Am I just not used to eating candy anymore? Why is it all so stinky?
These round little mini-bars smell funky when I bite into them, like
artificial nut flavoring. Why would they put almond or walnut extract in
here? They're trying to convince me they toasted it, not that they...
nutted it... right?
This is actually good.... This is the problem with recapping more than one
candy at once, actually. What I should say is "This is better than Andes
Mocha Mint Thingies." But my relief at not
having the aftertaste of those in my mouth anymore
is so extreme that my first reaction to these is "This is really good!"
Let's not give them such a quick... um... escape here. There's a lot going
on
in the Almond Joy Milk Chocolate Miniatures Toasted
Coconut With Almonds Naturally And Artificially Flavored. I know that's a
shock, after such a simple and clear name, but trust me here.
They are round. The coconut is brown and smells oddly walnutty. It reminds
me of something. You know what? It reminds me of the kind of candy you'd
get from a small local candy company, like our own Annabelle's, like
the kind of thing that Candyfreak guy would have flown all the
way to Pittsburgh for, where everyone has grown up with Walnutty Buddies
or Coco-Riffics or Chocolate Ball Sacks and never gave it a second
thought.
And then the unsuspecting newcomer takes a bite and for a moment, all
is coconut and sweet goodness. Until this weird, bitter artificial flavor
comes in. And this wakes me up. I love the Almond Joy, by which I mean I
love the Mounds and I eat around the almonds when they're there. I like
this variation at first, and I like it fine when
there's
chocolate mixed up in it from Properly Balanced Candy Biting. But damn,
that weird taste.
This is making me bitter. These giant candy companies (if Peter
Paul is one. I bet they're owned by Nestle now. And the sack says...
Hershey's! Damnit. This
explains everything) use unfair marketing practices to
crush the local candymakers, (I'm looking at you, Snodgrass!) and then
they think they get to come out
with something that totally rips off the people they crush? And they make
it have an aftertaste like artificial burned crap? That's not fair. Plus,
it's a limited edition! So even if I like it, even if
it replaces some lost
local specialty that I have yearned for for years, it will only be around
for a little while, getting the major candy giant all kinds of "’buzz" and
then boom! No more Walnutty Buddy for me! They're just toying
with
us, I tell you! Toying with us!
The crazy thing - besides that - is that I can't see anything in the
ingredients that explains the weird taste. They
list toasted coconut, for gods' sakes. Apparently they aren't lying
when they call it toasted coconut on
the label - as opposed to
all the times they use "creme" in a name, for example. They list chocolate
twice, and coconut
(untoasted) separately. The only thing on here that I haven't tasted
before, at least not in a candy I liked, is that PGPR stuff that
Hershey's and only Hershey's seems to stick in almost everything.
Okay, here's my new theory. On Star Trek, all those foods that come
materializing
out of the... food... materializer... thingy? Those are all made out of
pure PGPR. It's a new super-wonder-non-food that can be made to taste
almost
like anything. And Hershey's is at the forefront of PGPR Fake Food
Technology. They've just barely
gotten to the stage where they're using it to fill out
their candies or to replace ingredients in there.
Maybe it's like Ever-So-Much-More-So, in the Henry Reed stories, where
some faker
comes through town selling something that is invisible and unsmellable and
is supposed to be shaken onto food to make it taste "ever so much more so"
than it did. PGPR (they croon to their candymakers
and their investors)
will enhance any candy! It will make their products irresistible to the
world! And best of all, it costs only pennies per ton to make! Soon
everyone will be beating down their doors for more - and Hershey's is the
only one who knows how to make it! My friends, when we eat
their candies, we are tasting the future. The
multiple-chemical-sensitivies-inducing, brain-killing, corporate-branded,
weird-aftertastey future.
Anyway, where was I? So, it tastes kind of like walnuts. Bitter. The
miniature bars are round instead of the usual oval. Didn't they used to
just sell one of those oval half-bars as their miniature
form? I don't know why this is a circle, but it is. It retains the usual
slightly
tough, slightly squishy coconut filling, maybe a little tougher with its
new toasty nature.
There is a very mainstream, normal, milk chocolate coating over the whole
thing, including the small almond settled on top. I sucked everything off
of one: it's an actual almond, whole and complete with skin (which does
provide its
own slight bitterness, but nothing like the candy's), but somehow
seeming smaller than almonds usually do.
I really like it when the bitterness isn't there. It's a great chewing
candy! Because if you stop: tastebud pain!
The
walnuttiness isn't bad, even, and hey, toasting things is supposed to give
them a nutty
flavor. It's the bitter whack that comes in afterward that has no business
being
there. Maybe toasting the coconut didn't have the desired flavorful
effect and they used the candy equivalent of
liquid smoke in it. Actually, that sounds pretty good, compared to this.
On the bright side, unlike the Andes Coffee flavor, this candy's
aftertaste actually dissipates within a minute or so. And the toasted
flavor does something to balance out Almond Mounds' normal sickly-sweet
base flavor. Besides, I know I'm not the only one
who spent their childhood fantasizing about getting to
eat candy that materialized out of nowhere. For the moment, Toasted Almond
Coconut Artificial Natural Flavor Joy Milk Chocolate Miniatures is as
close as we can get.