPB. With peanut butter in lieu of caramel and a chocolate cookie base, it is a decadent, special occasion kind of Twick.
Given this example, I do not deign to question Mars' judgment. So when I found Twix Java (boasting coffee caramel and chocolate cookie covered in milk chocolate), I didn't recoil in horror. Instead, I chose to embrace their vision and put my faith in the Artificial Flavorteers.
Although Twix Java is by no means better than Twix original, it is successful in its own right. The coffee flavor is so bright (it tastes the way Sanka smells), it actually pairs well with the slapdash chocolate cookie and milk chocolate robe. Think of it as a Starbucks caramel mocha in candy bar form: A bastardization of many great things, but so trashily delicious, you just don't care.
Some say that Heath Ledger's chilling performance as The Joker is the best thing about The Dark Knight. But I dare say that the best thing about The Dark Knight is its promotional Special Edition Reese's Peanut Butter Bat.
Before I get to that, I must expound my philosophy: Reese's Special Edition Cups (which also include Halloween Reese's Peanut Butter Pumpkin and Easter Reese's Peanut Butter Egg) consistently trump traditional cups because they have a higher peanut butter to chocolate ratio. See, classic Cups are weighed down by the shell's chocolate crimping, which leaves us peanut butter lovers pining. But Special Edition Cups forgo the frills and pack as much PB as possible into a thin chocolate casing. In fact, if we're really getting down to brass tacks, Egg beats Pumpkin solely because Pumpkin has the little all-chocolate stem at the top.
Let it be known that I am a die hard Limited Edition Foods fan. I lived and died by Pepsi Kona, and I essentially redefine myself with each new incarnation of Kit Kat. That said, imagine my excitement when a friend of mine presented me with New Indiana Jones Mint Crisp M&Ms. (While they do not specifically say "Limited Edition", they do imply as much with "Get 'M' Before They're Lost!") One look at these puppies and you know you're in for an epicurean adventure of chilled-monkey-brains-buffet proportions, 'cause these M&Ms are all kinds of divergent from the original.
To wit:
They are shades of green and white
In place of the simple "M", some of the candies have mystical graphics (including a skull, a compass, a temple, and Indy's hat)
My father's college degree is in the History of Country Music (truly). I grew up with a lot of country, bluegrass, folk and other roots music playing in the house. Because of this early childhood conditioning, to this day I am a huge fan of old-timey music. However, I've never had much of a tolerance for currently popular Country music (although, Dolly Parton can do no wrong in my eyes).
So, when a PR person for the Fritos company offered to send me a couple of bags of Tim McGraw's new Spicy Jalapeño Fritos, I was skeptical. I was curious what the chips would taste like (being a lover of all things spicy) but had a scornful reaction that went something along the lines of,"What's a Country music star doing lending his name to chips? Jimmie Rodgers would never have done something like that!" It did nothing to elevate my opinion of current Country music.
However, after tasting the chips, I am forced to admit that they are darn tasty. They aren't actually all that spicy, but they capture the heat and greenness of a jalapeño pepper in a way that is addictive and delicious. And, they can't be that terrible for you, since the Frito was originally invented as a health food!
These chips are currently available in select areas around the country and will be for sale nationwide soon.
Way back in 2005, Cybele reviewed Orange Creme Hershey's Kisses at Candyblog. The orange-flavored white chocolate kisses didn't last too long at the time, but Hershey's has just re-released them, labeled as a "limited edition" offering for their year-long 100th anniversary celebration.
The original review noted - and I completely agree - that these chocolates taste a lot like orange creamsicles in the way that they blend orange and vanilla. The chocolate has a tempting orange scent and melts into your mouth smoothly and easily when you bite into one. Unfortunately, these kisses also have an almost overpowering sweetness to them that makes it difficult to eat any more than one at a time without having something to wash them down with.
The concept for these kisses is a good one. I'd try mixing these up with dark chocolate kisses (or other dark chocolates) for some variety and to subdue the sugar.
The bag makes no mention of how long the release will last, but I wouldn't be surprised if they stick around at least until Easter at the beginning of April.
I think that Cybele, who writes Candy Blog, gets a lot of her candy samples from convenience stores, which are more likely to stock the limited edition varieties of bars than the average grocery store. It just so happened that, while on a little bit of a road trip, I spotted this Limited Edition Triple Chocolate Twix in such a store.
The bar had the same milky, sweet chocolate covering that most Twix bars do, but also had a layer of chocolate caramel on top of a chocolate cookie. The cookie went wonderfully in the bar. It had a good chocolate flavor and was very light and tender, especially when compared to the much firmer cookie that is usually included in the candy bar. The caramel did not seem all that chocolaty when eaten alone, but it really tied the chocolate coating in to the chocolate cookie. When taken as a whole, the bar was excellent. It was lighter and more addictive than the standard Twix, with a good balance of chocolate and sweetness. It's hard to say how long a limited edition bar will stick around once it has been released, but this flavor is clearly a winner, so let's hope it is available for more than a couple of weeks.
With the holidays chugging along it's the time of year for giving special gifts to our friends. I like to give spirits to raise my friends spirits during the holidays and this year there are more products available than ever, especially for Scotch lovers with tons of limited edition and special bottlings available. My mouth is watering just reading about them and I am quivering in my seat in anticipation of a taste or three. Here is a baker's dozen that Forbes.com brought to my attention and you can't go wrong with any of these fabulous Scotch's. Just the type of gifts I hope I end up receiving this year. Hint, hint! Some may be beyond your budget (and mine) but we can all dream, can't we?
By now we have firmlyestablishedthat the end-of-the year is pie season and, while pies are still delicious year round, they are rarely more appreciated. To capitalize on our love of pies in fall, Godiva has released a limited edition American Pie Collection. The 18-piece box features pie-flavored truffles, elegantly painted and shaped into little wedges of "pie." There are a total of eight flavors included:
Apple Crumb Pie - made with real Granny Smith apples and cinnamon
Strawberry Pie - features fresh strawberries, sugar and butter, like the summer pie filling
Key Lime - condensed milk, vanilla and lime juice inside a white chocolate shell
Lemon Meringue - white chocolate with a meringue-textured lemon filling
Banana Cream Pie - a mix of banana and vanilla in a white chocolate ganache
Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie - combines natural-style peanut butter and chocolate cream
Chocolate Cream Pie - a 72% chocolate truffle center in dark chocolate
Pecan Pie - pecans mixed into a molasses flavored milk caramel and mixed with milk and dark chocolate
It looks like the good people at Reese's have been inspired by the King - Elvis Presley. The new limited edition Reese's have a two-layered filling of peanut butter and banana creme, in a candy rendition of Elvis's favoritepeanut butter sandwich. Even if you don't really think too much of Elvis, any combination of peanut butter, bananas and chocolate is bound to be a good one because the elements work well individually, as well as when put together. Junk Food Blog says that they are now available in the US, but gives no indication of where they might have been sold before. The Reese's website doesn't mention them at all. I have yet to see any in my local stores. Were they first released near Graceland? If anyone has had the chance to taste this creation, let us know how they turned out in the comments.
The Jones Soda Company has been tempting soda lovers for ten years with flavors from Root Beer and Strawberry to Fufu Berry and Blue Bubblegum. Their unusual - and unusually realistic - flavors have taken them from a small niche company, to a national brand, with lines of organic drinks, energy drinks, popsicles and candy in addition to their famous sodas.
To celebrate a decade of drinks, Jones has put together a new limited edition soda pack. Unlike the somewhat disturbing holiday pack, this one is a winner with all its flavors. It includes Blue Bubblegum and Green Apple sodas, as well as two of the original hits, Raspberry and Pineapple Upside Down sodas. The drinks come with a numbered, special-edition Hot Wheels "replica of the original black and silver-flamed Jones vans," which the company used for distribution in its early days.
There will probably be collectors out there who will not open the box to preserve it for posterity, but if you do get one, you really should taste the Pineapple Upside Down soda. It's light, tangy and delicious, so it's no wonder that fans have been asking for it to be reinstated for so long.
Anna, from Cookie Madness, made a great find the other day at her local supermarket in Austin: Dulce de Leche Oreos. These limited edition cookies aim to pair a slightly milky caramel-flavored cream filling with the classic chocolate wafer cookies of Oreos, though Anna said that the filling tasted mostly buttery with only notes of caramel.
For some reason, the limited edition cookies are not listed on the main Oreo website, though they do get a brief mention on the wiki entry for Oreos and I finally found them listed on the Comida Kraft site, Kraft's spanish-language counterpart, which may be an indication that the cookies are not going to be mass marketed in quite the same way that the peanut butter and mint chocolate Oreos were when those flavors were first released. And buttery or not, the chocolate/caramel combination still sound like a promising one for Oreos, so keep an eye out for them.
Root beer floats are fantastic, even if not all the products associated with them are. The combination of slightly peppery soda and creamy vanilla ice cream is hard to resist, so when I saw that Edy's/Dreyer's released a Root Beer Float ice cream, my initial reaction was "it's about time!" Then I saw that Breyer's has a Root Beer Float ice cream flavor out this summer, too. The difference between the two is that Dreyer's - which is limited edition - has vanilla ice cream with root beer flavored ice cream swirls, while Breyer's has vanilla with root beer sorbet swirls. Get them while you can - and try making a real root beer float with the ice creams for a double delicious summer treat.
The new Kisses are limited edition and feature a classic milk chocolate kiss with a coconut filling. They were released for the summer, so it is likely that they'll only be around for another month or two. The filling tastes much like a coconut macaroon: moist, very strongly flavored, sweet and slightly grainy from what appears to be real coconut bits. To put it bluntly, they are delicious, especially if you are a coconut fan. The combination of chocolate and coconut is great and the flavors and textures play off one another beautifully. I don't know that I could eat a lot of them at one time, but the chocolate to coconut ratio seems much more balanced - and more appealing - than a larger bar, such as Mounds.
The limited edition Kit Kats released in the UK resulted in consumer overstimulation and, in the US, too, consumers are seeing more and more limited editions on the shelves. Some of them seem to be only limited in their packaging, not the actual product.
Candybloggers Cybele, from CandyBlog, and Brian, from Candy Addict, were interviewed in a piece in the New York Times magazine that asked "what is the point of these releases?" The companies don't seem like they're asking consumers if they want to see them as part of the "regular" line-up, but there are so many limited edition candies on store shelves that they don't seem all that special anymore.
Personally, I don't mind seeing a new product every time I go into the store, but it can be annoying if a new favorite is never seen again after only a short run. There is no way for us, the consumers, to tell if this trend will continue or not - but do we want it to?
KitKats have long been one of the top-selling candy bars in Britain since their inception in 1935 by Rowntree LTD. The brand has been owned by Nestle since 1988, and Nestle increased its global distribution, making it one of the most popular candies in the world. To appeal to different tastes in different markets, Nestle has been producing flavored KitKats for many years now. These have enjoyed great success, particularly in Asian and Australian markets. The Wikipedia entry lists more than 65 different flavors of KitKat.
After having success elsewhere, Nestle turned to these limited edition and exotic flavors in the UK, with releases that ranged from strawberries and cream to mango to "Christmas pudding" all over the course of one year. They flopped. And not only did the flavors not sell, but KitKat sales in general fell by almost 17%. Galaxy bars saw an 11% increase in the same time period, largely making up the deficit in the number of bars sold.
The problem was that the bars were "not what [people] expected" from KitKats and the novelty wasn't enough to sustain sales. People purchased the flavored bars and lost interest in them, as well as being slightly turned off the original because the market was so saturated with KitKats. The flavors have been discontinued and the company is going to refocus on making up lost ground.
Hershey's, which owns the rights to the candy bar in the US, has released very few limited edition flavors, sticking primarily to white chocolate and dark chocolate. The company is unlikely to try a wide variety of flavors in the US because candy bar sales are not nearly as strong as in the UK. The company is, however, planning a caramel KitKat towards the end of this year.
My father's college degree is in the History of Country Music (truly). I grew up with a lot of country, bluegrass, folk and other roots music playing in the house. Because of this early childhood conditioning, to this day I am a huge fan of old-timey music. However, I've never had much of a tolerance for currently popular Country music (although, Dolly Parton can do no wrong in my eyes). 
Way back in 2005, Cybele reviewed 
With the holidays chugging along it's the time of year for giving special gifts to our friends. I like to give spirits to raise my friends spirits during the holidays and this year there are more products available than ever, especially for Scotch lovers with tons of 
By now we have 
It looks like the good people at Reese's have been inspired by the King - Elvis Presley. The new limited edition Reese's have a two-layered filling of peanut butter and banana creme, in a candy rendition of
The 
Anna, from 
Root beer floats are fantastic, even if not all the 
Hershey's has been doing well with their filled 
The limited edition 
KitKats have long been one of the top-selling candy bars in Britain since their inception in 1935 by Rowntree LTD. The brand has been owned by Nestle since 1988, and Nestle increased its global distribution, making it one of the most popular candies in the world. To appeal to different tastes in different markets, Nestle has been producing flavored KitKats for many years now. These have enjoyed great success, particularly in Asian and Australian markets. The Wikipedia entry lists more than 
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