Easter Goodness!

With Easter just around the corner I wanted to share some of my favorite reviews for you and the Easter Bunny! Happy hunting.

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Wispa Gold Review

Thank you for checking in – today we have another review, this time it is Wispa Gold!  Not available in Canada I was lucky enough to have a friend pass one along when they were recently in the UK!

 

In case you missed it here it is the original Wispa Bar.

 

If you're not subscribed yet, head over to the youtube page and sign up for new reviews twice weekly!

What's in a Toffee???

Are all English Butter Toffee's the same? Not a chance! Here's a recent review of the ever popular Daim bar.


But lets add a little context here. Here are reviews of Skor and Heath to round out the picture.



Let me know what your favourite toffee product is and don't forget to check out the YouTube channel for more reviews twice weekly.

Swedish Fish review

How bout some delicious Swedish Fish to swim in the New Year!



Fin-tastic!

Very Merry MunchPak

This recently arrived on my doorstep. Check out my review of the MunchPak Subscription service.



And now for the snacks themselves...



Pretty cool right. Find out more about MunchPak at their website - http://munchpak.com/

Chomp review

Another interesting piece of UK Chocolate up today with the Chomp bar.


Walking the Candy Aisle rates Chomp - 3 / 5

For more on Cadbury's Chomp please check them out online at - http://www.cadbury.co.uk/products/Chomp-2409?p=2409

5 Star review

Today I've got a really fun and different one for review, its Cadbury's 5 Star.


Walking the Candy Aisle rates 5 Star - 3 / 5

For more on the Cadbury 5 Star please check them out online at http://www.cadburyindia.com/in/en/brands/chocolate/pages/5star.aspx

Cadbury Caramel Biscuits review

Back in action today with another review, this time for Cadbury's Caramel Biscuits.


Walking the Candy Aisle rates the Cadbury Caramel Biscuits - 5 / 5

Amazing stuff. I certainly hope to see more of this kind of thing here in Canada. For more on Cadbury and all things Biscuity check out - http://www.cadbury.co.uk/products

Crispy Crunch review

Today we've got one of the high marks in Canadian chocolate bars up for review, its the Crispy Crunch.


Walking the Candy Aisle rates Crispy Crunch - 4 / 5

Crispy Crunch is a Kraft Canada product, keep up with them on their Facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/Kraft

Cadbury Dairy Milk review

Her we have it, ginally its time to look at Cadbury's Dairy Milk.



Walking the Candy Aisle rates Cadbury Dairy Milk - 5 / 5

For more on all things Cadbury please visit http://www.cadbury.co.uk/ and for more reviews of 5 star candy and chocolate, check out this playlist. Or just browse over to our Review page for links through to everything.

mr. Big review

Today we're back at it with Cadbury and their biggest bar on the market, its mr. Big!


Walking the Candy Aisle rates mr. Big - 4 / 5

For more on mr. Big please check the bar out online at www.mrbig.ca very exciting stuff! For more reviews please keep it here, or browse over to our Reviews page.

Wispa review

Welcome one and all to the final review in our long running UK Candy and Chocolate review series. OK, yes I know last week I told you that the Drifter review was the last one, but this time its for real. Today we end with the classic Cadbury Wispa bar.


Walking the Candy Aisle rates Wispa - 4 / 5

For a look at all of the reviews in our UK review series please check out the YouTube Playlist!

For more on Wispa, please see them online at http://www.cadbury.co.uk/ or find them on the Facebook. Thanks for watching all, more reviews are always coming so keep it locked here :)

Buttons, Bites, Clusters, Minis and More

Since moving from the States to Canada I've noticed a few products on the shelves that have surprised me. I've also noticed some surprising packaging of products. When I lived in San Francisco I didn't pay excessive attention to the packaged theater style candy, I eman it was usually in a different aisle altogether, or at the very least way down the end, and the selection was always limited. The mini, or bite sized phenomenon is definitely not such a big thing in the States. But in Canada I am absolutely floored by how much aisle space is given over the smaller sized versions of regular candy. If its a rare variation in the States, and usually something only found in that format, here in Canada the opposite is true. Almost everything in the theater candy section is a version of a bigger standard product, and its super popular.

These are the buttons, bites, clusters, minis, and more found while walking my candy aisles now.

I was looking all over this packaging and other than the character art I can't seem to find any difference between these Dairy Milk Buttons. Anyhow, these are of course the standard straightforward Cadbury chocolate buttons. And like the Dairy Milk itself, they are stamped as Fair Trade.

Hershey's answer to the Buttons are of course the Drops, which have as far as I know been fairly successful. In a surprising turn Hershey's has an actual new product on shelves now featuring whole nuts!

Dark and Milk Chocolate options with whole nuts... seems like a pretty good idea. |If only Hershey's chocolate was better quality.

Sticking with hershey's though we also get an entry into the Minis catagory.

Dark Chocolate, Milk Chocolate, Mr Goodbar (Milk Chocolate and Peanut), and Krackel (Milk Chocolate and Rice Crispies). While this mix bag is a common sight around Halloween, the most important thing to note here is the Krackel. Hershey's does not offer Krackel in a full sized bar. So if you want to try it, this is how its got to be done... in Miniature form.

Now I'm not 100% sure these Allan bagged candy should count since they're not chocolate, and aren't based on anything but they look good so I'll mention them.

Allan is of course the company behind the Big Foot gummy feet candy, and although I don't eat too much of their stuff I have to say I'm impressed with what I've seen. I wonder if these dessert bites have a true gummy center.... probably. I mean that would make sense from this company. but what do you think the outer frosting coating is? just sugar? or could it be like yogurt or something? Either way these look pretty tasty.

Now for some oddball entries from Cadbury.

The Mais Souffle is exactly what it looks like: caramel popcorn coated in chocolate. And honestly when you just hear it you know its a winner. And then there's the Toffee Clusters, which definitely hold some appeal, although I don't know if they're as sure a thing as the popcorn for me.

Let's move on to some small versions of big bars, these things seems so popular here in Canada.

Simple idea with the Kit Kat, Seems like a good one to me.

This one is good, but a bit odd since I thought you could still find the mini York Patties around. I'd say these bites are silid though, just maybe not as sharable as individually wrapped minis.

I don't know how Hershey's keeps claiming that Reese Sticks are new since they clearly aren't, but these Reese Sticks Minis are definitely a newer product. Since I like the reese Sticks I bet I'd go for this.

Another Reese product, I don't know if the Minis count. I mean aren't they always changing the size of the Reese Cups anyhow.

Coffee Crisp Bites on the other hand are a great idea from start to finish. I'd like to try these and review them for the site.

Playing on the Cadbury Caramilk secret these minis look great. I am a HUGE fan of Caramilk so these are sure to be awesome.

Big Turk of course has to make an appearance here. While I wasn't terribly impressed with this Turkish Delight chocolate bar in its big form I bet the Bites would improve the experience. More chocolate, and more of a candy experience. This might just work.

Oh Henry bites are not a great idea in my opinion. The bar was busy enough. Making it more compacted is not a recipe for success. I think this might be an even bigger garbled mess of a chocolate bar experiecne than the big version.

This is a case of good idea, bad idea. The good idea is making a small bite sized version of the Crunchie bar. The bad idea is making it a Cluster... why on earth didn't they just make it a straightforward Bite? I am confused, and suspect the flakey nature of the Crunchie would make this experience very weird.

As I mentioned in my Aero reviews they also come in Bubble form. This is an absolute no brainer when you think of the product, their marketing imagery and how well it ties in. I don't know that I've ever had them though, and I'd be very interested in checking it out.

Also while its rare to come across the full sized Aero bar in its Orange flavor, the Orange Bubbles are all over the place. At least that's been my experience.

This is a bit of a head scratcher. Aren't Rolos already mini???

And finally we come to one only recently reviewed here on the Candy Aisle the Skor Minis.

I think these might work better in mini form as well. While I didn't hate the bar or anything, it wasn't too exciting. I expect this would be about the same, or maybe a tiny bit better.

Anyhow, that's all I've got for you today. As I said off the top, it seems a bit odd that there are so many of these mini chocolates and candies here in Canada. Who is buying these when they could geta  full bar instead??? Whoever it is they must be doing ti a lot though. Since there seems to be no end in sight for these bags of minis, bites, and clusters.

Cadbury Fudge review

Today we've got another British Candy review for you, it's Cadbury's Fudge.


Walking the Candy Aisle rates Cadbury Fudge - 4 / 5

For more on Cadbury Fudge check them out online at http://www.cadbury.co.uk/. For more reviews make sure to subscribe to the YouTube Channel, and browse through our Reviews Page.

Dairy Milk Caramel review

Today we've got a great one for you. Continuing our look at UK Candy and chocolate here is the Dairy Milk Caramel.


Walking the Candy Aisle rates Dairy Milk Caramel - 5 / 5

Another great bar from Cadbury, should we really be surprised at this point, with this and the Caramilk they are just tops in the caramel and chocolate arena! For more on this and all the various Cadbury products you can always surf over to their website http://www.cadbury.co.uk/

For more from the Candy Aisle check out our Reviews Page, and make sure to keep an eye on all the UK Candy specifics over at YouTube.

The Big Bar Line Up - Wrapped

In case you missed it over the past month or so I posted an extensive look at some of the 'Big bar' chocolates available while walking the Candy Aisle here in Canada. I know it was more of a survey series but I liked all the pretty pictures and even just taking a closer look at them gave me a better understanding of what the various players are trying to achieve.

Does this mean I'll be eating more big bars down the line? I hope so. There are some really great offerings out there, especially from companies like Lindt and Ritter Sport. And hopefully that will translate here to the blog as well, in added reviews on some of the more interesting stuff.

For those who would like to check out the series of posts here they are in one handy dandy list:

Cadbury Dairy Milk

Hershey

Lindt

Ritter Sport

Dove and Godiva

Remainders

It seems like such a short list of posts but believe me it took a very long time to compile these lists with all the pictures involved.

I hope you do take the opportunity to go back and check out any of the posts you may have missed. They're fun looks at whats on the shelves right now. There's some great, and some definitely no so great looking stuff out there. Thanks for reading all :)

Curly Wurly review

Today we've got a bit of a werid one for you, especially in the design department. Its Cadbury's Curly Wurly.


Walking the Candy Aisle rates Curly Wurly - 3 / 5

For more on the curl, and Cadbury please check out their site right here. For more from us, please browse on over to our reviews page! 

The Big Bar Line Up - Remainder

So if you've been following along with my series of posts on Candy Aisle Big Bars you know that we've covered a lot of ground. But there are really SO many more big bars that we could talk about. There are whole blogs out there that deal with this topic. Granted once you pass a certain point it seems like most of the big bars are more for the Fair-Trade, Whole Foods crowd than regular candy aisle walkers like myself. Now I know that there are a lot of chocolates out there for that market and its great, but I'm more interested in the everyday stuff. So what I've gathered here for today's post is a reasonable sampling of some of the remaining big sized candy bars I've seen some-what commonly around town, or at least in regular, popular stores.

I'm interested to know if I'm missing out on the one line of chocolates that I simply must try or at the least should have heard of, so if you've got something that I didn't cover in these posts, please feel free to let me know :)

Lets start with the two 'other' bars that in Canada you'll find everywhere.

Caramilk is fantastic. Just check out my review. So its no wonder that its a staple of the Big Bar section of every store here.

Neilson's Jersey Milk is an interesting one here in Canada. They are a Canadian company that's been around for just over a hundred years. As you might guess from a name like Neilson's Dairy, they make milk, and milk products. In Canada you can find them in the biggest national grocery chain (Loblaws) and these chocolate bars made by them most everywhere else as well. Jersey Milk chocolate is practically a Canadian institution. As a kid these were probably the most prevalent fun size candy in everyone's bag at the end of Halloween night. The company has a longstanding relationship with Cadbury Canada, even owning their Canadian operations for a decade or so. A few of Cadbury's Canadian chocolate bars like Mr. Big and Crispy Crunch even were sold under the Neilson logo for a time. Jersey Milk, along with the others were all sold back to British Cadbury in the late 90s and this bar is now produced by them (only it retains the Neilson branding). I haven't personally had one of these in quite a while, and I'm looking forward to reviewing it soon!

Now these next two are new but they're very heavily "candy bar" influenced, and the kind of thing you'd see in any regular candy aisle, so I thought I should mention them now.

Who knows if wither of these bars will stick around, but I'm interested in trying them. Sometimes the form factor can really matter. I think both of these could be significantly different in this larger form.

Here's a weird one right?! I can't say that I've ever seen a straight up Nestle Dark chocolate bar before... but here it is. Straight from the local dollar store (meaning it could be an import) with honey and almond pieces. Very interesting.

Talk about BIG bars, that's a 400gm bar! Although I'm not familiar with Waterbridge this is one of a few things I saw at Wal-Mart.This is apparently their Belgian style chocolate while this next Mountain Range themed line is Swiss.

I found the Waterbridge Mountain Range line up at my local Lowes and think simply based on packaging alone that I'd prefer to go with it than the Belgian Style ones I saw earlier.

Here we have another Canadian institution found in the Dollarama :( Laura Secord are not known for having big chocolate bars in stores however so I don't feel too bad. Somehow this must have slipped into production and ended up here. Laura Secord is known for having almost boutique 200 chocolate retail locations across Canada. They are a really wonderful very high quality chocolatier perhaps best known for boxed chocolates and I'm certainly planning on getting some of their stuff onto the site here soon!

Here's two that I know virtually nothing about at all... Although that Heritage bar sounds alright. Apparently Jacquot is a very well regarded French chocolate, and the only thing I can see online about Heritage is a listing for something produced by Mars Canada... which doesn't seem like the same thing as this...

Another Dollarama special the Rocher Blanc comes in Milk and Dark and has nice packaging. I believe its French, but can't bank on that.

Cote D'Or is a brand I'm not too familiar with, but I've got something from them in the works for a review soon. All I can say is that I found these two Dark Chocolate beauties at a grocery chain called Metro here in Canada, and I LOVE their little elephant logo. Adorable.

PC is a brand every Canadian will be familiar with. If you want more info just check out this post for some thoughts of mine on the line. Probably not something I'd buy, but I knew this had to exist somewhere...

Next up we're going into the world of Fair-Trade. Here is a line of chocolates that I've been told are very good. This is the Canadian chocolate brand Camino.

I'm not one to go in for Fair-trade stuff too often since I don't feel like I can justifiably afford the cost, but since this is a well respected Canadian brand I thought I should mention them. And hey lets not forget, Cadbury's Dairy Milk is also officially Fair-Trade.

There's are LOTS of environmentally friendly brands out there nowadays. How about these ones:

Endangered Species Chocolates, with the very desirable website http://chocolatebar.com/ have exactly the story you'd expect... 10% of proceeds, all organic, not fair-trade (but this is about the animals not the people or financial equity), and all the other good stuff you want from your socially responsible chocolate company :/

I should probably stop talking about this stuff, since I'm sure to say something to annoy someone.

Of course I skipped a lot of stuff here. It seems like everyone has an in-house brand now as well. Wal-Mart has Great Value which for my money is actually pretty decent chocolate. There's also nationally here in Canada the Carnaby line at Shopper Drug Mart, as well as their lower end Life brand, out west Safeway has their Select Line. And there is Simply Foods, No Name, and you'll even see Milka or big bar Ghiradelli around here sometimes. Really there are about a zillion others, but this is a god enough place to stop.

Before I wrap up I think I should include a few pick ups of brands I've mentioned in earlier Big Bar Line Up posts. Here are some late entries into the Hershey, and Lindt posts.

I'd definitely like to try that Hazelnut Mousse...

So there you have it. Big Bar chocolates are interesting and a world I haven't really delved too deeply in. Frankly taking these photos for this series of posts is probably the most I've looked at them in my life. There are just too many other things to get done and if I'm personally buying a chocolate I know I'd rather go for a standard chocolate bar. Less cost, less size, better value on the spot.

For those interested though, maybe I should make a few exceptions and start reviewing a couple of these... especially the more 'candy bar' style ones... Let me know what you think and thanks for joining me on this walk down the candy aisle.