Wham: Tinglers - Tongue Tingling Belts [By Spectre] [Sour Multicolour]

I’ve long been a fan of sour sweets, since childhood in fact, which was only a couple of years ago. Okay, okay… more like twenty years, but it feels like yesterday and let’s face it, I don’t seem to have lost my baby fat. This pack has a number of short flat strips with raspberry, strawberry, lemon and lime colours prettily lined up against each other in each belt. I was really looking forward to munching on these and violently tore open the pack. Sugar bits flew all over my desk, which aroused some odd looks from my work colleagues. On putting the first one in my mouth a strong sour strawberry and raspberry combined flavour hit me to start with, and then I was left with a sour lemon and lime aftertaste. Sugar falls off pleasingly as you curl the flat belt into your mouth. There’s no particular sensual way to do this, as I found out when the attractive woman opposite me shielded her eyes from the sight. These belts really do make your tongue tingle. After several belts the sourness really kicks in and you feel your face starting to contort with every mouth full. These have to be one of my favourite sour sweets of all time. They are both easy and slightly messy to eat, which helps to bring the child out in you. They are tingly to the taste buds and moreish to the point of obsession. You seriously wouldn’t want to share them with a friend, or even an attractive woman. Well, maybe, just one belt… nah!

By Spectre

Clinkers Mini [Australia] (Cybercandy)

Cybercandy makes me weak; I cannot resist all the goodies from places far away. I saw this bag of chocolate coated sweets, each with a different flavour centre, and assumed they were an Australian version of Revels.
Unlike normal Revels these chocolates only have three different fruit centres and all of them are crunchy, with a honeycomb style centre.
The chocolate coating is of a decent thickness, and although nothing to get excited about on its own, delivers the necessary sweet and creamy cocoa goodness.
The three crunchy centres are:

• Green - Lime, quite a sweet citrus taste, with a pleasant flavour.
• Pink - Strawberry, not the most natural taste, but nice all the same!
• Yellow - Pineapple, loved this one, good tropical taste. Why do we not get more pineapple flavoured choccies in the UK?

I really enjoyed the bag, but Revels still have the upper hand as they have a larger selection of flavours and textures mixed in the bag.

Doritos Red Pepper & Pepperoni Dip (Sainsbury’s)

No Nacho’s are complete without a decent helping of dip, and I usually pick up a jar of Doritos Salsa as a good condiment for them. Doritos have now bought out this new salsa style product, made with red pepper and pepperoni and I picked up this jar for a change, and also because it was labelled as ‘new’! ;-)
I like salsa, I do, I buy it often. This little jar of dip though was amazing, it seem to correct all the faults I hadn’t noticed that the regular salsa had. The sharp acidic taste is gone, and the tomato is softer and the red pepper adds a lovely vegetable flavour. There is a spicier taste, and each spice is easier to spot because the sharp onion isn’t there to overpower it. Finally the pepperoni adds a wonderful meatiness that I would never have though to add, but works really well. I really loved this stuff, and despite buying many jars of Salsa in the past, I consider myself converted! Yum!

Le Whif [Breathable Chocolate] (Amazon)

Le Whif - Mixed Chocolate (3 Pack)

I have been running a competition on this site which involves people telling me about an interesting or favourite personal foodstuff find. One reader told me about ‘Le Whif’ breathable chocolate. A couple of clicks later I was transfixed by the concept of this curious item and low and behold I found them for sale on Amazon!

So the concept: You use the inhaler to breathe in chocolate, which coats your mouth giving a full flavour but just 0.8 calories in each Le Whif. Each Le Whiff offers up to eight chocolate scented puffs. It was created by academics as a very low calorie chocolate sensation.


My packet arrived today, and obviously I was very keen to try it out. It came packaged in a small box, inside of which were three lipstick sized inhalers. The brown is chocolate, the pink one chocolate raspberry and the green chocolate mint.

I decided to go for the chocolate first, to find out what the base chocolate taste was like. I clicked it open, and as per the instructions took a gentle breath. Nothing happened of note, except that I was just trying to work out if there was any noticeable difference when I realised there were just a few specks of something on my tongue. I took a deeper breath, and got a bit more product out , but it was just a light coating. Still not much flavour, and what there was disappeared from my taste buds remarkably quickly. I took a very big breathe in (what the hell) and I managed to not choke, but I don’t advise trying this as I did end up sneezing! I realised that the second breathe I took (i.e. slightly deep) was the right amount, and the product just was a bit of an anti climax to me.

Flavours:

• Brown - The chocolate was dark tasting, and sweet with a hint of drinking chocolate about it. In fact I think a similar experience would be tasting a few specks of drinking cocoa.
• Green – Like a peppermint taste, by the third breath there was a little more chocolate mixed in, but it was a bit like having one lick of a Mint Imperial.
• Pink - Quite a natural flavour, just a hint of raspberry taste with a hint of chocolate, but then it was gone.

I didn’t experience much of any of the flavours (despite finishing each tube), so I do apologise for being a bit vague. For me the experience was certainly not enough to get rid of a chocolate craving, or do anything really, just a strange novelty experience. Proper chocolate is about texture, about how it softens in the mouth, and all the different tones within the cocoa and the sugar, all melting into your taste buds.

The box costs £5 for three Le Whifs, and all I feel I have purchased is a plastic contraption with a tiny amount of product similar to drinking chocolate inside it. When it comes to giving me a low calorie sweet sensation, I’m afraid I’d rather buy a packet of sugar free mints.

Bahlsen Choco Sticks (Sainsbury’s)

Yesterday Pocky, and today a different look at the concept of biscuit sticks. This rather lovely product consists of a sort of paddle of biscuit, coated in milk chocolate. Like the Pocky there is a section at the end that doesn’t have any coating on it, in order to keep fingers clean!
Being thicker biscuits, they are full of flavour, the base is rich and sweet, giving the impression it is made with something like dark Demerara sugar. The chocolate is milky and sweet and adds a nice contrast to the biscuit. It isn’t just a chocolate flavoured coating and is instead proper good quality milk chocolate.
The problem is that they are quite quick to eat which leads to the inevitable having to have another... and then another. Let’s just say, I know they were good because the box didn’t last long!