Limited Edition Foods

I passed these by because I thought Vanilla Midgees were a regular release of Tootsie Rolls, but then my dad picked it up and brought it over to me while I was looking at the other Halloween candy looking for Limited Edition stuff. It turned out they packaged these as Limited Editions. Doing an Internet search I realized that they have released these as holiday packing before. This is definitely not the holiday version, though, as the packaging does not have snowflakes on the packaging like the holiday ones. I am a little leery to these being called Limited Edition, as I still think you can get these all year round even if it is just in a tootsie roll mix package. All I know is I remember always getting them at the parade in Iowa in the summers we went to the WIT Grand National Rally. They do taste good by the way.

Wandering the Target Halloween section yesterday I found several Limited Edition/seasonal Halloween candies and all the Jones soda flavors for the season. I bought two of the candies that were on sale and one of the Jones soda flavors, which I will hopefully get around to trying and reviewing next week. For now, though, I wanted to post about the interesting Snickers Rockin Nut Road Limited Edition flavor I noticed. I did not buy it because it was not on sale and I was not sure if I would like them and the package is pretty big to end up not liking them.

The Rockin Nut Road flavor I think refers to it being made in a combination to make it taste like the Rocky Road ice cream flavor. The specific description on the bag is “Almonds, Caramel, and Marshmallow-Flavored Nougat Wrapped in Dark Chocolate.” It really does sound pretty tasty, although I am sure the dark chocolate is the fake stuff with milk in it like the Snickers Dark bars, which are only a slight step up from milk chocolate coating. If I ever spot them on sale, I will definitely get them to try out.

The Orange Andes chocolate flavor is one of three in the Fall Harvest mix bag of individually wrapped Andes chocolates. It is the only one that is distinctly a three layered Andes chocolate, although the Cocoa one is three layered it just is not obvious like the Orange one. The Orange ones have milk chocolate layers on the top and bottom and the middle layer is colored orange.

The flavor of the Orange on is actually a nice unique one at least in terms of Andes chocolate flavors. The main thing is it is a distinct flavor in the mix and not faint like the Toffee one and not plain chocolate like the Cocoa ones taste like. The orange one really taste like orange flavored. It is not entirely unique, though, as it reminds me of the Chocolate Oranges that are popular around Christmas. I like those and I like these, too. I find myself picking these out of the mix because it is the one flavor in there that I have really enjoyed.

The Cocoa Andes flavor is part of the three flavor Fall Harvest Limited Edition mix I found at the grocery store the other day. At first look I thought this one was entirely light brown (i.e. milk chocolate) in color, but when I took a closer look to try it I realized it is the three layer style that makes something truly an Andes chocolate in my opinion. The middle layer is a dark chocolate color.

Overall this flavor is okay, especially if you are into plain chocolate flavor. I find it kind of boring for a Limited Edition, as the top and bottom milk chocolate layers overpower the more dark chocolate like middle layer. I do love the cute little fall designs on the bars still and just for that they are worth while. The chocolate part though just has a kind of funny/fake taste to it that makes me think I will probably give the cocoa ones left to my brother.

The toffee flavor of the Fall Harvest Andes chocolates mix is in a toffee/caramel brown wrapper. The chocolates are entirely a milk chocolate color, i.e. it does not have a different middle color like a lot of Andes chocolates do. The chocolate is overall pretty smooth and and great consistency for melting in your mouth. It has tiny bits of what I guess is toffee and what gives it the toffee like flavor. The milk chocolate itself must also be flavored toffee because the toffee bits are actually pretty minimal, although however the pieces are actually pretty minimally flavored.

Overall I think the toffee flavor ones taste okay. They are not bad, but they are not amazing flavor wise. Personally I find milk chocolate on its own not all that great and prefer dark chocolate if I am going to have unflavored chocolate. Basically this one is so minimally flavored it almost is just plain milk chocolate.

In the grocery story today I also saw these Andes Fall Harvest Limited Edition chocolates. Unlike the McGraw Spicy Jalapeno Fritos, which I passed up, the Andes chocolates I quickly decided to purchase. It was also on sale and well I love chocolate and have been impressed with Andes in the past, so it was not much of a risk to buy these.

The Fall Harvest is a mix of three flavors in one bag. The bag is very seasonal with its orange color and leaves on the front. The three flavors are Toffee, Orange, and Cocoa. The chocolates have different harvest designs on the small chocolate bars. This includes a Cornucopia design and pumpkin designs. It seems the pumpkin design with falling leaves is a popular one or at least in my package it is, as I opened six of them and five of them have that design. It appears the design is random and not specific to the flavors.

I have not tried the chocolates, yet, so I am not sure how they taste. I plan to try them out and review them later this week when I get a chance. The Orange one did stand out to me when I opened it, though, as it really looks like a classic Andes chocolate (i.e. the mint ones). This is because the Orange ones have three layers with the middle one being orange colored and the top and bottom layers being brown. Both the Cocoa and Toffee ones look the same being entirely brown.

The Candy Corn Kisses are one of three Limited Edition Kiss flavors available this fall. Yesterday, I wrote about trying the Pumpkin Spice ones. Today I set about getting ready to review the Candy Corn ones, but then realized I did not really have much to say just about trying the Candy Corn ones, so I decided to also try out the Kisses Candy Corn Autumn Cookies recipe on the back of the bag.

First, the Candy Corn Kisses taste pretty good in my opinion, which is really saying something because Candy Corn is on my list of candy I hate. My dad thinks they taste the same, but the texture is what makes it seem so different. As for the blogs I read saying these taste like buttered popcorn, well, I just do not taste them that way except they do have a little bit of a saltiness to them. Overall on there own I like them, although they are not that spectacular of a flavor that I will miss when they are not available.

As for the cookie recipe, that turned out really good. The recipe calls for 66 Candy Corn Kisses, but if you read the probable amount in the bag there is only 72. Of course, I realized the recipe after eating about 10 of the Kisses. Thus I just did a half recipe and ended up only needing 19 kisses because I only ended up with 11 cookies instead of the expected 24. The cookie base is a peanut butter oatmeal cookie, which is good on its own. After they cool you drizzle melted Candy Corn kisses on top and then put an unwrapped on on top. The cookies are pretty good tasting even though I substituted regular peanut butter for the called for Reeses peanut butter. They would have been better just leaving them without the added Candy Corn kisses, though. However, they do look very festive.

The other day I wrote a post about the three Limited Edition Hershey’s Kisses released for this Fall. I had my dad try to pick me up some Caramel Apple ones when he was at Target the other day, but instead he ended up bringing me the Caramel ones because he thought maybe I made a mistake. At least he did decide to pick up the Pumpkin Spice and Candy Corn ones even though I did not originally ask for them. Not to mention the Caramel ones are still definitely worth eating.

The first one I tried was the new for this year Pumpkin Spice ones. I totally agree that these are gushy and they certainly are not the same as being able to suck on a hard chocolate kiss and are more like the equivalent of a slobbery kiss vs. a quick peck on the cheek. Anyways, I did not really mind the gushy texture, but the inside is not all that pleasant on its own.

The outside I like with it tasting like pumpkin pie with double the called for spice. The inside, though, is some weird way too sugary to the point of being gritty concoction that is just disgusting. Yes, I am the adventurous one to just stick my tongue in the middle of the kiss and purposely try it one its own. I do not recommend it, though, as it really is meant to be mixed with the flavor of the shell. The sad thing, though, is that oddly enough I keep eating them, so they turned out not that bad once I stopped trying the center on its own. Oh, and I also like them because they made for such a lovely photo as seen above.

This 2008 Halloween Season Hershey’s Kisses has three different Limited Edition flavors available. The Limited Edition flavors are Candy Corn, Pumpkin Spice, and Candy Apple. Each one comes in bags that have just the one flavor, so you have to track down all of them and cannot just find one bag and be able to try them all.

Candy Corn - I think this one has been done by Kisses before. They look a lot like Candy Corn when unwrapped, although it is a little different looking because they are more squat than the real Candy Corn, however the colors are the same layout. From this review I read they sound like they are do not taste like actual candy corn, but rather taste more like buttered popcorn. I do not like real candy corn, but that review makes me interested in trying to track this down this year.

Pumpkin Spice - These ones have a creamy inside. The outside is orange and the creamy inside is white. The flavor is pumpkinish with some harvest spices, such as nutmeg. They are supposedly not very solid no matter the temperature, so I think I better skip buying them until it cools down here in AZ or they will be soup before I get them home.

Caramel Apple - This sounds like another tasty fall flavor. These have a liquid caramel inside. The apple flavor to them is supposedly a lot like those caramel apple lollipops, which makes me hope I can find this flavor, because I love those lollipops.

Mars candy will be releasing limited edition candies that are pink and they will be donating a minimum of $1 million to Susan G. Komen for the Cure.  The pink candies will be available for Breast Cancer Awareness Month (October).

One part of the pink line of limited edition candies are M & M products.  This includes special Promise Blend of personalizable white and pink M&Ms sold online.  There is also the standard Promise Blend with Susan G. Komen for the Cure Running Logo and say “for the cure.”  In stores there will be M&M bags with dark and light pink M&Ms.  These will be available in Milk Chocolate and Peanut varieties.  I wish they would do this with the Dark Chocolate variety or even the Peanut Butter ones, as those are the only type of M&Ms I usually buy.

The M&M aspect of Mars Candy support of Susan G. Komen for the Cure has been done before, but the second part is new this year.  It is limited edition Dove chocolate.  There will be two varieties (milk and dark chocolate) of the limited edition Promises of Hope Dove chocolates.  These chocolates will be wrapped in pink foil and will have inspirational messages on the inside of the wrapper.  There is also the option to create customized ones of the Dove Promises of Hop chocolates online.  I will probably try to get my hands on the non-personalized dark chocolate ones.  I love the Dove dark chocolate even though I do not think it is not real dark chocolate, which I am kind of a stickler about (really I think if it has milk in it they should be required to call it imitation dark chocolate or fake dark chocolate on the wrapper).