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June 10, 2009

Review: Milk Chocolate Fling

I've been toying with a few things of late, trying to find something worth writing about. And I've found things worth writing about, but I just don't know what the heck to say about them. One of those items that I should probably talk about is the Americanized Fling Chocolate. But what to say? I can go on about the ill-conceived marketing campaign, but I don't want to go there. My opinion of it would drag my little blog places I just don't want to take it. I'd rather focus on the candy, no matter what the marketing is like. I've only got the milk chocolate variety (apparently there are dark chocolate and hazelnut as well) so that's what I'm going to hit tonight. And, since I totally forgot when first posting this, I should say that I got it for free at the All Candy Expo.

And, you know, I like to focus on packaging because it catches the eye and builds some anticipation for what's to come and all that, but this is just a bit pink for my taste. But that's all part of the master plan (whatever the heck it might be) of the Mars marketing people. Inside you get two fingers (real industry term) of Fling which have a truffle layer on top of a crispy meringue style crunch layer all wrapped in "shimmering" chocolate. And they mean that shimmering thing quite literally. The pink on the package carries over to the bar with pink sparklies all over the thing. On the top of the bar it's subtle and you almost have to look for it. On the bottom it's super pink sparkle town or something. I had to start searching the web to make sure it was supposed to look like that and was safe to eat. I've seen similar, but this was a weird shimmery thing and it kind of worried me. From what I could find it's safe to eat so I took a bite. The crunch is nice, but not entirely what I had been expecting not knowing it was a meringue thing going on. But it's got a nice milky milk chocolate thing going on with a nice crunch and a nice bit of malt as well. It's not a bad combo. I'm not a fan of a whole ton of malt in my chocolate, but this gives enough to enjoy and is balanced by the milk chocolate. Overall it's a nice combo, but I'm not in love with the texture of the crunch. But that's just me being picky.

So we've got a decent crunch, a little malt, and some decent milk chocolate. It works well together so I'm going to give it a 7.75 out of 10. It's good, but not something I'll be going back for a whole lot. I don't care how pink and girly they want their product to be (I'm not about to turn my nose up at chocolate just because it's targeted toward women), I just want a different crunch in my chocolate. Same reason I don't do Twix - I don't dig the cookie in my chocolate and with Fling I just don't dig the meringue. But even if it ain't my cup of tea it still delivers some decent taste and crunch.

June 2, 2009

Review: Coconut M&M's

Going into All Candy Expo I already knew about the Strawberried Peanut Butter M&M's and was hoping to get my hands on them there. It took all of one minute of the opening session to shift my focus away from them and firmly onto the Coconut M&M's that they announced (coming later this summer - got mine in the swag bag at the Mars press conference). I'm a fan of coconut and love the texture (and miss the heck out of the Bounty bar). During a stop at the Mars booth I asked about them what they were like and the frightening answer was that they had no coconut texture. Just smooth milk chocolate and the characteristic candy crunch. So I was left to wonder: without the texture I love would I still dig the coconut action?

In a word YES! This could have ended up being a distressingly short review because I just want to say how much I love them, but we're going to go ahead and try and focus in and say something constructive about them. The basic idea is a slightly larger than normal M&M with dose of coconut flavor. Simple enough, right? And the concept is exactly what they delivered. It's an M&M chock full of great coconut flavor. And the really weird thing is this - it is dead on perfect coconut flavor with no nasty aftertaste, but nowhere in the ingredients do you find anything even close to coconut, not even natural flavor! They have a perfect artificial coconut flavor going on here! I was forced to share them around the office to make sure that I wasn't imagining things and everybody confirmed it. It tastes real. More than that, everybody liked them. People who hate the texture of coconut found them great. People who normally don't like coconut liked them (wha?). People who love the texture and taste of coconut like I do also loved them. It's a great implementation of a simple idea.

So, how great are they? Well, I'm tempted to give them a 10 just because I love the heck out of them. I consider Peanut M&M's a 9 and I like these better! So I'm going to give it a big ol' 9.5 out of 10 and call it nearly perfect. Why isn't it perfect? Because it's a limited edition. How unfair of me is that? I'm terrible. Anyway, I'm hoping that people love this is much as it deserves and it gets granted a position in the normal lineup. As far as I'm concerned this is a true winner. And all the people I've asked agree with me. Whether it is eventually adopted full-time or not, I have to give it to Mars. Bravo, people. Bravo.

June 1, 2009

Review: Strawberried Peanut Butter M&M's

I love to hunt for candy. Love to. I've been to more than a dozen places looking for the M&M's and Snickers limited edition Transformers tie-ins and after weeks of searching I have finally found the Strawberried Peanut Butter M&M's in a store. Of course I got some at the All Candy Expo a couple of weeks back, but after all of the searching I had to keep trying to find it in store. It was a point of pride or some such stupidity. Not to mention as I look for it I'm also looking for the Snickers Nougabot which I still have not found anywhere. But frustrations aside, tonight I'm going to address the M&M's.

I have to admit that when I first read about the Strawberried Peanut Butter M&M's my immediate reaction was a little confusion and horror. Strawberry and Peanut Butter? Seriously? It took a moment for it to click in my mind - it's peanut butter and jelly! I felt kind of stupid after that, but most people I've presented it to have the same mental block so I'm not the only person who can't see the obvious. Confusion aside, lets take a look at what we've got here. It's a peanut butter M&M with a hit of strawberry flavor to go along with the chocolate and peanut butter (yeah, I sort of failed to even mention the chocolate originally - oops!). It's a simple enough concept so it all comes down to execution and this is where it shines. I expected the peanut butter to taste like peanut butter, but wasn't sure what the strawberry would taste like. Strangely, it tastes like strawberry! With the odd exception the flavor is more peanut butter than strawberry and I'm really wanting just a little more strawberry than I'm getting, but the flavors are good and go well together. It tastes good.

So while it's a flavor combination I really didn't see coming, it's one that works on a very traditional level and one that they pull off very well. It isn't the ideal balance of flavors in my eyes, but I'm really one of those people who likes a little peanut butter with their jelly so I can forgive them. At the end of the day it's still good and different and a fun limited edition and as such I'm going to give it an 8 out of 10. I was pleasantly surprised by this one. Get 'em while you can or hit the bargain stores in a few months or look for it back in stores when the DVD hits.

May 29, 2009

All Candy Expo: Thoughts and Stuff

This is not going to be anywhere near complete and I might go back and edit it as I think of other things to add, but the idea here is just my general impressions from the show. What was good, what was less than good, what I learned - that sort of thing. Oh, and it might be a bit messy and disjointed.

The Good:

  • A million and one exhibitors. Sooo much to see and try.
  • Cool new products, some before they hit the public.
  • A chance to look in on the industry from the outside which was neat.
  • Some good sessions. The opening session was very cool. Nice info on hot new products and trends and such.
  • The food at the Knipschildt luncheon was tasty good. There was a salad (with nibs of course), a mole chicken sandwich (yum), and I don’t even remember what they did to the beef, but whatever it was paired really well with the cheese lurking in it's sandwich.
  • The caramel given out after the Knipschildt luncheon? Killer. Probably the best thing I had at the show.
  • Nice exhibitors. I met a number of people who I made it clear to that I was part of the press and focused on chocolate, but they were more than happy to have me try a sample of their goods anyway. I really did meet a lot of nice people exhibiting when I took the time to slow down.
  • Had a Firecracker Chocopod with Stone Smoked Porter. I’m rather a fan of both and they made a good pairing. Didn’t get to try the pairing with Ruination which was really disappointing as I’ve been struggling to pair chocolates with double IPAs for a while with no luck and I quite enjoy Ruination. I think it would have been neat to pair something milk chocolate (or white even) with the Stone 12th Anniversary Bitter Chocolate Oatmeal Stout (which I loved the heck out of), but it was a limited release and is not so easy to find now.
  • The new product showcase was a great thing. It was a great way to start my show after the opening session. They had these little scanner things that you could get so you could scan the companies who had new things you were interested in. They'd then read the scanner and print a list of company info with the booth number. Very nice feature, especially for anybody who might be stuck attending only one day of the show.
  • I could really go on for a while. There are a lot of great things to say about the show.


The Bad:

  • A million and one exhibitors. Yeah, it cuts both ways. So many exhibitors, so little time and all that.
  • Samples for tasting, not bagging – I have a lot of lit on places where I couldn’t take a sample home with me because they weren't wrapped and I didn’t want a giant wad of candy all stuck together in my bag. It does address the issue of people heaping handfuls of samples into their bag, though.
  • The Knipschildt presentation during lunch was interesting, but felt like it maybe had too much on him and his history (not that he’s not interesting or anything) and not enough on the food he’s doing. I loved the presentation from my vantage as a chocolate fiend, but I think the session should have gotten past the history and background and gotten into the concepts and practice of working chocolate into the menu. Some concepts and pairing ideas and maybe some thoughts on matching flavor elements.
  • There’s a dress code and bag policy which were somewhat (I hate to say largely) ignored. The people in front of me in the opening session were in t-shirts. Saw all manner of non-business attire all over the floor. And while the bag policy was that you were allowed the bag they give you, a standard briefcase, and nothing else there were bags of many shapes and sizes all over the place.
  • There was a lot of stuff that I wanted to try that didn't really have a lot to do with chocolate. It was a challenge to not get a bag full of all the other great stuff that was being exhibited, but I've got a bit of a focus going on here. I figured it was a good idea to try and stick to it.


The Ugly:

  • Ridiculous huge show floor. Lots and lots of walking.
  • People who showed up for the Knipschildt luncheon just to eat a free lunch before walking out five minutes into the presentation. That seemed a little rude to me.
  • People who were just the most absurd sample hogs. And I’m not even talking about the people I saw with full bags a half hour into the show (which is really kind of impressive). I’m talking about the people who will try and tear through the tape holding things into a retail display. The people who will lurk at the side of a booth trying to pull a bag of jerky off of a retail display until they pull the entire display down sending jerky everywhere and then go booking it down the aisle rather than offering an “oops” or “sorry” or anything. I don’t recall if he got his bag of jerky or not, but I do know the exhibitor took it in good humor saying something along the lines of “I’d have given him one if he’d asked!” I felt bad I couldn’t help pick up, but my back was a disaster at this point in the show – if I bent down to help clean up I might not have made it back up. But the idea is that if it wasn't glued to the display people were trying to take it - sometimes by the fistful.


Lessons Learned:

  • I really should have packed some gel insoles in my luggage (don’t try and wear them through the TSA checkpoint – they don’t take kindly to gel). They would have made such a difference in my overall enjoyment of the show. My feet were in bad shape after the first day and the second was just bad from the start. Dr. Scholl could have worked wonders for me.
  • In spite of the stated bag policy I would have been fine taking my laptop bag in with me. I had read the bag policy and, being unsure as to how strict they were about it, I left my laptop and bag at home.
  • Along the same lines of the bag policy, retrospection indicates that the suit was not really necessary (though I did rock it with a nice shirt/tie combo). This is why I ditched the jacket for day two.
  • Apparently the third day at the Expo is kind of similar to the final day of a comic convention in that nobody wants to pay to ship stuff home. At the Expo this means people get a little extra generous with the samples. This could be a good thing or a bad thing. I flew Southwest so I could have had two checked bags with no extra fees so an entire second suitcase filled with an extra fifty pounds of everything the show had to offer may well have been possible. Not that I need it or anything.
  • Cab fare! I didn’t know there was a set fare from Midway to the McCormick Center. Assuming any traffic at all it looks cheaper than standard fare. Bah!
  • Hey, they have a bag check! If I hadn’t been staying at the Hyatt attached to the McCormick I would have been able to make good use of this. As it was I checked my bag with the porter at the hotel before the show.
  • The McCormick center seems well served by Taxis while the show is running so between the taxis and the bag check I think maybe I should have stayed at my first choice of hotel rather than the conveniently located one. It was only one night, but if I return I'll know better.
  • Slow down, take your time. This isn’t quite like the New York Chocolate show where some samples run out really quickly each day. They come to this thing loaded. I suppose if you’re trying to get people to carry your product it really doesn’t pay to not have a sample to give them.
  • The press room is a wonderful place! You can relax in a comfy chair and have a bottle of water and maybe a bagel or something and blog away. Well, you can blog away if you brought your laptop, which, as I previously stated, I did not.


If I Return:
If I return to the show next year I’ll consider driving in and spending a little more time knocking about town. I don’t like driving in the Chicago area, but there are a number of items I can get in Chicago that I can’t here (certain chocolates, certain beers, certain mangas) and it would be nice to load up while there. I really didn’t want to take more than two days off work on short notice, though, and didn’t want to have to dump the rabbit on the sitters (plus it saves the bun the whole ordeal of being forced into a travel box and driven around – she doesn’t seem to like the car). In the end it worked out well, but a little more time for the show and a little regional shopping would be nice so I’d probably take the week off and enjoy myself. And I wouldn't have to worry about luggage weight so I could take all the stuff people wanted to force on me as the show ground to a close.

Thoughts:
There were some interesting things I saw on the show floor including some mini-trends like flax seed and thus omega 3, the return of the cranberry (could we end up going back to the more familiar super foods and away from the ones that don’t hold the same headspace like acai?), puffed soybeans and a nice dose of old fashioned candy and style.

Slowing down to talk to people pays off. I had great conversations with people at some of the big companies booths and some of the small producers booths and nearly every time I stopped to talk I got to find out all sorts of neat stuff and get a view into the industry from my position as press/consumer.

The smaller companies in particular are great to talk to because you usually get to talk to somebody who knows every inch of the operation and you can find out a lot more about a company and their products that way. They have a passion for the product that you only get when one is personally invested in the company, heart and soul, and its fun to talk to them. I have a terrible feeling of guilt when I do so since I’m not going to be selling their products and I’m taking up their time when they could be talking to people who might, with a little convincing, give them a shot. So I would tend to try and not take too much of their time with mixed results. Either way, it’s one of the things I really enjoy at an event like this or even a general chocolate show. Getting to talk to the people who make things happen is a great thing and it personalizes the company and their product in a special way.

In Closing:
Apparently it has been a couple of years since the “All Candy” in All Candy Expo really held true. It’s become more of a general snack show and that is reflected in its new title as of 2010: The Sweets and Snacks Expo. It’s more indicative of what the show is and opens it up to more things at least mentally. It’s still going to be held Tuesday through Thursday at the McCormick center and is largely going to have the same content, just a new name. Whatever it’s called, it’s still the king of the snack food trade shows in the US and an overwhelmingly fun place to just wander and look.

May 27, 2009

Review: Cranberry Raisinets

I've been at a total loss as to where to begin with the pile of goodies I've brought back from the All Candy Expo. There is such a wealth of chocolates that it's hard to pick any single one. So I tossed a few different ones into my bag to take to work with me. When I needed a snack I would pick one of them and run with it. The winner today was Nestlé Cranberry Raisinets. The classic Raisinets remixed with the mighty cranberry instead of the humble raisin. I saw a number of cranberry products on the floor, but this is the only one with the power of the Raisinets brand behind it. I like cranberries so I was excited to give them a try.

The Cranberry Raisinets I have come in a 100 calorie pouch, which is nice for those who want to watch the caloric intake. Opening the pouch it feels like it isn't all that much. The individual pieces are pretty big, but there aren't a whole ton of them (one of the drawbacks of the 100 calorie pouch in general is that you sometimes feel shorted and want more which may lead to opening a second pouch to fill the craving). So how do the little cran bombs taste? The chocolate is nothing remarkable - decent, but it seems a sideshow to the cranberries which take over on the taste front pretty quickly. As soon as the cran flavor kicked in I had to reach for the bag to check the ingredients. I know cran and it's tart. I was hoping for some mouth-twisting tartness (the old sour candy junky in me as well as somebody who actually likes unsweetened cranberries) and what I found was a pleasant sweet tartness. So they've done the standard "make cranberry palatable for the average consumer" move of sweetening it. Well, as much as I do love the sour and tart flavor of a cranberry the sweetened cranberries are quite tasty and will certainly be more to the tastes of most people than unsweetened ones might be. So they deliver a little chocolate and a nice bit of cranberry in a reasonable serving size. I may be crazy, but that seems to be just what they were aiming for.

It's a decent new product in my opinion, but it's lacking a little something at the same time. It's one of those things where I quickly forgot the chocolate. It's like it wasn't able to stand up to the cranberries. But that might just be me and it's not like I didn't like them either. I'm giving it a 7.5 out of 10 - they're good, have some lovely health benefits via the cranberry (albeit with a dose of sat fat along for the ride), but they do have some room for improvement. Quibbles aside, they're good and tasty and I like them enough that I'll give them another shot down the road. Right now I'm a trifle overwhelmed candy-wise.

Coming Up: All Candy Expo: The Good, The Bad And The Ugly. It's sort of a jumble of observations and mistakes made and lessons learned. The idea of a whole huge narrative of my time at the show just started feeling boring on the quick so I'm going to go for the Reader's Digest condensed version.

May 23, 2009

All Candy Expo: Inventory

I've been doing some family stuff, but as time allowed I was working on taking pictures of everything and getting a post built. This is sort of a visual inventory of what came home from the All Candy Expo with me. It is missing a couple of items, but has pretty good coverage. Note that there are a lot of places I want to address at some point that did not send me home with samples. A lot of places were handing out unwrapped bits of stuff and I wasn't going to go littering my bag with a giant mass of unwrapped candy - that'd be all messy. The whole affair lurks after the cut.

Continue reading "All Candy Expo: Inventory" »

May 21, 2009

All Candy Expo Quick Wrapup

After the rush of the first day of the All Candy Expo I decided to kick things down a gear for the second day. My feet and shoulders were killing me so I really wanted to take things easier. And with my press bag emptied out it was a lot easier. There was a lot of candy in that thing and I had pushed along at a good clip on day one to make sure I got in at least one full pass of the show floor in addition to the four sessions I attended. Day two was for filling in the blanks. And it seemed to be a good time to do so. I don’t know if I was just used to the madness by then, but things seemed a little slower on Wednesday. Given the leisurely pace I was setting and the feeling that things in general were going slower (possibly an illusion since I had slowed down) I took some time to stop and talk to people I had skipped by the day before for one reason or another and had some nice conversations with a number of the exhibitors. As the day wore on I found my curiosity slipping from chocolate into my old loves of sour candies and meat snacks. That was when I knew I should pack it in. I was there for the chocolate and it would be rude to leave with one suitcase stuffed with chocolate and another stuffed with jerky and sour bombs. But people were so nice about it. Even when I told people I was reporting on chocolate and felt they should save their samples for people who would potentially be selling for them they were still happy to offer my some mammoth meat log or the newest candy on the block. People were very friendly and I only felt an attitude from a couple of booths which was nice. It really was a fun time and it had a fun atmosphere.

You will notice that this post is very short on details. This is intentional. I have a lot of stuff to sort and try and I’m going to break things up into a series of posts. The first will be a sort of general inventory of what I’ve got in hand. There will be a few posts dedicated to a number of items that will get full reviews at this time. The new varieties of M&M’s will get their own post for certain as will the Snickers Fudge bar. A number of items will get a little paragraph of detail since I only have a few moments conversation and a small sample to go on, but a lot of these items will later be brought back in for full reviews. And somewhere in there I’m going to do a general trip report with my thoughts on the show, the direction, what I loved, what was irritating, lessons learned (like don’t leave your business cards in your suitcase) and what I might do different if I go back next year. So I have a lot of stuff I want to write about and there is going to be a disgusting amount of candy consumed over the next few days. Luckily it’s a long weekend so I’ll have some time to address it all (I should have taken the entire week off so I could handle it all at a leisurely pace, but that’s really something to be shoved off to the “lessons learned” post).

So, to cap this bloated post of generalities, I had a great time, learned a lot, tried some great chocolates, brought home some great chocolates, met some cool people and came out with a better understanding of how to make the most of the show.

May 19, 2009

All Candy Expo Day One Quick Notes

I'm not going to do real posts about the All Candy Expo until I get home and get some of my stuff sorted. I can't even begin to figure out what to talk about at this point so I'll just throw some of the neat bits.

  • Coconut M&M's in the Mars swag bag!
  • Strawberried Peanut Butter M&M's in the Mars swag bag!
  • Snickers Fudge Bars in the press room!
  • Chuao chocolate and beer tasting! Stone beer!
  • Cranberry Raisinets!
  • Talking to some of the people behind some cool products
  • Dark Chocolate M&M's Premiums
  • Tasty chocolate from Liberty Orchards (details forthcoming)
  • Conversation with Brightspot and Pure Origin (who i'm excited to learn more about)
  • Flax SuperSnax (yum!)
  • Hanging out and chatting with Cathy from CocoBon (locally sourced ingredients = win)
  • Dark Chocolate With Espresso Toffee from Cary's of Oregon
  • Jitterbeans (they scare me)
  • Fried chicken and waffles with my sister

That isn't near all and I've got some more places to look in on tomorrow. If my feet hold out. They hurt.

Arrived!

I've landed at the All Candy Expo and have found my way to the press room for some registration and water and have made my way down to the opening session.

Two things:
BIG!
Coconut M&M's!

More later!

May 13, 2009

Travel Time!

Once a year the candy industry descends upon Chicago for the All Candy Expo. It's the "largest confectionary, cookie and snack show in the Americas" and it's a pretty big deal. It is the king of candy trade shows and each year I sit back and live vicariously through the power of the interwebs and wish I could be there.

Well not this year!

I am not going to sit back and dream of all the wonderful candy just a few hundred miles away. I simply refuse to. Anyway, I'll be too busy attending the All Candy Expo instead. Yay for me! There's only like a billion and a half exhibitors (over 450) and I'm quite excited to see what all neat new stuff is coming down the pipe (and of course report my findings). No sitting on the sidelines for me this year. I get to get out and in the thick of it all.

There is one drawback, though. Got an email today. It contained the following terrible phrase:

The dress code for all Expo activities is business attire.
Business attire? Really?

"Bah!" and "Boo!" say I. I was planning on wearing a jacket, but I don't like wearing ties. They're really uncomfortable. But not cost is too high for candy.

So, the pain of horrible ties aside, I will be happily flying off to Chicago and checking out all of the fun myself this time around.

Um.... whee!