Kev's Snack Reviews

You can't beat coconut mushrooms. They're one of those classic Pick & Mix sweets that many of us know and love, and now Barratt have only gone and made a Fruity variety. Happy days! I was expecting these to taste of just regular coconut mushrooms when I saw them in Poundland recently, but to my surprise they actually turned out to have different individual fruit flavours. How pretty do they look? A lot nicer than regular coconut mushrooms that's for sure! There's classic fruit flavours like strawberry, lime, lemon, orange and er...blackcurrant? They contain no artificial colours or flavours, which is always a plus, but unfortunately aren't suitable for vegetarians as they contain gelatin. They're super tasty and moreish, with the coconut giving them that unmistakable tropical edge and the fruit flavours enhancing them even more. These were a lot nicer and more interesting than regular coconut mushrooms, and it's very easy to scoff most of the b...

Todays review is a face off...well...a jelly baby off between the new Tropical flavour Jelly Babies from Maynards Bassetts vs the Original Jelly Babies. It seems incomprehensible that a new variety could beat the originals, so this will be interesting! Firstly, I must mention the new name: Jelly Babies were originally labelled as Bassetts, but Mondelez have put both the Maynards brand (which is on things like Wine Gums and Sports Mixture) and Bassetts (which includes the likes of Liquorice Allsorts - who can forget the character Bertie Bassett?) I'm not sure it's a good idea to lump two brands together like this, but I guess it fits with Mondelez' marketing strategy of making everything the same. First up, the Tropical Jelly Babies. These come in mango, pineapple and BANANA (ooh!) flavours so straight off they are at a disadvantrage of containing less variety than the Originals, despite the fancy flavours. But are they good flavours? Yes, they are as it turns out!...

There seems to be a new Haribo Limited Edition for every season nowadays; the last few Summers they had the Frenzy Editions , which I thought were returning again this year. But it seems not...instead we're getting these "Summer Frenzy" Tangfastics which contain Ice Cream & Sorbet Flavours, and Starmix Summer Frenzy with Berry Flavours . The ice cream flavours are Passionfruit, Mango, Bubblegum, Peach, Watermelon and Rhubarb & Custard... Whilst the Sorbet flavours are Peach and Guava, Mango & Passionfruit and Pink Grapefruit. Being honest I think this is quite a random mix of flavours for ice cream and sorbets...I mean when was the last time anyone bought a tub of watermelon ice cream? No matter, Haribo flavours are usually better in practice than on paper. There were lots of Rhubarb and custard "Cherries" in the bag, and as nice as they were they became a big boring after a while. They tasted quite similar to Haribo Rhubarb and C...

These Haribo Little Cupcakes have been sat there on the shelf in Tesco for a while now, annoyingly calling me to try them. Don't they know I already consume enough sugar to feed a small army?! I finally plopped them in my basket, in need of some weekend sweets. They cost 98p or so, are not suitable for vegetarians and implore you to "create your own delicious cupcake creations with a caramel or lemon biscuit base, finishing it off with either a blueberry, orange, lemon, cherry, vanilla or strawberry topping". Annoyingly, there were no strawberry toppings in my bag, boo! There also seemed to be an over-abundance of biscuit bases to toppings. I do love the idea of these I have to say. It's a lot of fun creating your own flavour combinations, and how cute do they look? The caramel biscuit bases had a strong sweet caramel flavour, with definite hints of biscuit, and they went perfectly with all the toppings I tried. The blueberry in particular was very...

Following on from my review of Haribo TangfasTricks , today we have the other new Haribo Halloween Limited Edition (although curiously it just says "new" rather than limited edition). Unlike TangfasTricks, this variety provides some new "spooky" flavours to chew on... Left to right: Toffee Apple Monster's Eyeball, Blackcurrant and Bubblegum Vampire Hearts, Blood Orange Witches Brew, Lime Boo Bear, Cherry Boo Bear, Blood Orange Boo Bear, Blood Orange and Apple Dracula Rings, Apple and Blackcurrant Dracula Rings & Blackcurrant and Blueberry Dracula Rings. The Blackcurrant and Apple rings were pretty good...a nice strong blackcurrant flavour with an apple tang. Boo Bears : Gummy bears will never be scary, whatever name you give them. Luckily the taste isn't either: this cherry one tastes great! The Blood Orange ones have a nice strong zesty tang, whilst the Lime ones have a nice citrus kick. The Toffee Apple Eyeballs were a little o...

It's that time of year again, Halloween is just around the corner...so what better way to mark the occasion than some Limited Edition Haribo sweets. There's two out; Haribo Scaremix which I'll be reviewing soon, and TangfasTricks - a new version of Tangfastics that promises to be tangy, hot or super sour. Tangfastics are usually pretty sour and tangy anyway so I was curious how these would be different. The description on the pack reads "Fizzy fruit flavour, cola flavour and sweet foam gums with some hot or extra sour fruit, cola and sweet foam gums".  Unlike the new Haribo Scaremix, these didn't seem to have any different colours of sweets, it looked like a regular bag of Tangfastics.  There's the classic sour cola bottles... Sour cherries... Crocodiles... And of course, rings (or are they dummies! I never can tell!) Did they taste any different? Well to be honest not very much. Some of the ...

Halloween products are finally starting to appear on shelves, although oddly only after the new Christmas chocolates . Anyone else find this a bit odd? Anyway, these new Halloween Starburst are exclusive to Tesco, and they're a "scare edition". They're called "Trick or treat?", as you don't know whether you'll bite into a sour or sweet fruit chew. Scary indeed! The flavours are "sweet or sour orange ghoul", "sweet or sour raging raspberry" and "sweet or sour evil apple". There's a blurb on the pack that says "They blindfold fruit treats and play juicy tricks on them"...which sounds a little dodgy to me, but I'm sure it's meant to be innocent enough! Tipping out the bag, the chews all had brightly coloured wrappers with "Trick or Treat?" printed on. I like the colours, they're very fitting for Halloween! Oddly there were 4 different coloured wrappers as opposed to the th...

As well as the Cadbury Pep chocolate I reviewed yesterday, The Canada Shop also sent me a bag of these Allen's Sour Watermelon Slices to review. They instantly reminded me of some jelly sweets I've tried before...the Limited Edition Haribo Tangfastics with Sour Watermelon Slices  I reviewed earlier in the year. The main difference between these and the Haribo Watermelon Slices is that they're brighter and more artificial in colour: They tasted nice enough - they were pleasantly sour and very chewy, although the flavour was a little on the artificial side. If you're a fan of watermelon flavoured sweets you'll probably get a kick out of these, but personally I much preferred the Tangfastics with Watermelon Slices. Overall, these are definitely a nice novelty and great for anyone who likes watermelon flavour sweets, but they're not really to my taste. RATING: 6 out of 10. You can purchase these sweets as well as many other Canadian goodies from...