It's almost December, so let's say farewell to Fall with some unnecessarily autumnal candy!
Caramel Apple Filled Twizzlers: Look Past the Ectoplasm and Give Goo a Chance
OK, so, visually, these are a bit terrifying. The Twizzler has the usual ribbed tube shape, but slightly thicker than usual to accommodate the filling. The outer tube is the neon green color of Ghostbusters ectoplasm, or if you prefer, automobile anti-freeze, and the tube is filled inside with a soft, light brown putty. This Twizzler is stretchy and extremely pliable, far softer than the standard red model. The exterior has the texture of soft rubbery plastic, and the filling has a texture halfway between taffy and frosting, sticky but spreadable.
The aroma from the package is strongly of Jolly Rancher green apple, so I expected that flavor to pervade. But when you bite through this Twizzler, you do get a flash of fake green apple from the exterior tube, but then your mouth is filled with a surprisingly pleasant brown sugar caramel, which actually washes away the chemical green apple sourness. The caramel overtakes the apple to such an extent that my tasters noted that the Twizzler could actually use more apple flavor. The serious chew of this product makes sense with the overall caramel experience, which most tasters found “surprisingly unoffensive” and “not nearly as bad as expected,” with only a few detractors protesting the “caramel plastic and Jolly Rancher smell.” After my Christmas Twizzler experience, for me, this was Twizzler redemption where I least expected it.
White BOO-ter-scotch M&Ms: Neither Scary Nor Butterscotch
This one is a bit of a stretch. M&Ms packaged these white chocolate butterscotch-flavored M&Ms for Halloween, hence the ridiculous name. There is, however, nothing particularly Halloween-like about either white chocolate or butterscotch. The candies come in three different shades of yellow-ish brown, which I would describe as ivory, maize, and burnt sienna, if I were using my Crayola terms. (As with all M&Ms however, all three shades taste the same). The aroma coming from the bag is faintly bitter, almost suggestive of coffee, for some reason. The candies are bigger and puffier than a standard M&M, as with nearly all the novelty flavors.
Biting into one of these for the first time, there is an extremely faint, fleeting flavor of something that could, perhaps, be interpreted as butterscotch, if you were feeling generous. The flavor note could just as easily be caramel or even latte. After just a few of these M&Ms, however, that elusive flavor disappears entirely, drowned out by the bland creamy sweetness of the white chocolate that forms the base of these M&Ms. It reappears only as an unpleasant aftertaste clinging to the tongue. One taster wrote, “Butterscotch and M&Ms are like asparagus and powdered sugar; useful separated, terrible together.” Indeed. These weren’t worthy of spitting out, but they weren’t worthy of a second handful, either.