Is Maple The Official Flavour of Canada

As a Canadian I struggle to define the flavours of my own country. I've given several answers to the question about our national dish. I've told people it's poutine, baked potatoes, and even ketchup chips. The one thing however that most of the world associates with Canadian food is maple syrup. The problem is maple syrup isn't really a dish as much as it's an ingredient. I also get a lot of push back from Americans in Vermont. So what do you think is Canada's national dish, and does it even have maple syrup in it?

Check out my most recent maple flavoured Canadian treat review.

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It's Great Being Back In Canada So I Can Review Things Like Composed Taffy Sugar Cones

Whenever I live away from Canada I always start to get nostalgic about the treat that I remember from back home, but that I have not reviewed for candycritic.org. I make grand lists of these treats, and promise you (the Candy Critic reader) and myself that when I get home I'll fulfill this list of must have classic treats from home. I very rarely finish these lists, but one interesting thing that comes about is that I always re-discover treats that I love, but had forgotten about, and I always manage to review them. This new review is one such treat, and it's a treat that most certainly reminds me of home, and should have been one of the first reviews on Candy Critic.

Click here to find out about this truly Canadian candy.

You can also follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to find out what other Canadian treats I might be eating.

Also be sure to check out my micro comic called Snack Facts where I look at fun facts about candy and snacks.

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Tom's Look At The Visual Side Of Snacks And Candy - Lucky Elephant Popcorn

Hey everyone! This time around, the item up for scrutiny has a strong attachment to my childhood. As a family, we used to head to the arena (now defunct but replaced in a different location with a bigger facility) for ice skating. I recall a big part of the outing came after the skating. When learning to skate a lot of time  is spent falling on the ice and trying to stay warm in the cold arena. The reward was a box of Lucky Elephant popcorn! I don’t recall if freshly popped popcorn was an option. In hindsight, a warm box of fresh popcorn would have been amazing!

But I digress...

As the Pop Art (pun intended) lettering below states, it was indeed a box containing pink popcorn. Essentially, it was caramel corn but coloured pink instead of the regular caramel colour.

As a kid, the popcorn was almost secondary to the excitement of the promised “FREE PRIZE INSIDE”.

At this point, it should be stated that these photos are not images pulled from a nostalgic, vintage candy website. The Lucky Elephant Pink Popcorn is still available in a package that is largely unchanged from how it appeared forty-plus years ago!

As a concession to modern times, the popcorn is now in a plastic bag inside the package instead of simply filling the cardboard box. Also, there is the  mandatory “Nutritional Information” chart, required on food products sold in Canada. Otherwise, the imagery looks much as I remember it from long ago.

I’m pretty sure I never looked at the ingredients back then but here’s what goes into making “Pink Candy Popcorn”.

As for the prize, instead of a cheesy, plastic doodad, there was a sheet of Spider-Man stickers. I think the young “me” would have been pleased!

Not only was it amazing to see Lucky Elephant popcorn still on the market, it turns out that the company is Canadian! I don’t know for certain if that explains the sticker sheet, but Sandy Lion is a major Canadian company that makes a range of stickers, many depicting licensed characters.

Finally, I thought it would be fun to share the French translation as it gives a classier air to this humble treat. In the days before I took French in high school, looking at cereal boxes was a fascinating glimpse at a different language. Such is life in the officially bilingual country that is Canada!

Tom

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Tom's Look At The Visual Side Of Snacks And Candy - Bag From McDonald's Canadian Edition

Hello, again. If you are a Candy Critic follower in Canada, you may have seen the food package in the photo below:

Recently, McDonald’s introduced a version of a food item that’s uniquely identified with Canada and especially the French-Canadian population. I’m not here to talk about the food itself but to comment on the package.

In design terms, lettering is known as a “font” which refers to the style of the type as well as it’s size and degree of ‘boldness’. In the above photo, the container is a neutral grey/brown with strong black letters. The word “Poutine” doesn’t carry across the surface in one piece. Typically, when a word is ‘broken’ it is done so after a syllable. If you sound out where the syllable break would occur, it’s pretty obvious why the word is broken the way it is. Even with the popularity of the “poop” emoji in relation to some food items (muffin and candy moulds for example) it seems McDonald’s opted not to have a word fragment that sounds like “poo” on it’s exciting new food option.

The second photo reveals another reason for the unusual word break in “poutine”. It seems the current design model calls for non-traditional word breaks in favour of a bold visual. The plain, brown bag gets a splash of red from the large, bold letters. What’s remarkable is that the designers were allowed to push a well-known trademark to the brink of being illegible. A company’s trademark is a big deal. It takes time to build a solid identity and once established, it is guarded diligently. It says a lot about the strength and recognition factor that the logo was played with to such a degree.

At a glance, it looks like three words are shown. Once again, the word does not break on the syllables, as is typical in text handling design. “McD” is a strong identifier and may even evoke the familiar nickname “Mickey-D’s”. The second two letters are greatly enlarged and seem to form the word “on”. The third line has the letters “ald’s” and is the strangest element when taken on it’s own. Fortunately, the three lines of word fragments are packed in a tight design block that allows the viewer to take in the elements as one. With the trademark red colour used in tandem with the commonly used font associated with McDonald’s, the true identity is easy to puzzle out.

Next time you sit down to enjoy your order of McDonald’s, you may find you look at it with new eyes.

Tom

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Canadian Candy That I Love - Part 5 - Cherry Blossom

I once wrote a piece for a newspaper claiming that this is the most Canadian snack ever made. While it's not my favourite Canadian candy, I still stand by that piece I wrote. This candy is weird, and it combines some classic ingredients to make a better whole. That's pretty much the best way to describe the country that I call home.

Click here to read my review.



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Canadian Candy That I Love - Part 4 - Oh Henry

This is another bar that was my go to bar for a few years. It's also the bar that I used to rip apart the most when I ate it. I used to munch off the chocolate and peanuts exposing a log of chewy fudge to eat at the end. The commercial below tells me that I wasn't the only person doing this either.

Click here to read my review.



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Canadian Candy That I Love - Part 3 - Wunderbar

For a few years, the Wunderbar was my bar of choice. It wasn't found around town as easily as other bars, but once I had a source I would buy them out. It's a really unique bar that doesn't have anything inherently Canadian about it, but for some reason it still reminds me of home.

Click here to read my review.



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Canadian Candy That I Love - Part 2 - Crispy Crunch

This classic Canadian candy bar can best be described as similar to a Butterfinger, only much, much better. It's also the candy bar that my dad would pick up every time we'd go out to get some treats (which was often). This is a candy bar that brings me back to my childhood every time I taste it.

Click here to check out my review.



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Canadian Candy That I Love - Part 1 - Caramilk

To help celebrate Canada Day (July 1st), all this week I'm going to look at some of my favourite Canadian candies.  There's no better Canadian candy to start with than the Caramilk bar. There are a few Canadian things that I think everyone in the world should try, Tim Horton's, Swiss Chalet Chicken, and a Caramilk bar.

Click here to read my Caramilk bar review.

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It's Time For A New Episode Of In Hindsight, Today We Look At The Coffee Crisp

In this episode of In Hindsight I eat the classic Canadian candy bar, the Coffee Crisp. It's been a really long time since I wrote the Coffee Crisp review on Candy Critic, and it's even been a while since I've eaten a Coffee Crisp just for fun. This is just a bar that I rarely ever crave unless it's sitting in front of me.

Click here to read the original Coffee Crisp review.

Also make sure  to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to keep up with all of our shenanigans.

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Kit Kat Week Part 3 - Ideas For Kit Kat Flavours That Haven’t Been Made Yet

Having spent the last little while thinking about Kit Kat flavours, I thought it would be fun to brainstorm some ideas for different flavours of Kit Kat bars that haven't been made. I asked some friends to suggest a few flavours, and came up with a few of my own. So here's our list of Kit Kat flavours we'd like to see.  Let us know if there are any flavours you'd like to see, also let us know if we happened to mention a flavour that does exist already.

Here's some basic ideas I think would work:

Fruit salad - It would be awesome if each finger was the flavour of a different fruit.
Fruitcake - The perfect, or worst, Christmas Kit Kat idea.
Honey 'n' Oat - I love this idea (contributed by my friend Willy), I think it would work particularly well if you used whole rolled oats.
Buttered Popcorn - I stole this idea from Jelly Belly, it worked for them so it could work for Kit Kat.
Jelly Bean - This could similar to the fruit salad idea with each finger having a different flavour. You could also try and add a soft texture in somewhere.

I think it's also important  to think about flavours from other countries,  so here are a few ideas of foods I love from foreign lands that I think would make excellent Kit Kat flavours.

Mango Sticky Rice - This is a staple food in many countries like Thailand and Cambodia. They already make all kinds of treats using the flavours of mango sticky rice, so why not make a Kit Kat as well.
Jalebi - This is my favorite Indian/Pakistani sweet treat. If you made this in Kit Kat form you'd have to somehow get the crispy texture right as well as the flavour.
Sticky Toffee Pudding - This is one variety that I wouldn't be surprised if it already existed. It's such a unique flavour, and the perfect Kit Kat flavour
Turkish Delight - This is another Kit Kat variety that could go further than simply making a Kit Kat that tastes like Turkish delight. You could actually put Turkish delight into the Kit Kat bar, similar to what they already do with peanut butter and caramel.
Speculoos - I think this is a food trend that seems to be continuing to grow, so it would be perfect for a Kit Kat. Some people know this as cookie butter as well. It would blend perfectly with the crisp wafers and milk chocolate.

There are also a few Canadian flavours that I think would work.
Beavertail - In particular the Kilalo Sunrise variety with cinnamon, sugar and lemon.
Pancakes with Syrup - You could give the wafers a pancake flavour, and  put a thin layer of real Canadian maple syrup on the top.

Two people (Allison and Brent) thought of two meat flavours. You might think it’s just a joke, but I don't think it's a totally silly idea.
Roast Beef - Something about creamy gravy that I think might work in the context of a chocolate bar.
Fried Chicken - This might sound weird, but the spices would certainly be an interesting flavour combination with a Kit Kat bar, after all fried chicken does work with waffles.

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This Week's Candy Review Tries To Sweep The Competition Away - Original Marshmallow Brooms

I'm not really sure how well known this candy is. In Canada, and in particular Ontario, we've had Marshmallow Brooms around for as long as I can remember. It's a little strange because I look at this as a mainstay on my candy shelf, however I imagine that if you've never seen these before, they might come off as really strange. I mean who would want to eat a broom?

Click here to read our review of this possible old school classic candy.

Also, make sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook for your daily candy fix.

As a bonus, we just did a piece with the fine folks at The Sports Hangover giving the final call on their candy bracket.


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