Licking a Glacier... Seriously Cool

 While exploring the newly formed icebergs in a lagoon in Iceland, I thought the best thing to do would be to take a lick.

That's One Cold Cola

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 The fact that this man has a maple leaf on his toque tells me that he might be Canadian, and this might be the most Canadian way ever to pour a coke.

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A Little Pride In Your Ice Cream

This treat brings up an interesting debate that's been around for a few years. Is it positive for large brands to make a Pride version of their treats? On one side of the coin it's great that inclusivity is being celebrated, but on the other side of the coin one wonders if this is being used as a marketing ploy. Celebrations and holidays have been used to sell items for a very long time, but it seems like there are certain holidays and celebrations that are off limits. I don't really have an opinion on this particular treat, other than the fact that it's a new design and flavour combination that I've never seen or tasted before. While I endorse inclusivity in all its forms, I don't have an opinion on how others choose to celebrate Pride.

While I avoid a great deal of the politic, you can read my review and find out how I felt about the ice cream treat.

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Kit Kat Done 5 Ways

In this experiment I taste a Kit Kat bar done 5 ways, room temperature, refrigerated, frozen, microwaved and baked. Find out which one tasted best, and which one changed entirely.

Make sure to follow me on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to keep up with all the behind the scenes stuff at Candy Critic.

Also be sure to check out my Patreon for even more fun content.

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Amazing Candy/Junk Food Things That You Should Buy - Zombie Pops

This is a kind zombie roll flip thing. Normally zombies chase after you trying to eat your brains, but not with these. Instead you pop these in the freezer and try and eat their brains, as well as the entire upper half of their bodies. These would also work very well if you wanted to experiment with meat flavoured ice treats.

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5 Awesome Candy Themed Funko Pops - Part 1 - Otter Pops

Every day this week we're featuring a candy themed Funko Pop. For those not familiar with the Funko Pop trend there are plenty of websites and Youtube movies dedicated to the subject. All I can tell you is that they're very suited towards candy themed and candy licensed toys.

To start us off I thought I would look at one of their new lines, Otter Pops. Otter Pops are a very popular American frozen treat that's been copied in many other countries all over the world (In Canada we call them Freezees). They have different names in other places, but they're pretty much the same thing, a frozen tube of fruity sugar water.  Unfortunately the otters themselves probably won't appeal to anybody who doesn't know about the specific American cool treat. So these will likely be a US exclusive.

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We're On The Road, And We Still Have A New Review - Cool Air

I decided that this would make the perfect new review to symbolize the fact that all of you in the north are starting to get a little chilly. When I was a kid I used to believe that it was a good idea to chew a cool gum in order to keep warm. It's a silly idea, but mentally it got me through a few cold winter nights ice skating with my friends (holy cow was that ever a Canadian thing  to say).

Click here to find out what we thought of this chilly gum.

Hey everybody, we're on the road... although if you read the title of this blog  you'd know that already. We're in Cambodia road tripping it around Battambang and Siem Reap. It seems that I'm not able to embed videos using my tablet, so that means if you want to see our latest episode of Chris's Monday Morning BreakfastThoughts, you'll have to click here.

If you want to see more of our trip, make sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook as we'll be posting pictures of any cool snacks and food we find.

And remember to follow us on YouTube for videos that we might not post here.

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This New Candy Review Might Cure Your Cold, But Does Nothing For Your Tastebuds - Renesse "Red Ginseng Candy"

I think there's a belief that colds are afraid of things that taste bad. It's not always the case, but most of the time any kind of food that notionally makes a cold go away tastes awful. There are a few cold relief treats that I've had that aren't bad, but I don't think there are any that taste good. I don't think  I've ever been walking down the aisle of my local drug store, while feeling completely healthy, and thought about buying a lozenge.

Click here to read about the latest cold relief candy that we sampled.

You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook to find out whenever one of us is sick.

And why not follow us on Tumblr as well, unless you don't do that kind of thing.

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Most Notable Candy We Ate In 2017 - Lgantu

If I was to give this ice cream treat a category in our list of notable candy, I would say that it ranks as the most culturally insensitive and confusing package of the year. At first glance you  don't really think much of this package, but if you examine the character holding up the butterfly frozen treat it gets really odd. I'm guessing that whomever designed this package has  never actually been to anyplace in the north.

Click here to find out why this package disturbed me so much.

Also, follow us on Facebook and Twitter, because you can.

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It's Time For a New Candy Review! - Choco Kit "Ice Cone!"

I have to be honest, I've been feeling a little bummed out about living in a place that doesn't have a winter. In February it's a fantastic thing to not think about winter and snow, but around the Christmas holidays it's a little depressing. There are a few decorations up, both in our house and around town, but it doesn't feel the way Christmas should without the snow.

Click here to read the review that inspired this funk (only because there are penguins on the package).

You can also find out what I'm doing to cope with this Christmas funk on our Twitter and Facebook pages.

Why not follow us on Pinterest, it'll make you and me happy.

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It's The Last In Our Kit Kat Review-A-Thon!

Of all of the Kit Kat bars I've ever reviewed, this one might have been the most confusing. I don't think I've ever done as much research into a Kit Kat bar before reviewing it in my life.  This might even be the most research I've ever done on any candy before reviewing it.  Sadly, all that work didn't really pay off.

Click  here to find out  why this bar didn't really work out.

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter and let us know about any Kit Kat bar we might have missed.

You can also follow us on YouTube as well and enjoy our latest podcasts and vlogs.

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The Soft Serve Trend

Ice cream is probably one of the most versatile specialty treats in the snacking market.  If you think about it, there are more varieties of ice cream, than just about anything else.  The zillions of flavours available go from the strange, like sweet potato, and charcoal, to the classics like vanilla and chocolate.  You can have flavours that are filled with a bunch of ingredients, or some that are only one.  But flavours are just the beginning when it comes to ice cream treats.

From Popsicle like ice cream treats, to classic hard ice cream, gelato, frozen yogurt, the list just goes on and on.  The great thing about these frozen treats is that the industry seems to be constantly looking out for the next big advancement.  Some of these advancements are amazing, and change the way we eat cold treats, while others are just gimmicks that are interesting at first, but don't really last very long.  When new ideas come out, it's hard to say what's going to stick around and what's going to leave us.

One interesting thing about cold treats is that you often find that the new trend/gimmick always seems to be expensive.  After all ice cream was originally a treat fit only for royalty, and took years to make it to the common market. In the last 15 years I seem to have notice that a new ice cream trend is working its way through the market every year.  One year it's making a sundae on a marble slab, the next year it's eating perfectly round spheres of ice cream, then after that it's ice cream sandwiches made with everything from cupcakes to doughuts.  The one trend that I've noticed lately that's interested me is high end soft serve ice cream.

Normally the low quality ice cream that was only available at buffets in restaurants and sold off of a truck, something new has come out lately.  Soft serve ice cream has been around since 1936 when it was invented by the Carvel company, later it became more popular by Dairy Queen. But in both of these cases it never became a gourmet dessert. For the longest time it sat in a bit of a limbo, not changing much at all.  Probably the most revolutionary addition to soft serve ice cream was the creation of the hard shell or chocolate dip. Sure some places got a little creative with flavours, both of the ice cream and the dip, but for the most part it stayed as hard ice creams ugly cousin, and never made it to the high end establishments.  That was until recently.

Over the last few years I've noticed a trend in high end soft serve ice cream places (or some might call them really expensive soft serve places).  It's almost become the cupcake of the ice cream world, with some soft serve ice cream parlors forming huge lines outside just to get a cone.  The thing that I couldn't understand is why. Why were people going nuts, and spending a great deal of money, on a treat you could buy up the street at Dairy Queen for so much less. What was the factor that made  these particular ice cream treats so amazing.

I decided recently to give them a try. I was in Quebec City and a new soft serve place was making waves on the town of Levi, just across the river from Quebec City.  A person at the tourist information office in Quebec City even suggested that this ice cream place was worth the trip across the river alone.  So after a quick ferry ride, and a wonderful dinner (by the way Levi, Quebec has some amazing restaurant choices), I decided to give this new trend a try.

The first thing I noticed is that the real selling point of this trend is not the ice cream as much as it's the toppings.  I felt this way because it appeared that only one flavour of ice cream was available (vanilla), and no one was ordering it plain. I'll be honest, this sent up a red flag for me right off the bat.  One trend I generally don't like in the dessert world is where you take a classic dessert and just fill it up with way too many toppings (I'm looking at you current milkshake trend). There has to be more to it than simply dumping a bunch of stuff on it for me to really get into a new trend.

I'm not sure if the ordering system at this place is the same as at other trendy soft serve places, but for me it was very confusing.  You pretty much go to the cash register and decide the size of cone you want, and how many ingredients you want. Dip is the one thing you don't really get a choice about either. Then there's a million other things you can have attached to your dip, everything from nuts to cotton candy are available. This again was raising some red flags for me. Since this was my first time ordering this kind of treat, I was fairly confused.  I wasn't sure what I wanted as far as ingredients, and more importantly there are about a dozen flavour of dip to choose from, and I wasn't sure what flavour I wanted.

As it turns out at this point in the ordering process, you don't have to know what flavour you want, you just have to know how many ingredients you want.  Honestly I was very overwhelmed, so I decided to take the easy way out.  There were several examples of "perfect combinations" available, one was a salted caramel chocolate dip cone special with caramel corn and nuts stuck to it. This seemed like something I'd like, and would get me out of this hellish ordering process. I imagine that after a few tries at ordering you might get the hang of it, which is a good technique to get return customers for these places.

The two other things that turned me off about this trend, is the crowds and the waiting.  I'm sure that the ice cream places love the crowds, and can't do much about the waiting because of the crowds, but I didn't really like it at all. I think the entire buying process took about 20 minutes, and the waiting wasn't comfortable at all. Who would have thought that kids would be the main customers, and that having them wait for long periods of time for ice cream would make them go crazy.

You may have noticed that I've been pretty negative about this experience so far, and you're likely thinking that I'm going to write a really scathing review of the treat itself. That or maybe I'm going to trick you, and in the end I'll tell you that it was all worth it in the end.  Well prepare to be disappointed.

The cone  itself was OK, not amazing, but not the worst thing ever either. The good thing about this cone was the dip.  The chocolate was so smooth and creamy, I could have just eaten a bar of it on its own.  The salted caramel flavour was perfectly balanced with the smooth chocolate. The toppings (caramel corn and peanuts) although a little silly at first, actually really added to the fun of eating this cone. It was fun to bite them off as I was working my way down the cone. It also added some great texture to an ice cream that's not really known for its texture.

The bad, was the ice cream.  First of all, it melted very fast.  I assume this is because the kind of chocolate dip they used did not contain as much coconut oil as other soft serve dips (thus improving the flavour). The problem is that the dip without so much coconut oil would then have to be kept at a higher temperature to keep it liquid. So when the cone is dipped, the ice cream is melting immediately. It was one of the messiest cones I've eaten in my life.  The other problem with the ice cream was that it wasn't that special at all.  It pretty much tasted exactly like every other soft serve ice cream I've eaten in my life.

Only once in my life have I had soft serve ice cream where the ice cream was actually better than the rest.  That's in a small town called The Mumbles in Whales. There's a place there called Joe's which is legendary for their soft serve.  The thing is, they're legendary because they make their own soft serve ice cream, and it's suggested that you just get the plain vanilla with no dip to experience it.  I would say that if I got the plain vanilla with no dip at this place, I would have been very disappointed for the price.

In the end I'll say that I'm not likely going to try this again.  Unless someone can point to a place that does something more than high quality dip and sticking lots of things to the outside, I just don't think it's worth it. I would rather spend the same amount of money on a sundae, or save my money and go to Dairy Queen.

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Winter Candies

There's a huge gap in the winter candy market.  In the wintertime there are plenty of Christmas and Valentine's Day candies, but there are very few, maybe no candies that celebrate winter itself.  Being Canadian, and understanding how great winter can be, I've decided to design a few winter candies on my own.  I've had some help from a few of you guys, as well as friends and family (many of whom don't actually read this blog... disappointment).

As always when I come up with candy ideas, these ideas are free for the taking for any candy company that wants to make them.  All I ask in return is a sample of the treat after they're made. If you do make them, and send me some, I can guarantee a review on candycritic.org and likely guarantee a perfect score when it come to novelty.  Now it's time to warm up with some cool winter candies and snacks.

Mulled Wine Gums

I'd like to take credit for coming up with Mulled Wine Gums, but I can't.  I was working with my new friend Jess, and I asked her for ideas for this article.  She instantly blurted out, "Mulled Wine Gums" and I knew that it was a perfect idea.  I'm not that familiar with regular mulled wine, but I know it's huge in Germany, the place where gummies were invented. I'm not saying that it's a coincidence, but I'm also not saying it isn't either.  I think the variety of flavours you could make of these gummies would be limitless, and you could also ad a touch of various citrus flavours as well.

Potato Snowshoes

This is probably the silliest of all of these ideas, but I think it would be really fun too.  I wanted to make sure to include a salty snack with this list, and potato strips in the shape of snowshoes seems perfect.  It could be like those Hickory Stick snacks, only larger, and the shape of snowshoes. You could make all kinds of flavours that remind you of winter, like cool ranch, or BBQ... OK those flavours aren't really winter themed, can you think of a winter themed flavour that would work with a salty snack?

Keep Me Warm Candies

Of all the winter themed treats on this list, this is the one that I think would be the greatest of all. I call them Keep Me Warm Candies, but you can change that if you want.  The premise is really simple, make a candy that warms you up.  The important thing is that the candy isn't "hot", it's just warm.  Also, get away from using normal hot flavours like cinnamon, and use fruit or spice flavours instead. The point is that you could eat these candies, and on a cold day they would warm up your mouth just a little bit, not enough to burn, just a little bit warm.  It's like the anti mint gum.

Winter is here, and we need candy to hold us over until the spring/summer, when there appears to be limitless numbers of treats.  All you candy makers out there have officially been challenged, but if you already have a winter candy let us know. We'd be happy to review it on candycritic.org.

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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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Candy In The Media

The science of brain freeze, the more you know...

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Candy In The Media

Why would you want to shoot a gummy bear?

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This Week In Candy

It's a new day, a new month, and a new year, so there's lot to talk about.  First of all, this month we're celebrating two great things, cookies and retro cereal.  Every Wednesday this month we're posting a new cookie themed thing, because cookies are awesome, and there are so many cool cookie making tools out there to see.  Every Friday this month we're posting some classic retro cereal commercials.  While old cereal is stale and gross, looking back at old cereal and remembering how cool it was is not gross.

With the new year comes the first episode of the new and improved Junk Fud podcast.  Later this week we'll be posting the first episode, part one of our series called Junk Fud on the Road.  Next week we'll be posting our second episode, but first part in our series about junk food history.  In three week's we'll be posting the first episode of Junk Fud and You, our interview segment.  Finally, at the end of January we'll be posting the first in our end of the month candy round up podcasts called Junk Fud News.  Make sure to check back (or follow us on social media) to find out when the new episodes are released.

January is always a bit of a depression month for me, candy wise.  There's no holidays that celebrate sweet treats at all.  We have to wait till Valentine's Day before we can justifiably eat an entire box of chocolates.  Worse still, the store shelves are just full of rejected Christmas candy.  The selection of rejected Christmas candy just gets sadder and sadder as the days go by.  I know that New Years is technically in January, but I think another holiday is required.  Maybe some kind of escape from the cold winter days, or if you live in Australia an escape from the heat.

Snack Facts is back!  With the new year comes the return of Snack Facts, our Instagram feed.  Every day this week we'll be posting a fun fact about a particular snack, this week it's marshmallows.  We were inspired by a marshmallow roast we had recently.  Make sure to follow us on Instagram to get a daily Snack Fact (this week on the subject of marshmallows), if you don't use Instagram, you can also follow Snack Facts on our Twitter feed and Facebook page as well.

Today we post part 1 of our gummy review-a-thon.  It's been a while since we've done a review-a-thon, so we thought that gummies would be the perfect candy to focus on.  Today's gummy review is a little bit out of the box, or bag as would be more appropriate.  Make sure to check out our Facebook page, Twitter feed, Tumblr page, or any of our social media sites to keep up with this week's gummy review-a-thon.  You can also click here daily to read our latest review.

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A Cool Candy Thing

With the cold weather here, it's about time to think about how to keep warm.  Why not drape the most important part of your body in a stylish M&M's hat (or as they call it in my home town a "toque").  I'd never thought about how well these characters work as hats, after all they're round and colourful, and heads are round and look good when covered in colourful fabrics.  So what candy would make for good mittens or scarfs?

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A Cool Candy Thing

I could spend a great deal of time talking about why this is an awesome toy that makes a really fun snack, or I could just let this commercial from my youth do all of the explaining:



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I Feel Better Review

Last week I had a cold.  It was one of those colds that simply makes you feel crappy, nothing serious, just very annoying.  Then a package came in the mail, it was a gift from the heavens, it was lozenges.  It was just what the doctor ordered (keep in mind I didn't visit my doctor just for a cold, this is just a figure of speech).  So today's review might be a little biased because I wasn't just looking for a tasty snack, I was also looking for some relief as well.

Click here to read the review that made me feel better.

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