Jan 292020
 

Pennsylvania Dutch Candies Root Beer Flavored Rock Candy Crystal Stick

Pennsylvania Dutch Candies started as a specialty candy store in Mount Holly Spring, PA back in the 60’s. In 1965 it was bought by The Warrell Corporation and began expansion. Today they can be found in all 50 states. One of those states is Minnesota, where my son found these at a local grocery store and got me this (and some other candies) for Christmas because he knew I needed to try it and write about it. How thoughtful. That’s the best sort of Christmas gift, in my opinion. Something useful, needed, and won’t take up space in the house. He nailed it. Anyways, back to the root beer rock candy stick.

The flavor is standard generic minty root beer that isn’t too strong or too weak. It has a more creamy flavor than old fashioned flavor, which I prefer. The texture, should you choose to crunch it, is that strange rock candy crystal texture, which is fun at first but then sort of annoying, unless you like that, then it’s great.

Overall, it’s a pretty solid root beer hard candy. It gives you the flavor you expect without being unpleasant in anyway. It’s also got that strange rock candy crystal texture. What else could you want?




Jan 222020
 

A&W Gummy Soda Bottles

My final Minnesota’s Largest Candy Store post (from this past year’s journey at least). This is also made by Kenny’s Candy. They’re gummy soda bottles, obviously. They have several brand name flavors, but we only care about these root beer ones. I love gummies. They are probably my favorite type of candy. This is my first experience with root beer gummies, so I had high hopes for this, especially because they are made with A&W Root Beer concentrate, which is a good root beer. Though, usually gummies are fruity, there’s spice drops, and those are gummy and yummy. Root beer can be spicy too, so it could work.

There’s a very mild root beer flavor that has a slight wintergreen aftertaste. If you eat a lot of them, that wintergreen builds a bit, but really it’s hard to tell. They are really bland actually, with little root beer and even very little sweetness. It really tastes like gelatin more than anything. Gelatin with some wintergreen.

These are actually really bad. They don’t really have flavor, other than that hint of wintergreen. I eat them and eat them, yet they don’t get any better. I’ve had failed attempts at root beer candy before, but these have got to be the worst, sadly. I don’t even recommend trying these for the experience. Hopefully I’ll find some good root beer gummies some day.




Jan 152020
 

My daughter found this candy, I’m not sure where, and gave it to me one day. That’s sweet, and helpful. I need more things to write about after all. I didn’t know Charms made anything other than Blow Pops to be honest. I was always more of a Blow Pop than a Tootsie Pop kid growing up, so I am quite surprised to learn they also make these Minipops. Doing some research, and turns out Charms is owned by Tootsie, and they may lots of different kind of pops. And to think, up until writing this, I believed that there was some deep rivalry between the center-filled-lollipop brands. But, nope, they’re the same company. But now I know and so do you. Now root beer float Minipop…

There’s a mild generic root beer flavor that really doesn’t have any standout characteristics. There’s a bit of spicy and bit of wintergreen, you know, standard hard candy stuff. There’s a distinct lack of strong vanilla in it, which is odd because it’s trying to pass itself off as a root beer float. In fact there’s nothing float about it. It tastes like plain root beer to me.

Yeah, so, this isn’t a root beer float flavor. But, it’s not a bad root beer flavor. So I’ll give it a passing grade (whatever that means in this case). I wouldn’t go seeking it out by any means, but it won’t leave you disappointed if you have it, and that’s really all you can ask for from a root beer (float) lollipop.