ProperCorn - Lightly Sea Salted [by @Nli10]

Yesterday we popped into London to see The Book Of Mormon (which is very, very good but not one for people who are offended, or who dislike musicals) and as we came via Marylebone station I decided to pop into the Bagel Factory and get some more of that ProperCorn that we liked so much last time.  They only had the flavour we tried previously and this lightly sea-salted variety so I went for this.

We cracked these open in the interval and were struck by how little there was done to the corn.  Lightly salted is correct - these are pretty much as plain as you can get! This was not a problem as they all got devoured pretty quickly, but in contrast to the explosive flavours in the previous kind this was a confusing thing.

I guess if you want good popcorn that tastes of popcorn then this is it! Its not going to make you run for the drinks stand due to salt, it's not the horrible sugar coated popcorn that most bagged ones are.  It's not too soft and not too hard, and there are no dreaded unpopped kernels lurking at the bottom.

I'd probably choose the Fiery Worcester Sauce and Sun-dried Tomato version over this personally, but it's nice to have a choice depending on your mood!

Fruit-tella Magics (WH Smiths) [By @spectreUK]

These Fruit-tella Magics chewy sweets were made with natural colours and flavours, including fruit juice. I’m always impressed by sweet manufacturers that use actual fruit juice instead of crazy chemicals in an attempt to create the same flavour affects in a mad professor’s laboratory deep underground in a secret location. There were two flavours in the 140g bag, with each 100g having 400 calories, with 54g of sugar and 6.9g of fat. The ingredients included fruit juice from concentrates; orange, raspberry, strawberry and lemon, as well as fully hydrogenated coconut oil, glucose syrup, sugar, citric acid, gelatine, and gum arabic, amongst other things. The packet exclaimed that orange flavour changes to strawberry and raspberry flavour changes to lemon and that you have to chew to change the flavour. Each chewy sweet was individually wrapped. Orange changing to strawberry flavour had a very mild orange flavour that was quickly overpowered by strawberry, both mixed together to make a pleasant tasting chewy sweet. This was a natural tasting combination and not overly sweet which made them very tasty, moreish and did not particularly give me a guilty feeling whilst unwrapping and dumping one after another in my mouth. Raspberry changing to lemon flavour was more a mix of raspberry and lemon, which made for a sweet and sour explosive combo in the mouth. These were very nice indeed, again natural feeling and tasty, strangely healthy feeling even. Both flavour combinations of these chewy sweets were very flavoursome and I didn’t feel bad eating loads of them in one sitting. I wouldn’t say the flavours change from one to the other though, more a mixture of the two, but were still very tasty indeed and natural feeling. The rest of the chewy sweets certainly went down very quickly in the office too!

By Spectre

BARR Limited Edition Bubblegum Drink (Pound World) [By @cinabar]

This is from the lovely people at BARR who brought us the fabulous drink that is Irn Bru, they have a new limited edition on the shelves... Bubblegum! When I told Spectre what drink they had released he replied; “How can you chew it if it’s made from girders?” :-D
I’ll be honest when I first saw this I didn‘t know what to think, I’ve never seen a Bubblegum drink before, and part of me thought that was because it something that doesn’t sound quite right. You can’t say no to the idea of four cans for £1 though, so obviously I picked them up.
I chilled the drink, to try and make it as refreshing as possible, and then poured it out into my glass. It was blue, and by that I really do mean blue, quite a bright shade too. There was an impossibly sweet smell too. Oh boy!
I tentatively took my first sip. Wow! It was indeed super sweet and tasted like bubblegum ice lollies, the kind I used to buy as a kid. This drink does have the unmistakable taste of that bubblegum flavour, it’s very sweet and the taste is over powering, but part of me quite liked it. It made me nostalgic despite its super sweet tone, but I could imagine that kids who are the target market would just lap it up!
The new BARR Bubblegum is something a bit different and playful, and it is nice to see a bit of innovation in the market. Just don’t go expecting a subtle delicate drink, it's bright blue and fully flavoured! :-)

By Cinabar

New Galaxy Honeycomb Crisp (WHSmiths) [By @cinabar]

The thing about buying chocolate in WH Smith is that I’m rather used to new products being on a £1 special, so it is really annoying buying full price chocolate from in there. Anyway that aside, new is new so I picked this bar and another one for a later review. I had no change from £5 though and just 2 chocolate bars! :-o
I wanted to take a moment to mention the updated wrappers that Galaxy has switched too. What do you think of them? Part of me thinks they stand out better than the previous ones and the sweep of colour makes them more easily identifiable. I’m not keen on the matt finish though, it makes it look a bit retro, but somehow not in a good way.
I do like honeycomb, and cinder toffee, with Crunchie bars also being a favourite. From the top this bar looks like a regular Galaxy bar, but turn it over or break a piece off and you can see all the honeycomb pieces within it.
I tried my first chunk, and an overwhelming sweetness hit my taste buds. It was if anything too sweet, even for me. I didn’t think Galaxy was as sweet as it was, but with the addition of the honeycomb it really tipped it for me. After the first strip I was done, I just didn’t fancy any more. I liked the crunchy texture, but couldn’t quite worked out what happened.
I can eat honeycomb raw, and regularly have the chocolate dipped variety, so why wasn’t this working?
I’m hoping to have more luck with the other new bar, a new Galaxy nutty version, which I also picked up. Maybe I just wasn’t in the mood for such a sweet treat, I do worry about how other factors can influence you perception of a product. I’ll have to try it again, and see if I change my mind. Has anyone else tried it? What did you think?

By Cinabar

Fentiman's & Bloom Botanically Blended Gin & Tonic (Sainsbury's Online) [by @NLi10]

I love Fentiman's so when I was shopping online on Sainsbury's and saw a new version of the tonic I added a couple to my basket - but they were much more expensive than I expected.  Turns out these were a premixed alcoholic drink with Bloom Gin - so I took one out and figured I'd give one a shot.

The Fentiman's Tonic that I reviewed before was nice, but more of an & Tonic, than a just tonic by itself. Here was a perfect opportunity to try it with their suggested gin.  I had it with ice with a meal (that turned out to be spicier than we'd intended!) and drank it slowly over the evening.

The alcohol content was stringer than I'd expected - this was more like 2 gin & tonics in a bottle than one larger but weaker one as I'd expected.  The flavours intermingled quite nicely and the deep gin took the edge off the tonic.  As I noted before this was designed to sit neatly with gin and not to explode the senses like the Fever Tree tonic does so it was a nicely refined experience.  I'm not enough of a gin drinker to know about the flavours of that part, but it was certainly nice and something I could not only drink again but could see myself taking to a party or similar.

Fentiman's have branched out into the alcoholic drinks over the years and I think this has largely worked.  I can see this being something that people would ask for by name as it's a distinctive taste and one you can guarantee has two quality ingredients (unlike my university fail of mixing expensive vodka with No Frills cola... yuk!).