Minecraft Ice Creams (Iceland) By @Cinabar

I’m definitely starting to think I should have tried these ice creams before the change in weather. We seemed to move very quickly from lovely warm days to me digging out jumpers to keep warm.

These new ice creams are blocky, as you’d expect from something Minecraft inspired. They have a green vanilla layer, a cocoa layer, and another vanilla section with blue “crystals” (crispy rice coated in blue). The Minecraft styling is spot on. Even without the packaging, it’s obvious these are based on the Minecraft world. I was actually pleased that the green section was more muted in colour than the box suggested. On the pack it looked like it was going to be a very bright grass green, but in reality it wasn’t garish at all.

The vanilla sections were creamy and sweet, nothing too exciting but pleasant enough. The blue crystals added a light crunch, broke up the texture, and looked fun, though they didn’t really add any flavour. The cocoa section had a stronger chocolate taste that was very nice, still smooth and creamy.

These lollies are clearly aimed at kids, and that’s probably why the flavours are so simple and easy going. The appearance and theming are great, but I do think they could have pushed the flavours further, especially for us big kids who still enjoy playing video games.

Gamer Gummies Space Invaders (Game) By @SpectreUK

I remember gaming nights in the past when we played many different video games in the same room together, there were new and retro games, and we snacked on all manners of crisps and nuts, chocolates and gummies.

Life seemed so much less complicated then, and much more fun. Gaming online took over, and became more about the pains and scars of life rather than the sheer fun of games, of beating each other in duels to the death, racing hard, and hunting down bad guys, and of course gorging on snacks.

I loved Space Invaders as a kid, and still like to play it now. However, these Gamer Gummies Space Invaders will be snacked on during my regular snacking time of just after dinner when I watch something on the box, and munch on snack food for pudding, before my evening hot soak in the tub.

Made by Powerbears with 20% real fruit, there are six flavours of gummies in the packet. Blackberry had a weak blackberry flavour. Kiwi Lime was more kiwi than lime, still pretty faint in flavour though. Plum red was very faint in flavour. Orange had a faint orange flavour. Pomegranate tasted a little bit like strawberry, but not much. And sadly, Pineapple had a faint pineapple flavour. I was pretty disappointed by these Space Invaders Gamer Gummies. I think I'll stick to face twisty sour gummies instead.

Information on the bag; The 125g packet contains 328 calories per 100g, 0.5g of fat, with 44g of sugar, and 0.1g of salt. Made with no artificial colours and natural flavours. Please see photograph for the ingredients.

Warhammer World: Bugman’s Bar and Troll Brew Beer (By @SpectreUK)

We've just spent my Birthday Week (yes, I get a week) at Centre Parcs in Nottinghamshire. We had a great adventure week doing everything from the water park to miniature golf, learning to fire a crossbow, to quad biking, falconry, boating, and quite a few trips to their lovely spa.

On the way to Centre Parcs I dragged Cinabar to Warhammer World. I've been a collector and war gamer for many years, but never visited the hub of Games Workshop, so it was a bit of a pilgrimage for me. After getting several treats for my Birthday and wandering around the war gaming tables, we stopped off at Bugman's Bar for a spot of lunch.

The bar itself is Dwarf themed in Games Workshop's branded Bugman's style with a few of Bugman's Beers on tap. Cinabar ordered a fish finger sandwich, and I had a Bacon Lettuce and Tomato sandwich. I couldn't help but order the Troll Brew from the rather ugly image on the pump handle.

Although the bar suddenly became very busy after Cinabar's empty bar photo our sandwiches arrived pretty quickly. Both sandwiches came with a tub of really nice chips, and there was plenty of sauce on the side. It was a huge portion served on a wooden board. There was a lot of bacon in my BLT, some diced onion, and chopped tomatoes. The bread was pretty soft and thick, and my sandwich was very tasty with its decent supply of bacon. Cinabar loved her fish finger sandwich too.

There were a few tables filled with people playing various board games, such as Blood Bowl, and I could well imagine a group of dwarf adventurers sitting down for something to eat. Although as you can see the bar is quite high, so they may have to stand on tiptoes! The music was metal and not too loud, with a good balance for talking. Some restaurant's music can be too loud for people to chat, whereas a meal out is supposed to be a gathering.The toilets were refreshingly labelled Ladies and Gentlemen too, not anything weird that could confuse the desperate.

My Troll Brew was a good strong amber ale at 4.2% in volume. There were floral undertones in the aroma. In taste there was sweet amber malt to start with, which was followed by bitter herbal hops into the aftertaste. It was not a fruity beer, it was quite bitter, but you'd expect that from Troll Brew. Having said that it was really nice, washed my sandwich down a treat and I would definitely have it again. Somebody wandered past me with a San Miguel. I couldn't understand it, why wouldn't you drink Troll Brew if you have the chance to travel to Bugman's Bar?

Candy Crush Chocolate Mountain Ice Cream (Ocado) By @Cinabar

This brightly packaged and fun looking ice cream is based on the popular app game Candy Crush, and I spotted it on the Ocado website. I think it says something about technology that an app has influenced an ice cream flavour, and shows how many of us spend time playing phone games etc. My biggest problem with the ice cream is that whenever I look at the tub I inexplicably get an ear-worm and the song “I want candy” stuck in my head. Even now as I come to write this, “I want candy”. Oh well,
I’ll try and focus on the ice cream, it is called Chocolate Mountain and consists of a chocolate ice cream with white chocolate pieces and candy coated chocolate drops, which is handy because… “I want candy”.

I opened up the tub and was a little surprised to not see any candy, just ripples of chocolate ice cream. I scooped some to serve and could start to see a few of the goodies inside but there weren't many. As this is a Candy Crush ice cream I would have expected it to be more fun packed with all the extras, but there weren’t that many. I tasted the chocolate ice cream and that too didn’t feel very luxurious, it felt thin and watery, the chocolate flavour was quite dark and rich but not overly sweet. The problem is that this Candy Crush ice cream’s packaging sells fun and it ends of being a more adult grown up flavour, almost like a gelato. The chocolate drops and white chocolate pieces were nice, but I would have preferred more candy. I just don’t think the contents met my expectations, I was hoping for a little more luxury, something more thick and creamy and packed with candy extras. Did I mention this song thats still going round my head.... anyone have a remedy for ear-worms???

Gamer Grub (Cybercandy @CyberCandyLTD) [By @SpectreUK]

This is a gaming performance snack enhanced with neurotransmitters and vitamins to support cognitive performance. Gamer Grub has been “scientifically formulated to power your core gaming systems for maximum performance”. Having quoted that from the packet, don’t pour it into your console! The snack food promotes a no greasy fingers rule, so you can hold a joypad without it slipping from your grasp or sticking to your hands during gaming. You could pour Gamer Grub into a bowl and game and munch or alternatively abide by the RTFM (Read the Fine Manual) on the back of the packet that states: 1 – Tear open pack, 2 – Pour in mouth – eat – repeat. Just put the bag in easy reach, as you don’t want to take your eyes off the screen when gaming, especially in a fire fight or race for first place!

The 149g resealable bag is a blend of peanut butter chips, peanuts, strawberries, strawberry jelly chips and sweet bread. I decided to accept the RTFM's advice and tore open the packet. The contents smelt like peanut butter mixed with fruit and biscuits. The first mouthful had a crunchy, dry, salty peanut, and strawberry fruity flavoured mix to it. My tastebuds received a full mix of savoury and sweet strawberry flavours, which made my mouth think that I was eating a full meal with each mouthful, first came the salty peanut flavour followed by strawberries for pudding. It’s an unusual and rather nice combination. Though the opening of the packet is quite wide, so I had to tip the contents quite carefully into my mouth, rather than dump quickly, as I’d have ended up wearing the snack rather than eating it. This wouldn't help in a tense high action online Team Deathmatch or Burnout race. This Gamer Grub makes you feel like you’re snacking healthily whilst being a gaming couch potato. Still there’s always the Wii or Move to get you off that settee!

By Spectre

Health Potion, www.manapotions.com by @nli10 (via Cyber Candy, Birmingham UK)

It's not often I go into Cyber Candy in Birmingham. It's like the sweet shop of Tantalus as every sweet you ever wanted is there to see but they are priced just out of your everyday reach. This is sound economics - these things cost a bomb to import and to keep a shop in the centre of Birmingham is similarly steep - but it means I am limited to few impulse buys instead of a sugar fuelled shopping spree. I tend to limit myself to £5 per trip which means I get a nice treat but can still afford to get home afterwards.

One of these choice picks was a Health Potion. You know, like in computer games from the 90s. A little bottle of juice (40ml) for £3.60 doesn't sound that much of a good deal, but if you take a peak at the website then you will understand why I was tempted. Pop it open in another tab (or window) and have a look, It's all really professional and the drinks are marketed as a gamer pick me up. I figured that the little bottle was equivalent to 2 shots of premium drinks in a bar, and not unfairly priced for this so I bought one health potion, because I like Red flavoured drinks. Reading the site I should have gone for the MANA version as that is for the actual gaming session, the health potion is more to get you to work the following day after not sleeping due to a game launch. That said I'm a professional epidemiologist (no - really, I am - I even have half a Masters to prove it!) and know a good opportunity for a drug trial study when I see one, so I dug out Modern Warfare 2 for X360 for the first time in about 2 months, and got ready to play.

My methods were this. Blocks of 4 'every man for himself' matches with the exact same gear and skills set up. After each match I record the kills, deaths & score. After the first 4 'baseline' matches I down all the Health Potion and then keep going until I get bored (likely) or sleepy, or just plain run out of time. There are loads of flaws with this (Im bound to get better at the game as I go along) so it's not a proper study. Also it's not a blind trial - tempting as it is to have some other potions and drink one before each session it wouldn't work as I'd know which ones were which. Going into this I had a 0.60 ish kills to deaths ratio due to never taking the game seriously and always playing for fun with friends, and about 19 hours of playtime.

First of all I had to apply an update - it's the first time I've played since the DLC maps came out so I presume it was for that. Then I had to settle the cat so that I wasn't too interrupted as I went. It must have been about 7pm UK time when I jumped on.

All set up and without head-set I got 12Kills Died 14 times earning a score of 600 for the first game. I think I was a bit rusty and as I began to remember how all the radars worked and how not to run and shoot as it lowers accuracy I got 12K/11D/600 on my 2nd round which is a positive Kills to Death ratio (which is pretty good for me and my goal in every match) also I came 3rd in this game. Next up was a fantastic 17K/13D/850 with a 6 kill streak, and to finish the block 16K/11D/800 which by my previous standards was excellent. This meant that my baseline total was 57K/49D/2850 score, and a 1.16 Ratio. I was pretty chuffed with that - positive Kills to deaths and a few high finishes put me in a good mood so as planned I turned everything off and had some burgers. I watched a bit of TV and then about an hour and a half after switching off got back on again.

The potion itself was easy enough to open by hand with little dot perforations in the wrapper and a seal inside the lid for safety. It smelt odd. I think that ginseng and cinnamon is the best way to describe it, but as I suspected it didn't taste sweet. While the flavour was like a rather nice medicine, or red aftershock without the burn the most satisfying part was the sound it made as you drank it. That kind of precision touch is why the little things found their way to the UK I suspect.

After giving it a few minutes to settle into my system I could feel the caffeine start to work. I tend to restrict my caffeine intake these days (decaf tea - the works) just because I had a few problems with it when I was a teenager, but I've always been a big fan of sports drinks so was quite used to this. Traditionally I'd use them to survive festivals not gaming sessions (powdered energy drinks & free Glastonbury water is the perfect lightweight festival breakfast) but was willing to accept this might help.

First game up the matchmaker threw me into a mid match situation. As there was only a minute (out of 10) gone and I was only 100 points behind I made the snap decision that this match counted and after some close calls I came 2nd. Admittedly this was not a close 2nd, but 13K/6D/650 points was my best ratio so far! Could the potion be already working? Then I think the adrenaline kicked in and took the potion with it as what followed was some of the worst gaming ever witnessed. 10/15/500 , 10/17/500 and 9/17/450 were the rest of the scores for the session, more than offsetting my brilliant start. I was becoming twitchy, angry with the cat for ending my kill-streaks and beginning to think that I was playing NetHack and had quaffed the clumsiness potion instead. The session score was 42K/55D/2100 with a 0.76 ratio and you don't need to know statistics to know that was lower than the first session. In the last match my batteries had died and for that slim portion of time I only died once which probably improved my ratio. I was getting impatient and rushing into situations instead of waiting out and stalking my prey. I quit out so that I could fetch more batteries (I always have a spare set to hand, but these were low too) and had a comfort break.

When I jumped back in the next match was half way through and the leader already had 750 points (half of the target for the game mode) so I didn't count it. I got 8K/7D and 400 points which was only my 2nd positive result on the potion. The rest of the session was much poorer with a grand total of 46K/75D/2300 and a shocking 0.61 ratio. While my kills had increased my deaths had too. I found myself regressing to the play style of my teenage self, running into every firefight hoping for that one kill before I got shot down and giving everyone else all the points in the process. It wasn't a productive strategy.

The fourth (and final) session was not much better but did include one close game and one positive game to produce a 42K/50D/2100 and a 0.84 ratio which is similar to session 2 but with a few less deaths. At this point I became convinced that I could continue to play for a good few more hours, but the results would not change much so decided to write up then sleep. In this session I took a much more relaxed approach to the game, I stayed back and I focused on covering choke points so I could get a few easy kills. All these matches seem to be dominated by 3 or 4 players who knew what they were doing, used multiple weapon sets and also had the heart-beat sensor that I tend to use. This really contrasted with my earlier games where most people seemed to use the same basic gear that I have. I think that the main factor that influenced the trial was that better gamers tend to go on later, and play for longer. In the early evening I was earning the kill rewards for multiple kills and using them to at least keep myself alive. In the later games I got a few, but always the lower ones and was often picked off by the special weapons of the others. That 90 minute food break had really messed up the comparrisons as the gamers playing seemed to be a very different bunch of people.

I think if I repeated this with the MANA potion I'd do it on consecutive weekends in the same time slot to make it fairer with a similar set of opponents. As it stands I don't think that the ratios are different enough to say there is a true effect either-way and more tasty xbox sessions must be planned.

Post experiment I did a bit more reading on the website and found out that one of the Mana Potions contains as much caffeine as 2 cans of Red Bull - the drink that I stopped drinking due to the excessive effects it was having on me. Probably should have looked into that before hand really. On the plus side it probably won't wear off until half way through work tomorrow so if I don't fall asleep now, I probably won't then either. Writing food reviews at 1:30 am is not really typical behaviour mid-week though and probably not wise. They discuss how you can dilute it or drink half for a nice moderate effect, or go all in for epic gaming sessions or clubbing the night away. Again, probably should have looked into that beforehand. I think a single shot from the 2 shot phial would have sufficed for a midweek session on the MW2.

As for the drink, while I think that for MW2 it made me too hyperactive to play well within my skill limits (aiming is difficult enough!) but it definitely fulfils it's goal of allowing me to play for longer. I'd love to try it out while playing lazer quest or another real-world physical activity that really needs the energy. The flavour is good, the bottle is a keeper, and it certainly is a very cool concept. I don't expect many places in the UK will stock it though, which is a shame as a FoodStuffFinds staff outing on Left4Dead2, fuelled by Harcos Lab's newest product Zombie Blood would be a pretty cool experience. But not on a work night...

By NLi10 (GamerTag)

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Additional notes:

The original review was done on Wednesday night and written up in the small hours of Thursday morning. I could still feel the effects of the potion throughout the day and while I hadn't really slept that much I didn't feel tired.
As usual after work on Thursday I (aged 30) went to visit my Granddad (in his late 70s) & Uncle (in his 50s) for our weekly three generations (board)game night which consists of Playing the modern upgraded & faster version of Risk. We have played over 30 times and with the exception of the first week last summer where I won because we didn't understand the rules properly I have only won on one other occasion, and that was due to some atrocious luck on the part of the other (far more experienced players). As both of them have been playing Risk for almost as long as I have been alive, and no one tries to throw the game it's good friendly fun.
And yesterday I actually won. While the Gdad probably should have won, one of the newer rules means you have to hold your capital city as well as three goals to take the victory. When he picked up his final goal he didn't have this so turn passed to my uncle. All he had to do was take my capital and I couldn't win, but he had spotted one of the goals that was easy for me to take (hold 18 countries) and went for it. It cost him pretty much all of his armies, but he got it.
On my turns previously I'd been gradually taking extra countries in Asia. In Risk it's pretty much impossible to hold Asia without having already got victory within your grasp so no one tried to stop me. As my uncle had moved his giant force out of Southeast Asia (Thailand) to get the 18 countries I only needed to take 4 countries with one army in each for the victory. As I had a good chunk of reinforcements and had left 3 ready to take Australasia this was fairly easy (with luck being a bit against me, but not too much).
While I'm not saying that this was all due to being under the influence of the health potion I think it must be considered a little coincidental that my first true victory that relied on my own strategy playing out was less than 24 hours after consuming a drink that gives you a gaming edge.