The Good: Sweet and tastes like the fruits they are supposed to, Inexpensive
The Bad: Not at all filling for the calories, Environmentally irresponsible packaging.
The Basics: Crystal Light Hard Candy are a delightful way to get Vitamin C and may be one of the best non-jelly bean products Crystal Light produces!
I’m always interested in companies that contract out their names to products other than their primary product type. When it comes to ice cream, for example, all sorts of companies contract out to get their product synergized with new flavors, like Mrs. Fields working with Breyers with their Mint Fudge Brownie ice cream (reviewed here!). But sometimes, the leaps a company makes are much more dramatic, which is how I interpret Crystal Light getting into the candy business with their hard candy. My wife and I, who have both been watching what we eat better, were instantly intrigued when we found the bad of Crystal Light Hard Candy.
Basics
Crystal Light Hard Candy are little discs of hard, translucent candy that are individually-wrapped. Crystal Light Hard Candy are approximately three-quarters inches in diameter by 1/4” thick. These candies are marketed to taste precisely like various fruit flavors and they live up to that to varying degrees. The assortment has four flavors in it.
The Hard Candy from Crystal Light are sugar free, individually-wrapped and then contained in a 3 oz. bag. This is terribly unenvironmental and that matters to me. Crystal Light is working with Sorbee to produce these candies. The raspberry and cherry candies are both red, though the cherry are darker than the raspberry, but not by much. In low light, those two flavors are very close in color.
Ease Of Preparation
These are Hard Candy, not making Crystal Light into a beverage without water! Consuming these is as easy as opening the bag, unwrapping each candy and placing them in your mouth. There is no additional prep needed. There is, however, restraint needed to keep one from biting them apart!
Taste
The Orange Hard Candies have no discernable aroma. On the tongue, they are orange-flavored, but very lightly flavored. The orange Crystal Light flavor is distinctly citrus and flavored much like mandarin oranges. This flavor is fairly rich and inviting for those who like hard candies.
The darkest red Crystal Light hard candy is cherry. The Cherry Crystal Light hard candies taste like cough drops, save that they lack a mentholated kick. The Cherry hard candies are sweet, but finish with a more forceful flavor, like one might expect of cherry flavored candy. They are pretty much the archetypal cherry flavored hard candy.
The middle red-pink hard candies are the raspberry Crystal Light hard candies. Like the others, they have no real aroma. The raspberry hard candies are the least distinct in their flavor. They do not taste bad, but their flavor is more “watery” than the others, much like Crystal Light. The flavor is more subtle than the others and it is slightly more generic in its fruit flavor than the others.
The lightest pink hard candies are the strawberry ones. These also have no scent, but are the sweetest of the bunch. The strawberry flavor is light after the generic sweet and fruity primary taste. This tastes like strawberry the way strawberry-scented candles smell like strawberry. The flavor is not the actual flavor of strawberries; it is a conditioned flavor that mimics part of the flavor of strawberry, without the tart aftertaste of actual strawberries.
Nutrition
Again, these are fruit flavored candies, not actual fruit. As such, they have no real nutritional value, no vitamins or minerals. These are a snack food, a dessert, and are in no way an adequate substitute for a real meal. A serving is listed as four hard candies, with each serving having 25 calories. The 3 oz. package has “about 6” servings, which ours bore out with twenty-three individually-wrapped candies. They were pretty much evenly distributed in our bag, flavorwise.
Crystal Light Hard Candy are pretty much what one might expect from a candy in the nutrition area. They have no fat, sodium, cholesterol or protein, but for those who have ever dated a Vegan, these are Vegan compliant because they contain no gelatin! They are gluten free, as well! The main ingredients are isomalt, citric acid, and natural and artificial flavors, so it actually lives up to its claim of being sugar free. The Crystal Light hard candies seems to employ sucralose as its sugar substitute.
Storage/Clean-up
Crystal Light Hard Candy have a shelf life of approximately three years, though we obviously made it through our twenty-three candies well in advance of that. They remain freshest when they are kept in an airtight container (the bag is sufficient if it is kept closed and tightly resealed) and they ought to be kept in a lukewarm environment. Storing them in hot places is likely to make the candies get sticky and stick to the plastic wrap. Kept in a cool, dry place, the Hard Candy retain their flavor perfectly. The bag we picked up late last month had a February 22, 2015 expiration date.
As for cleanup, unless one allows the Hard Candy to get hot to the point that they melt and get sticky, there should be no cleanup necessary.
Overall
Crystal Light Hard Candy are good, but a very average candy that are not likely to fill one up enough to actually stop eating to avoid more calorie-packed snacks. Even so, they help take the edge off and they are a relatively inexpensive way to do so.
For other fruit-flavored candies reviewed by me, please check out:
Jelly Belly Grape And Lime Pet Cockroach Gummi Candy
Jelly Belly Sunkist Orange Slices
Hubba Bubba Sour Watermelon Squeeze & Lick Lollipop
5/10
For other food or drink reviews, please visit my index page on the subject by clicking here!
© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |
No comments:
Post a Comment