Cocoa Via is hardly new. It’s so not-new, it’s not worth listing all the Web sites who’ve mentioned it. The basic premise - “chocolate that’s good for you” - never appealed. what’s the point of that? but it showed up at SuperT and was thus easy to buy. anyway, made by Mars/Dove (and the color scheme is very similar to Dove), it brags about its “cocoapro process” (and they even ® it to let you know it’s special). saying it retains flavanols “to help promote healthy circulation”. hmf. take a look at the pic. there is 1. a cardboard box. and inside 2. a cardboard shelf. on which rest the five bars. over them lies 3. a piece of double-layered glued cardboard. MUCH packaging. and what do you actually get, chocolate-wise? 5 wee .71-oz bars. maybe the size of a single twix. a box of 5 costs $5.99. or $1.20 per stick. now, admittedly, this is no noka. but it’s still a helluva lot of $$. as for the flavor - it’s dark choc and not very sweet. but you have to wonder: what exactly ARE “soy sterol esters“?

before posting this, i conducted the usual investigation to see if it really was news (it’s not) and/or what other stuff might be out there. during this exhaustive search, i discovered an A+ blog, Candy for Dinner, w/ an admirably hardcore focus on breaking candy news (much more diligently than i have time for, altho said blog has such a plethora of hershey’s scoops, one wonders about an inside hershey’s connection). anyway C4D had this Hershey’s with Corn Bits bar wks ago; but it’s been foto’d here already and gets points for being weird. the corn bits are tiny, not sweet, and stick around on the teeth for a second or two. it’s clever intellectually, in that it evokes nestles crunch but with a different grain. can’t wait for the barley

what a way to start ‘07: marc, the indian scout of NYCE, scrounged up what is perhaps the quintessential, the penultimate, the emblematic NYCE product: Hershey’s ltd-ed coffee kisses. let us quantify (or is that qualify?): 1. limited edition + 2. coffee. these coffee kisses are the pinnacle in a flurry of elegant, limited-ed flavors intro’d by hershey’s over the holidays (incl. dark-choc/strawberry & dark-choc raspberry). but coffee. the aroma when you open the bag bursts right out: more folger’s than intelligentsia (props to chic coffee guru spinnakr) but still admirably dark & espresso-y, w/ a flavor similar to that Pocket Coffee stuff

Damn, hope Ghirardelli Limited Edition Peppermint Bark is still in stores, even tho it’s post-xmas. Otherwise that makes NYCE obsolete. so no, pepp bark is not brand new. but it’s still surging in popularity (which makes it newsworthy) and this new ltd-ed (w/ its A+ shiny ribbon-candy wrapper) does a twist. The usual formula izza 3-layered construction: 1. milk choc base 2. white choc layer 3. cracked pep candies. Ghirardelli’s has the pep candy mixed right in to the white choc. a radical departure + also easier to eat, as the candy shards don’t fall all over yr keyboard

pls forgive the presence of yet-another item on yet-another ltd-edition seasonal mint sweet, but it seems best to get them done w/ and this one’s unique in its class: Hershey’s Candy Cane Kisses, a white-choc kiss w/ crunchy candy bits mixed within. they’re unique enough that it’s easy to keep eating them, possibly even beyond the point where you still like them. but - and let me state the obvious here - they’re good 4 people who like mint. anyway, see, that wasn’t so bad, and now next wk can start fresh w/ fully-linked items on new restaurants (a new sushi place in richardson), ice creams (bluebell’s doing French vanilla cappuccino), & maybe coffee drinks (dunkin donuts just intro’d a very starbucksian “gingerbread latte”)

was there ever a product that begged more for the silly snowflake-frame photo treatment?

Of all the kit kats that have cometh before, none surpasses this ltd edition mint dark chocolate. (which is why the kk sabbatical is broken yet again.) but this kit kat warrants it. It has the same piercing mint + dark choc you get from york pep patties & junior mints but not as sugary, thanks to the superior qual of kit kat’s dark choc (which is also less “greasy” than the usual kit kat milk choc). And, as is evident in foto #2, the choc is thick. a superior seasonal prod and kit kat flavor too

While hersheys kisses & kit kats have gone off the deep end w/ brand extensions, staid ol’ M&Ms have mostly stayed the course, w/ only a few spinoffs on the comfy/familiar original M, tho all have been good, from M&M almonds to dark M&Ms to mega M&Ms (’specially the mega peanuts). that makes these flavored M&Ms a pretty big deal. there’s 8 flavors: raspberry, cherry, peach, orange, almond, mint, peanut, & mint cookie. the proviso is that they can only be ordered online and are hugely expensive: $49.99 plus $12.95 shipping for 24 oz, a price they justify as acceptable becuz you get a “premium collectible tin“. possibly down the road, the most popular flavors will eventually turn up in stores

NYCE has been taking a sabbatical from kit kats. furthermore, this ltd-edition Mocha Kit Kat is not revolutionary. I mean, they came out with a not-dissimilar cappuccino flavor last year. But this merits mention for 3 reasons
1. A pic had been taken (see left). hate to waste a pic
2. It actually tastes pretty good. not too sweet. better than the capp
3. It provides the opportunity to write about a much more-interesting flavor which unfortunately is not available in the US: a PUMPKIN kit kat released in japan. Which sounds great but, the japan thing, weird; isn’t Halloween like an American holiday?

not sure if you’ve caught wind of the rumor going around – it’s about dark choc stopmeifyou’veheardit that it’s good for you. all those dark choc items you’ve seen aren’t even the tip of the iceberg. stats!:
$ one third of the new choc items this year are dark - up from 1/4 in 2005, sez Datamonitor’s Productscan Online
$ new dark-choc prods have already hit 278 this year (279 if you count today’s blog item?) (and it’s only sept!), compared to a total last year of 217
$ Sales of dark choc are up 40% this year, sez Ad Age, driven by reports that the antioxidants make it heart healthy
in that area, Nestle dark raisinets scores 2-for-1, cuz raisins have antioxidants too. this 11-oz foil package claims to have 7 servings, w/ 180 cal, 32 carbs, 8 grams of fat

Today’s theme is “marginal“… after all, these ltd-ed dulce de leche Oreos are only marginally new (they’ve been out a while), marginally of interest (oh boy another dulce de leche item which i would’ve ignored altogether but these were on sale), & marginally edible (they taste way grossfakesweet). dulce de leche has many fans, but the flavor succeeds best in a dairy context. what IS of interest is how these underscore the importance of oreo’s standard filling. you’d think most of the “oreo flavor” lay in the choc cookie, but no, for oreos to be oreos, they need the white goo

*note how cookies in photo mimic the ones on the box!