Purple Is Awesome

 

I don't think I've ever been disappointed with a purple coloured treat. It's not to say that I've loved every single purple snack I've ever eaten, I just find that most purple snacks either taste great, or at the very least are very interesting. I'm not sure I've ever had an amazing flavoured, really interesting purple treat, but generally you're likely to get one or the other. Maybe one day I will get the perfect purple treat, but for now I'm just happy when they're either interesting or really tasty.

Check out my latest interesting purple review.

Purple Isn't Always Grape

When I was kid, if you handed me a purple potato chip I would have assumed that it was grape. I don't think there were many purple coloured treats in the world that weren't grape. I'm not sure if times have changed, or if I've just seen more of the world, but I'm seeing more and more purple in the snacking and treat world all the time. Probably the most popular purple flavour that's out right now is ube, a popular flavour that I believe came from the Philippines. But Japan also has some pretty impressive purple potato treats too.

Check out my latest purple potato treat review, this one's from Japan.

Chicken Skin Paradox

 I have an odd paradox when it comes to eating chicken skin. I know a lot of people out there find that the skin of the chicken they eat is the best part. Honestly, when I eat chicken I'm known to peel the skin off an leave it to the side. When I go out for chicken I often get chicken sandwiches. The paradox however is that I'm actually a big fan of deep fried chicken skin, a treat I was introduced to while I was living in Yangon. So it's totally possible that I could go to a chicken place, peel the chicken skin off my chicken, then dip into a bowl of deep fried chicken skin. It's weird, I know.

Check out my latest chicken skin themed snack review.

Doritos?

I've recently been going through my list of all the candies I have (and will) review on candycritic.org. I've realised something that's made me think. I used to have a rule that once a brand had more than 10 reviews, it would be a featured brand on the site. I also had the same rule for treats that had more than 10 varieties or flavours. It's been a few years since I've updated my lists, and I've realized that I haven't been keeping up with this policy. I now have several other brands, varieties and flavours that are not featured on the site. I'm wondering if 10 should continue to be the number, or if I should start adding many more treats to my featured lists.

Check out the latest review of a new Doritos flavour, which would qualify it for the list technically.

Potato Chip Problem

I'm not sure if this is a trend in all snacks, or just in the regions I've been buying my treats lately, but for some reason there seems to be a great number of potato chip companies that don't use slices of potato anymore. It seems to be the trend to use potato starch or ground potato to make potato snacks. My assumption is that it's cheaper to make, but I really can't figure out why since you have to add a few extra steps to make these fake potato treats. Worst of all many companies imply that you're getting the real (classic) potato chip, only to let you down when you open the bag.

Check out my latest "potato" treat review, I'll warn you that I wasn't that impressed.

Chris, Why Would You Eat That?!! - Dried Peas and Mangoes

 In this episode of Chris, Why Would You Eat That?!! Chris tastes two things that taste great on their own, but who would have thought someone would put them together.

Healthy Candy

I'm never really sure if I should be reviewing "healthy" candy. I'll be honest, I'm not a health expert by any means, my goal in life is to taste yummy treats. I don't give any thought about the health value of anything I review on this site in either direction (healthy or unhealthy). I feel like I don't review enough "healthy" treats on this site, mostly because they don't normally cross my path very often. I'm just not looking at too many health food stores for potential treats to review. I also worry that some of these "healthy" treats may not be healthy at all, and the thing I hate most in the snacking/candy world is being lied to.

Check out my latest review that may or may not be healthy.

How Loud is a Dorito?

 Doritos are notoriously loud, but how loud are they? It also got me wondering how loud other snacks might be, and are Doritos the loudest?

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Unfair Advantage

There are some snacks and treats that really get an unfair advantage when it comes to reviews on candycritic.org. A great example of this is salt and vinegar potato chips. I love salt and vinegar potato chips so much that I'm always happy to eat a bag. I've tasted many brands, and for the most part I've loved them all. It would (and has) take a lot to ruin this flavour combination for for me. Even an average bag of these chips puts a smile on my face. So I guess if you make salt and vinegar potato chips, and you want a positive review on the site, just send me a bag and I'm pretty sure it will work out fine.

Check out my latest salt and vinegar potato chip review.

Attempting To Solve A Popcorn Problem

 The popcorn problem is a mathematical problem that takes place mostly at theatres, but can also happen at just about any place that entertains you and offers popcorn. I've never bought popcorn at a concert or professional sporting event, but I have seen it for sale at those events and can imagine that the problem happens there as well. For the sake of explaining this problem, I'll use the theatre as my example. The problem is that all too often you run out of popcorn before the entertainment has even begun. On some occasions you might manage to limit you popcorn intake during the time you're waiting for the event or movie to start, and maybe you'll have popcorn available during the first 15 minutes of so. 

This is a strange situation because I always associate popcorn with watching movies, but maybe I'm actually associating popcorn with waiting for movies to start. Maybe once the movie starts I might actually have no interest in popcorn at all. I wouldn't really know because I've always finished my popcorn before the movie has started.

Popcorn is an odd snack. You might be thinking to yourself, "those buckets of popcorn at theatres are huge, that's more than enough". The fact that they call the container for popcorn a bucket supports that theory. The thing is, most popcorn buckets don't actually contain much solid food mass. I don't think I've ever heard anyone complain about having to carry a bucket of popcorn before because it's too heavy. It's a bit of an illusion, as most of what you're buying is actually air, and these air filled popped kernels have lots of air between them as they don't really nestle together very well.

I should also point out that I tend to order the medium, or maybe large if I'm sharing popcorn when I go to the movies. I pretty much just go along with whatever "combo" or deal the theatre is trying to sell that seems appropriate for my party size (a single if I'm alone and a two person combo if I'm with Allison). I am aware that many theatres also offer insanely large buckets of popcorn as well. I'd just always assumed that these buckets were meant for families and since I don't have kids, I've never bought one... That is until now.

On a recent trip to see the movie Inside Out 2, Allison and I jokingly suggested that we pick up the largest bucket of popcorn available at this theatre. As you might be able to see from the picture, it's about 10 inches tall with a diameter of about 12 inches. I feel like this sudden urge to get a giant bucket of popcorn came about because of our last theatre going experience where we bought the "large" box of popcorn at another theatre and it contained maybe 50 kernels of popcorn, and that's it. Maybe we were over compensating, but the price wasn't too bad and we figured it might be an interesting experiment.

We got this behemoth and couldn't stop laughing the whole time. We were actually watching this movie in Thailand, and I couldn't help but imagine how the locals would see the "westerners" with their giant bucket of popcorn since there's a generalization that westerners eat large portions (spoilers, we do). We waited for the theatre to be cleaned out, and once it was, we wandered inside to our seats. In this theatre they offer special seating for couples that consist of two large, comfy chairs squished together like a couch. We generally opt for this and it worked out well as our popcorn needed a large place to sit and between us on this couch worked perfectly.

We also decided that we would eat the popcorn as usual. So no holding back and waiting for the movie to start. We sat down and watched a good 20 to 30 minutes of trailers happily munching away on our popcorn. I would occasionally feel around the bucket to see how far we'd gotten. By the time the movie started it felt like we'd eaten about 1 and a half inches into the bucket. After about the first 45 minutes of the movie I assumed that we must have been near the end, but we weren't even halfway through.

By about the 1 hour mark I started to not want to eat popcorn anymore, and only continued to eat out of habit or some drive to finish this bucket. About 20 minutes after that I was pretty much tapped out. I nibbled here and there, but I just couldn't eat any more popcorn. I felt like Allison was in the same boat as me.

The photo above is how far we managed to get into the bucket. By this point I could touch the bottom with my finger, but just barely. I would say we had a good 2 or 3 inches left. I took away a few lessons from doing this. First and foremost, as much as you think you'd like to eat popcorn throughout an entire movie (or concert or sporting event), I don't think that's true. Secondly, if you get a giant bucket of popcorn, make sure to get the giant drink to go with it. I noticed my consumption went way down once my drink was done.

We tried to eat more popcorn when we got back to our hotel, but frankly the idea made us a little sick. There's a great expression is show business "leave them wanting more". The expression suggests that it's better for your audience to not get enough entertainment rather than over doing it. I feel like this works with popcorn too. It's better to not get enough popcorn than have too much. When I don't have enough popcorn I just look forward to the next time I'm planning to go to a movie. If I get too much I just leave with a tummy ache and sore, dry lips.

It's A Review-a-Thon Marathon

Starting this week, and going until the end of the month, I'm going to post a new snack/candy review every single day. Normally I post one or two reviews a week, with the occasional small one week review-a-thons, but lately I've had a huge backlog of reviews that I need to post. I've decided to thin out this backlog a bit and post like crazy. My goal is to have them all posted overnight with a notice on my social media every morning, but please be kind if I'm running a little late.

Check out the first entry in my mega review-a-thon and don't forget to complain about the fact that it's not really a candy.

Kaya Revelation

 There are a few snacking trends that make their way from Asia to the west. Odd flavoured Kit Kat bars, Pocky, seaweed crackers just to name a few. There are however some Asian trends that never make their way to the west, and I can’t figure out why. Salted Egg, both on fish skins and as a flavour is a great example. It’s a flavour trend that’s just about everywhere in Asia, from Krispy Kreme donuts to every kind of salty snack and cookie you could imagine, yet most people in the west have no idea what it is. I can never really figure out why one particular snacking trend makes its way around the world while others don’t.

Kaya is the latest thing I’ve discovered that seems to fall into the category of treat that just about everyone should love, but for some reason it seems to stick to certain parts of Asia. I discovered it on a trip to Malaysia where I met a person who was so surprised that I had never tried it before. This isn’t that uncommon, for someone to introduce me to a treat that I’ve never tried before. After all there are hundreds of regional treats and snacks all over the world that are only available in very specific places. At first I assumed that this was just a Malaysian thing and while happy to try it, I didn’t think much of it.

Then, after my trip to Malaysia, we ventured to Singapore. I decided to poke around Singapore and see if they had any Kaya available as well. I was blown away by how much Kaya I found. There were snack shops and restaurants dedicated to the stuff. Dunkin’ had a doughnut flavoured with Kaya too. I also checked the grocery stores and there were shelves full of different varieties and different qualities of Kaya. After having one person in Malaysia point it out to me, I suddenly discovered that it’s actually all over the place. I’ve since travel ed to a few other Asian countries, and each and every one of them also offers Kaya.

For those of you that don’t know, Kaya is a coconut based spread. It often has pandam in it as well as various other ingredients like sugar and sometimes egg. There are apparently different versions of it too, depending on where you get it, but most are sweet, slightly gritty spreads. There is certainly a coconut flavour, but it’s not too overpowering. The traditional way to eat it is on toast with butter, but as I said before filling donuts or dipping things in it is also acceptable.

It’s a sweet spread that has some truly fun (and fairly familiar) Asian flavours, so why is no one in North America or Europe eating this stuff? I don’t really have an answer, but I can say that it’s not because it’s brand new. The people I’ve talked to about it have been eating it for years. According to some research I’ve done online, there are Kaya recipes that have been around since the early nineteen hundreds.

I’m not sure how long Dunkin’ has offered a Kaya donut, and I’m not sure how long Kaya toast shops have been open. Maybe Kaya is just hitting the mainstream in Asia. Maybe it’s been on the shelves for a while, but now it’s finally getting a bit more of the snacking spotlight. I can’t really say for sure because it just wasn’t on my radar until recently.

What I’m hoping is that this awesome spread picks up momentum, and we start to see more and more treats flavoured with it. A Kaya Kit Kat sounds good to me, maybe even some more Kaya cookies. I would also love to taste a Kaya ice cream, if Baskin Robbins is feeling adventurous.

CC

A Tale of a Fishy Cracker

 One part of this snack really stands out, and it's kind of surprising, yet also disappointing.

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Should I Even Buy Spicy Snacks?

Probably one of my biggest weaknesses of being a snack/candy critic is the fact that I don't really like spicy foods. I've passed by a few treats in my day just because I thought they'd be too spicy. Honestly, the only reason I ever get spicy treats to review are if they're a gift, if I misread the label, or it has to be so interesting that I'm willing to take the chance. Maybe it's not fair to those candy makers making spicy snacks out there, but I just find it hard to build up the courage to eat spicy treats very often.

Check out my latest spicy review, and remember that I went through a bit of pain to write it.

A New Popcorn Name Might Pop Up

 When it comes to names of popcorn brands, I love a good pun. Not every brand manages to come up with a great pun, I’m looking at your Orville Redenbacher, but there are so many great names for popcorn brands that I figured it was well worth sharing my favourites. A good name can easily influence me to buy a particular popcorn, although my go to is Orville Redenbacher (it’s a bit of a contradiction I know). However, if a really clever name comes up I’ll at the very least give it a try.

Probably the most popular brand of popcorn with a fairly clever name is Pop Secret. The brand is so popular that I feel like the pun in the name is lost on most people. It’s even possible that you didn’t even think about it until reading this very article, but Pop Secret is a really clever name. I wonder if the early marketing for Pop Secret involved some kind of secret butter recipe, or maybe a top secret type of corn was being used. Either way it’s a solid pun for a popcorn brand.

I came across this Pop Star brand of popcorn, and I must say it’s also a pretty solid pun. It’s a little off track because I feel like pop stars are more about music, and people don’t really associate music and popcorn consumption. Maybe that the angle the Pop Star popcorn people thought they could exploit. Maybe people are eating popcorn at concerts, and I’m just not aware of it.

Mr Popgun is a slightly clever name for popcorn, but I’ll be honest, I think the package might be considered a little politically incorrect. I will also be honest and say that I did buy some of this popcorn because I found the package to be so politically incorrect, and the popcorn was really good. I assume the “popgun” is in reference to the toy guns that often shoot a small cork attached to a string out the muzzle. 

This Mr Bop popcorn is a bit of a conundrum. I feel like they’re trying to make some kind of pun, but I don’t really know what that pun is supposed to be. Maybe in some parts of the world the onomatopoeia for the sound popcorn makes is “bop” and not “pop”. Although that would mean you’re eating bopcorn and not popcorn. The marketing behind this brand is a little confusing, but I feel like there’s at least an attempt to make it fun.

While writing this article I was trying to come up with some good pun names that have not been used yet for popcorn. I decided to ask Allison and she instantly came up with one that was so good that I just gave up trying to come up with my own. She suggested that you use a military theme and just call it Colonel Kernel. I have to be honest, that might be better than Pop Secret, and it’s much better than all of the rest. So if any popcorn brand wants to use Colonel Kernel as a popcorn brand name, be my guest, I just ask that you send me some, I like the extra butter variety.

CC

Candy Corn?

Our latest featured review on candycritic.org has got me thinking about when I was a kid. I seem to have memories of my family calling popcorn with a sweet outer coating "candy corn". Today you mostly see sweet popcorn flavours called caramel corn when it's really sweet and kettle corn when the sweetness is less severe.  I think later in life I used to think that candy corn only referred to the popcorns that were covered in sweet stuff, however it had to be a flavour other than caramel. I'm not sure if this was all a construct in my mind, or if other people have the same memories. Today you don't really see candy corn mentioned anywhere except with those Halloween treats.

Check out our latest candy corn... I mean caramel corn treat review.

HBAF (the “h” is silent)

On our recent trip to Korea we came across a snacking trend that was so gigantic, yet so unique at the same time. This trend is completely about almonds, in particular, flavoured almonds by a company called HBAF. According to their advertising the “h” is silent, if that makes it easier for your to read. I first noticed these almonds on day one of our trip as we had a few hours to wait at the train station in Seoul to head down south to Busan. There was a grocery store in the train station, and we thought it would be a great place to get some snacks and also see what the shopping/food is like in Korea. At the front of the store was a huge display with a giant statue of a cartoon almond greeting everyone who walked in. In this are of the store were hundreds of colourful bags of almonds, with hundreds of strange flavours to choose from. There were also dozens of people loading up on this these nutty treats.

I decided that I should probably try a few flavours. I went for a few of the stranger flavours, as I’m known to do including carrot cake, salted caramel pretzels and salted caramel latte (Allison actually picked that last one). After our shop, we got on our train and headed south to Busan. I opened my first bag of these flavoured almonds and was instantly impressed by the smell coming out of the package. It not only smelled great, but matched the flavour perfectly. Even the almond itself was perfect, fresh and very crunchy. I could see why people were so excited to pick up these nuts, and I thought to myself that I should probably go back to that store on our way home to get some more. Little did I know that there were going to many more opportunities to get some HBAF again in the future.

Our first stop was in Busan, a smaller city in the south of Korea. Within a few days of exploring I quickly realized that HBAF almonds were not going to be hard to find. Every single store had at least a small display for these tasty almonds, some had whole sections dedicated to them. At one point we were walking down a trendy shopping street in Busan and I noticed that they were in the process of building an entire store dedicated to HBAF almonds. It looked like it was going to open soon, and it looked pretty epic. I was a little sad that I wouldn’t be around to see it open, but it really gave me an idea of how popular these almonds were... or so I thought.

After our time in Busan we headed north to Seoul. Our first night we decided to walk to one of the trendy areas of town that also had a night market atmosphere. This is when I realized how popular these nuts really were. Every single shop that sold packaged food (there were a lot) had a huge display of these nuts. As far as visiting a HBAF store, I had a choice of no less than 3, each bigger than the next in this one neighbourhood. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any snack have so much publicity and available in so many places in my life. It was like spotting Mickey Mouse at Disneyland, these nuts were just everywhere.

The good thing about the HBAF almonds is they’re really good. The flavours are super creative and the way they make the flavours work is even more ingenious. You could easily try a new flavour every day for a month and not only will you not repeat, but you’ll be amazed how different each flavour is. I’d like to tell you that you shouldn’t miss HBAF if you happen to be visiting Korea, but I feel like you’d have a harder time avoiding them, they’re just everywhere. I just wonder if this trend might make its way outside Korea, I sure hope so because I’m already craving another bag.

Is Cookies and Cream Better Than Chocolate and Hazelnut?

 I feel like comparing this Cookies and Cream spread to Nutella is a little unfair. They're both very different types of spread. I do believe that many sweet spreads out there in the world owe a great deal to Nutella. While Nutella was not the first sweet (non jam) spread out there, I believe it's probably globally the most famous. I believe the fame of Nutella has allowed for new and obscure spreads to get out into the open market. Cookie butters are very popular right now, but I don't believe that we would have them available in so many places if it wasn't for Nutella. Because of this, I figured it was okay to broaden my search for sweet spreads that might be better than Nutella beyond just chocolate and hazelnut themed treats.

While I'm really glad that spreads like a cookies and cream spread exists, I'll be honest and say that I wasn't really a big fan of this one. The crunchy cookie bits were great, and most of the time I'm a huge fan of cookies and cream things. The problem with this spread is that it's too sour. I believe that many cookies and cream treats have a sour component in order to balance out the sweet and heavy cream flavour of the cream. Sour is a flavour that's common in real dairy products, but as we know if a dairy product is too sour it just tastes rotten. I wouldn't say that this tastes rotten, but it felt like it was heading that direction.

Creatively this is really a great idea, as cookies and cream on toast or even some fruit is a great combination. With just a little less sour, this spread would at the very least be a close runner up to Nutella, but as it stands it's most certainly not better than Nutella.

CC

Something Tells Me You Know Someone Who Would Love This

Stew the Snake T-Shirt
by candycritic

 I've got t-shirts for every letter of the alphabet featuring beasts and the treats they love. If you know someone who's name starts with "S", this one will make the perfect gift.

CC

An Interesting Themed Snack

Themed snacks are nothing new, but occasionally a themed snack will last longer than the thing it's representing. Most themed snacks are actually notorious for only being on the shelves for a very short time. It's something that can really disappoint me when I actually love the snack. These cheese sticks on the other hand have not only stayed around for a very long time, I believe they might have outlasted the comic strip that they're based on... I think. I'll be honest, it's been a few years since I've picked up a paper, so I could be wrong about Andy Capp being over, but at least his cheese fries will live forever apparently.

Check out these cheesy sticks based on a very peculiar comic strip.

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