Let the Easter Fun Begin!

Isn't it amazing how quickly all the Valentine's candy was cleared away and replaced by Easter candy? There was barely any time for the shelves to be empty before they were loaded up with jelly beans and chocolate bunnies.
My first official Easter purchase was a bag of Sour Patch Bunnies. It was a difficult choice between those or Swedish Fish Eggs.
If you didn't tell me these were bunnies, I'm not sure what I'd think they were. They sort of resemble a bottle of Aunt Jemima pancake syrup. I hadn't had any Sour Patch candies in a long time, so I'd forgotten how much I like them. These are one of the few sour candies that start off and stay sour. The flavors are bright, fresh and citrusy-- a nice juxtaposition to the usual super sweet Easter basket offerings.

QBZ: Candy With a Q!

This entry is a two-fer: a review and a candy ABC all in one! I was very perplexed about what I was going to do for the letter "Q" in my ABC paintings. If worse came to worse, I was going to do Quince Paste, a British treat. But then-- taa daa! Warheads candy came out with QBZ. These are little gummie squares that are rated as "Sour" on the Warheads Sour Meter.
The texture is more like a gumdrop than a gummie, and they're not as puckery as Sour Patch Kids. The flavors are Green Apple, Strawberry, Blue Raspberry and Watermelon. None of these are big on my list. It seems like these are the flavors of the generation after mine. My crowd was all about grape, orange and cherry. Not very exciting, but we Gen-Xers are into simplification. I'm sending the rest of the package back with No-Nuts. I'm sure they'll be a welcome addition to her communal candy jar.

Gummy Smackdown: Sour Patch Xploderz vs. Starburst GummiBursts

In the left corner, Sour Patch Exploderz.

Strengths:

• They satisfy my need for sour
• They're not too sweet
• I like all the flavors
• The sugar-dusted outside provides a nice texture contrast to the gummy part

Weaknesses:

• I hate the typeface they use. Makes me think this is candy made in someone's kitchen with their community-college-attending son doing the logo on his iMac.

In the right corner, Starburst GummiBursts.

Strengths:

• Well-known brand with professional logo
• Starbursts have their own unique flavor

Weaknesses:

• Texture is like rubber instead of that hard/chewy of traditional Starburst
• Inside is thick and oozy

While it looked like Starburst may have had the upper hand since they're more mass-market, Sour Patch snuck up from behind and put the smackdown on Starburst. No question here. Sour Patch Xploderz wins hands-down!

Pucker up!

The little von Schokolats couldn't wait for me to try this gum. I guess it's called "Center Shock" and the flavor was "Mystery." They were all giddy waiting to see how I'd react to this supposedly super-sour treat. Being a sour lover, I figured I've tasted worse and thought I'd have to play up my reaction for the kiddos.

Oh my. Was I wrong. This is some seriously sour stuff. It's the kind of sour that makes your tongue fold in half and your eyelids flutter.

"Keep chewing," they said as they cheered me on. It wasn't easy to do. I started to feel a burning sensation in my chest. But after about a minute or two of excruciating (yet strangely satisfying) sour, the gum mellowed out into just a plain old lump of sour gum.

As I've said before, I'm not a gum fan, but this stuff is in a class of its own. I don't know if you can get it in the States, but I'd be willing to buy it if it was available.