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US chocolate reviews

This page is one of a series of international chocolate reviews.

This time, Lucy went to Las Vegas. While there, she visited Fuzziwig's Candy Factory and sent me a number of chocolate bars and other sweets candy. Sweets. She also went to a brilliant Star Trek hotel, but that is outside my reviewing remit.

I will start by saying that I'm a bit leery of American confectionery, because (i) they use freaky "corn syrup" instead of sugar and (ii) Kim once sent me cinnamon chewing gum whose wrapper, I swear, mentioned something about cancer in rats. I have also decided that future consignments of foreign sweets should probably be limited to chocolate, because everything else is horrible and toxic enough to have any sane man skipping and gibbering like an epileptic in an airlock.

With those cheering thoughts, let us begin.

A. Skor

Delicious milk chocolate / crisp butter toffee.

Presumably the favourite snack of Hagar the Horrible, this is exactly like a Daim bar in taste and appearance. Very buttery and crunchy, with an appealing snap when bitten.

B. Smarties

Not, of course, the oblate chocolate Smarties known to British shores. No, these are like Refreshers — but smaller, criminally lacking in fizz factor, and at least twice as chalky. Totally forgettable.

C. Slap Stix

A big rectangular caramel lollipop with a spiral streak of yellow, pink and white. The ominous aniseed smell is fortunately countered by the sweet, mild taste, rather like those limited-edition ice-cream Chewits. Very chewy (this will become a common theme on this page), enough so that you have to rip bits off with your teeth. The colours are purely cosmetic. It took ages to chomp my way through this, but it was still surprisingly moreish and would make a good fairground treat.

D. Whoppers

The original malted milk balls.

"The original" is a whopper for starters: Maltesers were invented thirteen years earlier, in 1936. Opening the bag releases a nice aroma, rather like white chocolate. The malted milk filling is paler than that in Maltesers and tastes like cheap condensed milk. The metallic aftertaste is hugely off-putting. Just about acceptable in small doses.

E. Milk Duds

These little darlings are small, round, irregular lumps (hence the name, I suppose) made from chocolate and caramel — like very chewy Rolos. They taste good, but the chewiness soon becomes annoying. My weary jaw sagged and I had to use my fingers to remove the bits that got stuck in my teeth.

F. Sour Sippers

A funny little six-pack of plastic bottles. The fine, silky powder is hardly sour at all, so I don't know why they bothered really. I only had a "sip" of each, because they were vile. Blue raspberry looked like copper sulphate, tasted like soap, and smelled like the threadworm medicine that was concealed in my jam sandwiches as a child: certainly a winning combination. Yellow lemonade had the unripe acridity of green tomatoes. And red cherry tasted exactly like six pints of snakebite and black coming up for air. I want your money back.

G. Sour Mini Burger

Actually, I love sour things, done properly. This burger with its three coloured fillings ("made in China") comes in a cute little tray, is dusted with sugar and/or sourotron 7, and splits handily into three pieces. The sourness is pretty moderate, so you basically end up with three tangy fruit pastilles. Nice appley smell and flavour, but a bit too chewy for my liking. Some tongue colouration.

H. Laffy Taffy

"Jazzberry blue raspberry" flavour, with an excellent cowlike blue demon depicted stretching the stuff between his froggy fingers. The boast of "jokes on every wrapper" is no idle one, since there really were two jokes. It's a long chewy bar, like the classic Wham, in a truly gorgeous shade of cornflower blue. Tasted better than it smelled, rather like a Fruit Salad chew, and left my tongue bluer than the bar itself. Bonus points for not welding itself inseparably to the flimsy wrapper despite having sat on a warm table for days.

I. PayDay

Chocolatey Avalanche! Chocolatey covered peanut caramel bar.

This is more like it, even if chocolatey as a noun makes my heart sink in dread. PayDay does in fact contain chocolate, but it's the sixth ingredient by volume. (It also contains egg whites; can that be normal?) It's a hefty, lumpy bar, deserving its "King Size" tag, and has a pleasant peanut smell. The taste is good: not too peanut-buttery, something like a nuttier, chewier Snickers. I think this would be a favourite if I lived there.

J. Chick-O-Stick

Crunchy peanut butter and toasted coconut candy.

What a fantastic name. I can't decide whether it should be an elongated chicken nugget or a sparkly baton that attracts girls in nightclubs. In reality it's a hard, orange, gravelly cylinder, a bit like a carrot that fell in sawdust. It's tough to bite, but brittle enough to fracture into powder afterwards. The peanut/coconut combination is tasty, and it's not overly sweet. I could probably convince myself that this was a healthy energy bar. Sticks badly in the teeth.

K. Zagnut

Crunchy peanut butter — toasted coconut.

Alert readers will recall a similar description for Chick-O-Stick, and indeed this tastes about the same. However, the opaque wrapper fooled me into thinking that it would be a chocolate bar. Zagnut combines a brittle crunch with a greasy texture; it feels like something that was recently cooked in butter. At this point I am getting a bit tired of peanuts.

L. Jelly Belly 20 Flavors

"Package may not contain every flavor", but the only omission was watermelon. I appreciated the identification chart on the back of the box. I also note that some flavours do contain actual fruit. I enjoyed lemon/lime (fortuitously the commonest in the box), chocolate pudding, and cotton candy. On the down side, buttered popcorn was an impressive reproduction of a flavour I hate, peach and green apple were absurdly strong, and island punch packed a nasty one: remember Parma Violets?

M. Gummi Pizza

Five slices of ersatz pizza, a startlingly bright orange base topped with cute green peppers, tiny mushrooms, and black olives, and made entirely from that gummy jelly stuff that comprised half of our childhood sweet shops by weight. Strong-smelling, though the smell is sweet and quite nice — confirmed by a non-specific fruit flavour — but let down by the chewiness. Seriously, there are dog toys that don't last as long as this.

N. Shockers Squeez

I approach this with no little trepidation, because it's in a tube — I've never seen sweet stuff in a tube — and the Tongue Trippin' Lemon flavour is spelled out on a frazzle-haired youth's extruded tongue. The blast of citrus air when I squeeze the tube is like an acidic belch from a lemon volcano. The "Squeez" itself proves to be translucent crystalline jelly, not the hot-dog mustard I had imagined. It's really sour, face-puckering, and I feel like a confused anorexic choking down toothpaste.

O. Chase's Cherry Mash

The old-fashioned wrapper evokes soda fountains and long dresses. "Mash" sounds like alcohol, and the ingredients do include "chocolate liquor", but that probably doesn't mean what it ought to. Cherry Mash is a big lump, like half a knobbly tennis ball, and it smells like medicine. Deep beneath a generous coating of chocolate studded with peanut fragments lurks a hateful molten core of bright pink maraschino cherry. Why would anyone be so cruel?

P. Wonka Bar

Milk chocolate with graham crackers.

The most inviting wrapper of the bunch, with that wacky chocolatier's famous hat and a splash of liquid chocolate, Wonka is made by Nestlé, so you can't eat it if you're allergic to evil. The flattish bar smells rather bland and unappetising. It has an excellent texture and a good crunch, but the chocolate is dull and (for once) not sweet enough. Imagine a fractionally inferior version of the shortcake Dairy Milk. Still, a good, functional bar overall. No golden ticket.

Q. Butterfinger

Crispety, crunchety, peanut-buttery!

It's a bar of two halves, à la Milky Way, and smells more like shortbread than peanut butter. The taste is something akin to Crunchie, but the texture is heavier, rather biscuity and gritty, like a cheesecake base. I found it very filling. The inside of the wrapper has a mystifying "American Idol elimination game code" that the affiliated Web site claims to know nothing about.

R. Charleston Chew

A superlatively long bar in three separate pieces that looks like real chocolate but isn't. The fake coating smells and tastes like that of a choc-ice, which might explain why they recommend trying it frozen. The centre is equally deceptive, an uncompromisingly durable caramel that the untrained eye might take for nougat. Fairly enjoyable, but just two thirds of it was enough to make Baby Jawsus cry.

S. Owyhee Idaho Spud

What a bizarre thing to finish on. It's not so much a bar as half a potato, crumbly on the outside with flakes of coconut, and filled with a kind of soft but chewy coconut cream. Very light and fluffy, with surprisingly dark and rich cocoa undertones, Spud translates the earthiness of its namesake into chocolate very well indeed. My specimen had collapsed somewhat and, adding to the realism, had to be dug from chocolatey soil. The squidgy texture might take some getting used to, but this is both original and delicious.