Andes Creme de Menthe Cookies and Ritter Sport Strawberry Creme

Some people don't like the foolishness of Tumblr, so I've decided to post what I put on Tumblr onto here as well.

Andes Chocolate Mints were one of those candies that I loved as a kid, but didn’t know what they were called until I was much older. I found out that a lot of my students actually liked them as well. I’m sure that you’re familiar with Andes Chocolate Mints in one form or another, but if you’re not, it is a thin piece of dark chocolate with a thin, creamy mint part in the middle. In a word, delicious. Therefore, I could not pass up buying this product:

Who knew that Andes made cookies? I’m not sure if this is recent or not; I didn’t take the time to look it up. However, the picture on the box reminds me of a Kiebler or Snackwells product. Speaking of which, do Snackwells cookies still exist? I haven’t seen them in a while. I guess they’re not as popular as they once were.

A tray of Andes Creme de Menthe Cookies

The inside of a Andes Creme De Menthe Cookie

The cookie reminded me greatly of an Andes Chocolate Mint, which means that it was delicious. The texture and form it came in may have been different from an Andes Chocolate Mint, but the flavor was the same. If you can imagine an Andes Chocolate Mint with the texture and mouth-feel of a cookie, this is what you get. Overall, a great product, but I wonder why I haven’t seen them anywhere else besides Walgreen’s.

Andes Creme de Menthe Cookies: 10/10

Chris' take on Andes Creme de Menthe Cookies: Just bought the Andes cookies yesterday in fact. My review before reading yours, 8/10, doesn't quite live up to it's older, smaller, and better brother.

It seems as if a company finally decided to listen to me and distribute a strawberry chocolate candy in America. It may have taken a while for them to hear my cries, but we’ve finally made it. I take all the credit for this. Anyway, here it is:

I was not too excited, however, when I found out it was a Ritter Sport chocolate square. I’ve purchased Ritter Sport products in the past, and time and time again I’ve been disappointed. I rate them only higher than Wonka chocolates. It may be my taste buds, but their chocolate isn’t that great to me. I prefer Hershey’s chocolate bars. Also for their price, I would much rather purchase a Lindt chocolate bar or a Milka chocolate bar. According to the wrapper, buying this is for a good cause though, so I can’t complain about that.

A square of Ritter Sport Strawberry Creme with exposed strawberry filling

Alright, the chocolate wasn’t great again, but I liked the filling. If the chocolate was better, then I would like it a lot more. Some may find the strawberry filling too sweet, but I liked it, even though in the past I may have complained about some things being too sweet. Ritter Sport should start adding something into their chocolate too make it richer, because that’s my main gripe with their chocolate. However, the filling saves this chocolate square, and hopefully they listen to more of my ideas.

Ritter Sport Strawberry Creme: 7/10

Shifts in-between Tumblr and such

So if you've noticed, I haven't made an entry in over a month. This is because I was told that I should move operations to my tumblr, since my tumblr is connected to my Facebook, and I link stuff that I post on here onto my tumblr...so long story short, I'm not sure if I'll be updating this particular blog, but Stephenlovescandy entries have been posted on:

http://stephenthoughts.tumblr.com

So feel free to swing by and read a few of my latest reviews!

Kinder Bueno

I noticed I had some pictures of a candy I meant to write about last week, but never got around to. This was part of some goods I bought from the European market. I usually buy a lot from there because I never know when I'm going to come back. Also, I don't go there often because chocolate melts really quickly, so it's hard to base a review off of melted chocolate.

The highly recommended Kinder chocolate brand comes back and it has yet to disappoint. With a name like Kinder Bueno, it advertises itself to be good, or my poor level of Spanish leads me to believe

I swear I didn't bite this one either

As one of my students stated, this tasted like Kinder Happy Hippo. And all these candies taste like a smoother Ferrero Rocher. I assume it's because they aren't covered walnuts. I'm starting to think Europeans enjoy hazelnut-filling as I have seen many other products at the European market with hazelnuts or hazelnut-flavored filling. Well, it certainly is bueno and it does indeed taste like Happy Hippo with the exception of being covered in chocolate and not having those chocolate bits covering it. And like Happy Hippo, I'd definitely recommend getting a bar of Kinder Bueno.

Kinder Bueno: 8.5/10

Japanese BBQ Corn Snack

It's a rare treat when I buy chips or salty snacks from foreign countries. The reason is because there are so many kinds of Doritos out there that I don't think I need to. However, when one walks down the aisles of an Asian market, one begins to realize that the foreign possibilities may be endless.

I bought this solely because of the picture on the lower right. My friends can attest that I am no fan of baseball, but there's something appealing about purchasing a product that has athletes on it. This is why I assume Wheaties has seen such great success. And if you notice there's Tim Lincecum throwing a pitch...he's a pitcher, right?

I took a picture of the back to verify that it was indeed a corn snack and because I thought I would be getting a mini jersey or something. There was no prize in my bag of BBQ corn snacks

Well it looks like we just met the Cheeto's Japanese cousin

Here's the skinny: Someone took Funyun flavor and put it in a Cheeto. This a perfect description for the snack. When I first ate one I thought, "This is a Funyun-flavored Cheeto, I am both disappointed because it is not a new flavor, but I love Funyuns." If you like Funyuns, and who doesn't, then this snack is worth the purchase. I won't say that I didn't like it, because I do like Funyuns a lot, but I was just disappointed that it was something familiar.

Japanese BBQ Corn Snack: 8/10

Volin Ti: Hazelnut, Almond, and Caramel

This bar is related to the lime/yogurt chocolate bar I wrote about a few entries ago. "Volim ti", according to Google Translate means "I love you" in Serbian. Good to know if I ever go to Eastern Europe. Onward to the candy at hand:

This candy bar has three different sections with different flavors which are hazelnut, almond, and caramel. This concept reminded me of the Japanese, "LOOK", line of candy bars where there are four different sections with different flavors. I figured that any of the three flavors listed above would pair well with chocolate.

A cross section of the three flavors: hazelnut, almond, and caramel

All three flavors tasted pretty much like caramel, so that was a bit disappointing. However, the flavor was still good, so it wasn't that bad. The last minor gripe that I have is that this was a bit too sweet without anything to balance it. I would have liked more richness and depth with the flavors, but otherwise I would say I liked this candy bar. The aroma was pleasing and the chocolate may not have been amazing, but this was a solid candy bar.

Volin Ti: Hazelnut, Almond, and Caramel: 7/10

Three on three with Phil and Karina

This is going to be another post featuring guest input from my friends. This time it is from my friends Karina and Phil, who were the ones who contributed to my Japanese Loot series of entries. The following products are Japanese, but we found them in a Korean supermarket. This supermarket had a large selection of candies, but the prices were a little bit more expensive than at a Japanese market. However, they did feature some things that I had not seen before, or things that have not returned to the shelves at Japanese markets. Anyway, the first item that we sampled was:

Blueberry Kit Kat. Meiji has a blueberry flavored chocolate bar, which is excellent as are there green tea and strawberry flavored bars. I figured that if Blueberry Kit Kat was anything similar to those, it would be worth the try.

A melted Blueberry Kit Kat. I'm going to assume that these were not the best stored candies because a majority, if not all the bars, were melted

We all agreed that this was a pretty mediocre candy. I expected a lot more, but there wasn't much flavor at all. The chocolate wasn't that good, there was a hint of blueberry, but overall it lacked flavor in general. I would recommend getting regular milk chocolate Kit Kat over this.

Blueberry Kit Kat: 6/10
Phil's input: 6 - 6.5/10
Karina's input: 6/10

The next item we tried was Mango Oreo bars. Mango and chocolate are not a combination I could have thought of. There are some fruits that pair well with chocolate, such as strawberries, but things like mangoes, oranges, or anything that you can't really imagine with chocolate never come to light, so I imagined this would be interesting

A Mango Oreo bar cut in half

The best way I can describe the way this tasted is that it's like a sub-par Chinese pineapple cake. Phil agreed with me on this and all three of us thought that this was a step down from the Blueberry Kit Kat. I expected more of a mango taste, but I suppose pineapple is the closest Oreo could get. It lacked even more flavor than the Blueberry Kit Kat and was extremely average

Mango Oreo Bar: 5/10
Phil's input: 5 - 5.5/10
Karina's input: 5/10

Lion Cola Candy was the last candy we tried and I figured that it was a safe bet. Cola candies are generally quite good when they have a fizz to them. The only time I could imagine a cola flavored candy being good without having some sort of fizz is with Haribo Cola Gummies

Lion Cola Candy from another angle

This was definitely the winner of the items we tried. It had lots of flavor, most importantly a lot of cola flavor, and it had a nice fizz to it. We've been screwed before with other hard cola candies that didn't have fizz and just weren't good at all, but this one was very good. The only thing that I could hold against it is that I think it wasn't stored properly either, so a lot of the pieces were sticky and stuck to each other, but that's more of a storage issue than a flavor issue. We're glad we tried this last, so that we could get the flavor of the previous two candies out of our mouths.

Lion Cola Candy: 8/10
Phil's input: 8 .5/10
Karina's input: 8/10

Stadium Nacho Doritos

Since I wrote about Tailgate BBQ, I felt that I should try the other limited time flavor which is Stadium Nacho. After having a wonderful experience with Tailgate BBQ, I had high hopes for Stadium Nacho.

The main reason as to why I didn't get this flavor before getting Tailgate BBQ is because the name implied that it would be too plain of a flavor. Nacho is pretty much a staple flavor of Doritos, so I couldn't really see how they could improve on it. However, because it is a limited time flavor, it won't be around forever

A Stadium Nacho Doritos chip

The flavor was very subdued in this one I felt. It had less flavor than Nacho Cheese Doritos or any of the other flavors of Doritos that are offered year round. It had a bit more of a corn tortilla chip aroma to it which I guess is a reflection of the tortilla chips that are a part of nachos. However, I feel like by adding this element, they made this flavor seem more like a typical corn chip than a typical over-flavored Doritos chip. Because of this, I feel that Stadium Nacho Doritos are passable and that Tailgate BBQ or a regular flavor of Doritos is preferable.

Stadium Nacho Doritos: 7/10