Quick List - Best Treat From Each Continent

 Here's a quick list of the best candy from each and every continent.

Junk Fud on the Road - Tunisia

 Allison and Chris talk about their latest adventure (and it's kind of long term) in Tunisia. Check back later as there might even be a second part where they explore the many deserts in the dessert portions of the country.

An Interesting Opinion of Classic Candy Treats

 I do often watch other people review candy, but I've never been so interested in someone else's opinion on the subject than I was watching this video.

Don't forget to check out some of my cool candy merch.

CC

In This Episode Of Junk Fud On The Road We Check Out Two Of The Nicest Countries In The World

Allison and I generally don't like to visit the same country twice, yet I can see us going back to South Africa and Botswana sometime in the future. At the very least we'll be able to stock up on South African Rusks, one of the best treats in the world.

If you want to keep up with our podcasts, be sure to follow us on YouTube and Sound Cloud.

You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to keep up with our latest adventures.

CC

Tom's Look At The Visual Side Of Snacks And Candy - African Gold Sesame Seed

Hi folks! Glad you could drop in for another look at snack and candy packaging! This week, I wanted to share a quick snapshot of a shipping sack for African Gold Sesame Seeds. I love how the shape of the continent is filled with graphic silhouettes that represent flora and fauna of Africa! What struck me was the fact that very few people will see this piece of package art. It is on a large 50lb sack from which bins at Bulk Barn (for example) sell the product to customers. Except for the moments when staff refill the container, the bag is stored away out of sight of the public. Hopefully, the audience of Candy Critic will enjoy this glimpse of a rarely seen piece of Snack Pack Art!

Tom

Make sure to check out Tom's Instagram account for his amazing artwork, and also be sure to pick up one of the exclusive Candy Critic shirts he's  designed.

Candy Critic Chris By Tom Yeo T-Shirt
by candycritic

It's A New Episode Of Junk Fud On The Road!!! - Tanzania and Kenya

In this episode of Junk Fud On The Road, Allison and Chris talk about their most recent trip, a safari adventure in Tanzania and Kenya. It's a strange episode as it's they're also making tea and snacks while chatting.

Click here to check out old episodes of Junk Fud On The Road.

And make sure to follow us on SoundCloud and YouTube to keep up with all our new episodes.

CC

On Day 4 Of Our African Candy Review-A-Thon, We Have Yet Another Bag Of Chips - Tropical Heat Potato Crisps "Tomato Flavour"

I like these chips (spoilers). The name was a little misleading, but I like the name. It sounds like a bad movie from the 1980's. Likely one of those movies that would play really late at night on a cable channel, and would contain some nudity. Nothing too offensive, but enough to keep you interested.  The chips themselves aren't that interesting, but they're good enough that I wish I had more.

Click here to read about these "saucy" sounding potato chips.

You can also follow all our daily adventures on Facebook and Twitter.

Why not follow us on Pinterest to keep up with all our new reviews as well.

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It's The Third Entry In Our African Candy Review-A-Thon, And There's A Bit Of A Theme - Viva Potato Crisps “Salt & Vinegar”

I didn't really mean for this to happen, but apparently most of the reviews in this Tanzania/Kenya review-a-thon are going to be potato chips. This could either be because chips are very popular in these two countries, or that I had already tried many of the local chocolate bars available in these countries. I'm guessing it's a combination of both.

Click here to read this fun African potato chip review.

Make sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook as well.

You can also follow us on Instagram, if that's the kind of thing you might do.

CC

It's Part 1 Or Our African Candy Review-A-Thon!!! And It's A Little Salty - Krackles "Tingly Cheese & Onion"

All this week we're going to be posting candy reviews from candy we picked up on our recent trip to Kenya and Tanzania. Normally when I travel I go nuts picking up snacks from my adventures, but I have to be honest, this time I didn't find that much. It's not because Kenya and Tanzania didn't have much to offer, it's most because I was out in the middle of the savanna without any contact with the real world for most of our trip. Whenever I could though, I stopped in some of the local shops and picked up a few fun munchies and fortunately I found some pretty interesting snacks.

Click here to read our first entry in our Kenya/Tanzania candy review-a-thon.

Also, make sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook to get a sneak peek at the reviews before we post them here.

If you're feeling generous, you can also follow us on Google+.

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We're Back, And We've Got A New Review - Lindt Excelence "Extra Creamy"

For those of you not in the know, which might prove to be all of you, we've been away for the last few weeks in Africa. We're back now, and we're on board with a new review. This review has absolutely nothing to do with our trip to Africa, but next week we're planning on a special African Candy Review-A-Thon to show off some of our finds.

Click here to read about a chocolate bar that most certainly did not come from Africa.

Want to check out a few photos from our Africa trip, check out our Facebook or Twitter feeds.

You can also follow us on Tumblr, because it's the right thing to do.

CC

We've Just Posted A New Candy Review! - Hart Beat

The review's we're posting this week have a theme, and this theme comes together to form a clue. The clue is the answer to a question I choose not to answer, but I imagine you'll figure out at some point or another. Don't you love cryptic puzzles?

Click here to read this review, and make sure to look for clues.

You might figure out  what I'm talking about if you follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

You might also figure it out if you follow us on Tumblr.

CC

It's The First In Our Random Summer Candy Reviews

Back when I started this blog I used to post new reviews whenever I wanted, or whenever I had one to post.  Then I started to notice that I didn't post reviews for weeks at a time. I decided then to post regularly, once a week. This summer I'm going to be super busy, and I wanted to loosen up a bit on the schedule, so I've decided to try random candy posts again. This time however I'll guarantee at least one review a week. This likely means I'll often post more than one review a week.  I'll keep this up throughout the summer and see how it goes.

This particular review was pretty disappointing for me. You'd imagine that a bar with the name symphony would sing in your mouth. Instead it was just a collection of sour notes.

Click here to read the review.

And make sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter as well.

CC

This Week In Candy

Boy is it cold out there. It's our first winter in six years (we've been living overseas) and it's been pretty extreme, in Canada where I live we've had more than 150 cm of snow, and as I write this the temperature is around -15 degrees. It got me thinking about winter candy, or the lack of it. Sure there are a huge range of candies for Christmas, but the day after Christmas Valentine's day and Easter candies start to appear on the shelf. What about January, and half of February, what are we supposed to eat then?

A great deal of candy in this world is really designed for summer. Anything you eat with your fingers can be cumbersome while wearing gloves or mitts. Mint flavours make your insides freeze along with your outsides. Most fruit flavours just remind me of warmer days, and that's depressing. And ice cream is just out of the question. So what kind of candy can we eat in the winter? Maybe I'll think about it and try and design some specialty winter treats. If you have any ideas, let me know on Facebook, Twitter, or comment below.

This week on Candy Critic we're going to post our latest episode of Chris, Why Would You Eat That?!! featuring a special guest, my nephew Feroner. We shot a two (maybe three) part candy tasting series over the holidays. The first episode is online at Feroner's YouTube channel right now, make sure to check it out here. Part two is going up on our YouTube channel later this week. It was a pretty intense episode of Chris, Why Would You Eat That?!! but we both survived.

To help me think about warmer days, I decided to review a classic African candy bar.  I figure that since it's summer there right now, maybe it'll make me feel better (nope). While this bar has brought back fond memories of the time I visited Africa, it really wasn't that impressive itself.  Click here to find out why.

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This Week In Candy

Is it too early to think about Valentine's Day? I've started to think about Valentines Day a lot lately.  It's actually one of my favorite holidays of the year.  I like it because people rarely expect anything for this day, yet there's so much you can offer. Even as an adult I've been known to give all of my friends Valentines, in particular the cute ones they sell at drug stores for kids to give to their classmates.  I also really like the quality and variety of candy available on this holiday. Unlike Halloween and Christmas, where you often only get the same types of candy you see all year only themed for that holiday. Valentine's Day candy is associated with high quality chocolates, in decorative and classier packaging.  So I'm thinking about it now, and I'll be thinking about it till Valentine's Day is over.

This week we have the second episode of our podcast Junk Fud going online.  This week's episode is the first in our series called Junk Fud History.  Inspired by a really disappointing cookie experience I had a while back, this episode looks at the history of Keebler.  This is one of those cookie companies that I can't say that I love, yet it's probably one of the most recognizable in the world.  It probably has something to do with those elves.

Today, right after writing this, I'm going to be taking a whole bunch of photographs (in association with our sister site bewarethecheese.com).  I've got all kinds of article ideas for this site, as well as ideas for Snack facts, and I need photographs.  Many of these photos are for articles that probably won't be going up for a while, months likely, but I like to be extra prepared.  You can see what we're shooting if you follow any of our social media sites, or just wait till the articles are online.

This week on Snack Facts, our Instagram feed, we're looking at corn chips.  Originally a Mexican creation, these chips are now available all over the world.  Make sure to check Snack Facts every day this week to learn something new about these crunchy chips. If you don't use Instagram, don't worry, you can also follow Snack Facts on our Facebook page and Twitter feed as well.

This week's review is a bar that I picked up in Africa earlier this year.  I was going to include it in our African candy review-a-thon, but I felt that it really needed to go up on it's own.  Probably one of the most unique chocolate bars I've tasted in a while, and well worth hunting down if you've never tried it.  Click here to read this latest cool review.

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This Week In Candy

With the holidays behind us, I can safely tell you that I managed to eat more cookies in one week than I have in my entire life.  I'm not sure why, but cookies were truly the theme for the holidays this year.  I can't complain about that though.  Cookies allow you to have a lot more variety than cake or pies.  You can pile many varieties of cookies on one plate and no one looks at you as if you were some kind of dessert hording glutton. You can also go back for seconds on cookies on the grounds that you didn't get to taste a particular type of cookie.  For some reason if you do that with cake people seem to frown upon it.

This week at Candy Critic we're preparing for the new year, and what a year it's going to be.  We're already gearing up for some new adventures this year, travel wise.  We're preparing for a trip to Thailand in the near future, and have other trips planned later in the year.  The new year is also going to bring the return of Junk Fud, the official Candy Critic podcast.  With a new format the show will go live in January, and we hope to have 3 or 4 episodes going online every month. We'll also be continuing some of our other new segments in the new year, including the monthly Candy Critic Dessert Club, that's posted on this blog each month.  We're also going to see an increase in candy review-a-thons since we have a huge backlog of reviews to post.  This is were we post 5 or 7 new candy reviews in a week instead of just one.  All this and we'll still be continuing our regular weekly segments like our Candy Thing, Candy in the Media, and in January Snack Facts (our Instagram feed) returns.

This year we're also going to be focusing on more writing projects outside of the website.  We've got three projects waiting to go out, and we hope to have several of them out by the end of the year.  So it's going to be a busy year, and we hope you'll be along for the ride.

Speaking of busy years, 2015 was a pretty crazy year for us as well.  Later this week we'll be posting our top 5 most memorable candy reviews, and today we're posting a new candy review from our most memorable trip.  Our trip to Southern Africa was pretty intense, and a whole lot of fun.  We tried all kinds of amazing foods from wild game to not so wild candy bars.  Today's new review is a snack we found in South Africa that really made us excited, that was until we ate it.  Click here to check out the new review.

CC

African Food Adventure

On this African adventure we visited primarily two countries South Africa and Botswana. We also made a quick stop in Zimbabwe, Zambia, and a fictional collaboration of these two countries known as ZimZam.  The basic plan of action was to quickly drive from Johannesburg to Botswana, and after a few days make our way to Victoria Falls at the Zimbabwe and Zambia border (ZimZam). Then take a few weeks to meander down to Cape Town and the Southern most point of Africa.

Food wise the plan was to figure out what kind of candy we could get, sample the local snacks, and in Allison's case taste as many wild games as possible.

I did what I always do when I visit someplace new, I instantly panicked, and within the first few days I visited as many stores as I could to try and get a vibe for the candy scene in Africa. The one thing that really struck me was the amount of chocolate bars available all over Southern Africa. It was surprising because this is a pretty hot place and a pretty hot season when we were visiting. Many warm countries don't sell many chocolate bars because they melt easily in their warm weather. Some countries even formulate special chocolate bars that don't melt as easily, but not Botswana or South Africa. They have a huge range of bars, often not kept in refrigerators, and made with high quality chocolate.  This did lead to a few messy chocolate bars disasters, in particular with the Tex bar that I had to re-buy because mine had melted beyond recognition.  Even the new one I purchased melted in the few seconds I set it down on the table to take out my camera and shoot a few photos.

After a day or two of panic shopping for African candy, I started to calm down and looked around much more casually. I discovered a few treats that were all over the place and I also came across a few really unique treats too, most notably the Monkey Gland Sauce Flavoured Potato Chips (you can read the review here). I also noticed that similar to other European colonized countries, brands like Cadbury and Nestle were in abundance and this included many of their standards. Fortunately there were also many original Cadbury and Nestle products as well. I also found a lot of licorice, which I imagine is due to the Dutch influence, but could also have something to do with the fact that licorice doesn’t melt.

The most surprising food that everyone seemed to go nuts over in all of the countries we visited was baked goods. All of the grocery stores had exceptional baked sections with a vast array of cakes and pastries. The most popular baked item seemed to be sliced bread, and there was an obsession with slicing it immediately.  Each and every store had at least one bread slicer, some as many as 5 or 6. My favourite baked product in Africa had to be the rusks. If you've only ever sampled European or North American rusks in your life, then you just don't know how good a rusk can be. The variety is fantastic as well, Sweet rusks, savoury rusks, all kinds of grains and fruits as well. In my mind however the buttermilk rusks can't be beat.

Allison's adventure on this journey was a little more meat focused, but maybe I'll let her explain:

"Canada is known for great game meat, and I enjoy some of the standards, like deer and moose, but have also sampled some more northern specialties like caribou, elk, and muskox.  In Botswana, some opportunities arose to enjoy some African game meat!  The first time, I had a choice between a few meats.  Impala is known as the "McDonald's of the savanna", as they are plentiful and many animals hunt them (and they also have a marking on their behinds that looks like an "M").  So I chose the impala, thinking, "If everything else eats them, why shouldn't I?"  In the following days, I also sampled kudu and eland.  I missed a chance to try giraffe stew - I was too late and it was all gone - but I was secretly happy to miss it, because with their long necks, interesting fur patterns, and slow graceful strides, they just seem too ... *nice*... to eat."

This was a great adventure both food and travel wise. Southern Africa is truly a beautiful place, and the food is fantastic. I'm sure I'll be back, if at the very least to pick up more rusks.

CC

This Week In Candy

It generally takes about a week for me to get home, and get sorted after a trip.  This trip to Southern Africa was particularly epic, but I still managed to get everything sorted out and it's all ready to go.  What does that mean for you?  Well to start, we're having a review-a-thon, and as you might have guessed, it's going to be all African treats we picked up on this adventure.  You can read more about the first entry into this week's review-a-thon below.  We'll also be posting a special article looking back at our adventure, and some of the cool foods we sampled going up on Thursday.

So what else has happened on our epic trip, well I got to thinking. More importantly I got to thinking about some of the projects I've been promising but not executing.  I've decided to use the month of November as the launching/testing for new projects here at Candy Critic, to see what's going to work and what won't.  On our African adventure I decided that I'm going to start producing more material, in more mediums.  On deck are the following projects:

The podcast is coming back!  Junk Fud will start again in November with a few different formats.  We'll see what works and play it by ear from there.  We'll make sure to let you all know about the new episodes on our social media, as well as on this blog.

The Periscope  show is going to be going up later this month.  The show will be called VS, and will let you vote on your favorite candy.  It'll be the ultimate contest of snack vs snack, like WWE meets Food Network.

More blog articles.  I've been writing some long format blogs about travel, food, and candy, and I'm going to start sharing them on this blog.  Some will be looks back at past food travel adventures, others will be food travel tips, some still will look at snack history and news.

Candy in the Media, and Cool Candy Things will continue, but they'll be a lot less of me yammering about them and more room for you to just enjoy the strange things we find on the internet.  Every Wednesday we'll pick out a Cool Candy Thing for you to check out and every Friday we'll randomly post a candy video, or a link to a cool candy game or website.

Finally, there has been some thought about updating the format of candycritic.org.  I'd love to do this, but frankly I don't have time to learn any new coding.  If anybody has any suggestions for upgrading the site, without me having to learn a brand new code, that would be great.

This week Snack Facts is back!!! We'll be coming to you with a new fact about a classic snack every day this week.  This week we're looking at one of the strangest candies every, cotton candy.  Sure it's a classic candy now, but cotton candy might be one of the first modern cuisine foods ever.  Every day this week we'll look at this strange treat and post a new fact on our Instagram feed.  Don't use Instagram, don't worry, we'll also post Snack Facts on our Facebook page and Twitter feed as well.

This week's new review was probably the most talked about snack that I picked up on my African adventure, Monkey Gland Sauce flavoured potato chips.  I can only assure you that no monkey was harmed in the making of these chips.  Click here to read the review of these very odd chips.

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This Week In Candy

Well the Halloween week is upon us, and I couldn't be happier!  I'm also really happy to be back home from an epic trip to Southern Africa.  Since I'm going to be super busy with all of the Halloween festivities this week, I'll wait till November to write about my African experiences.  My most pressing issue is that I don't have a Halloween costume.  That wouldn't be much of an issue except for the fact that I have a Halloween party to attend.  Even more pressing is the fact that I'm one of the hosts of the party, so it would be pretty wrong for me to show up with no costume.  I was going to look for something in Africa, but I didn't find anything relevant.

As for the return of the trip, I had a few vacation epiphanies while crossing the African Savanna.  I've decided to use Halloween as a new year at Candy Critic, and with this new year comes some changes.  Nothing major, and mostly additions.  I don't want to announce anything official, but come November Candy Critic will have a few new projects for your to enjoy.

Since I'm so busy setting up everything (and planning a party), Snack Facts is taking the week off.  Next week we'll be back with a whole bunch of new facts, however this week it'll be pretty quite.

We do have a new review this week, and it's terrible.  I normally don't like to give reviews away, but I just can't help myself.  I've noticed a trend in Halloween candy, and it's often terrible.  Fortunately that makes writing the review pretty simple, particularly when it's very obvious why the review is terrible.  Click here to read the terrible review.

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This Week In Candy

Halloween is coming, and we're super excited about it!

This week we're continuing with our blog posts all about this most awesome of holidays, at least when it comes to candy.  This Friday we'll be posting another video all about how they make one of your favorite Halloween treats.. well sort of.  This Wednesday we'll also be posting another in our list of candy themed Halloween costumes.  Speaking of which, we still don't know what we should dress up as this year.  We have a party to attend, but nothing to wear.  Any suggestions?

The biggest problem we have with getting a costume is the fact that we're not home right now.  We're still in Africa trying to see cool animals, explore fun places, and track down African candy.  We'll be back soon, before Halloween for sure.  It just makes it hard to find a costume while you're traveling.

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This Week In Candy

We're still on the road to Halloween, and we're continuing our month with cool posts to help you celebrate the ultimate candy holiday.  This Wednesday we're featuring another candy themed costume, I'm sure if you get a rush delivery you could get it for yourself this holiday season.  On Friday we're also continuing with our series on how they make some of the candies you might get this year on Halloween.

As I also mentioned last week, we're away.  I'm not sure where we are exactly right now, but it's somewhere in Southern Africa.  Maybe by now I've seen an elephant or a lion, that would be cool.  I'm sure I've probably also already found a few fun African treats, and maybe even posted them on our Twitter feed or Facebook page.

Since we're away that also means Snack Facts, our Instagram feed is running slightly irregular.  But don't worry, we'll post fun snack facts as we go, and as we get Internet access, which might be sparse at times.

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