Chase's Cherry Mash

The Cherry Mash is a classic and I generally grab one whenever I can. It is my father-in-law's favorite candy, so I usually get two. They aren't exactly common place here in the Denver area, but not terribly hard to find either. During my childhood, back in Missouri, they were in just about every gas station and convenience store. They are manufactured in St. Joseph, MO, so that might explain their ubiquity in my youth.

The Cherry Mash is a cherry fondant, with minced maraschino cherry in, covered in an peanut and chocolate mixture. The cherry fondant is a shockingly unnatural color of pink, and it's flavor is pretty standard maraschino cherry/amaretto flavor, but very sweet. The first ingredient is peanut so there are a lot of peanuts in the milk chocolate coating. The peanuts in the coating a very rough exterior. Overall, it is a pretty ugly candy bar. The roughly spherical form factor makes it deceptive diminutive, but at just over 2 ounces, this is a good sized piece of candy.

I love this candy. Its place in my youth makes it impossible for me to provide a objective review. But, even Alton Brown gave it a good review on his series Feasting on Asphalt.

5 out of 5 cavities

McCraw's Confections Taffy

I stopped in at my local grocery and found a huge display of retro candies on sale. So I picked up a few different candies for all of the CEA (Candy Eaters Association) members. This was the cheapest of the lot at $0.25. This price is good considering the quantity of taffy you get.

This taffy is rolled really thin, way tinner than any taffy I have before. It comes packaged in wax paper with some nice retro design. It comes in several different colors and flavors. I had a yellow one, and it was banana flavor. The package indicates that there is also red, purple, blue, green and brown taffies. I don't know what flavor these colors represent as I only at a yellow taffy. It looks like you can buy boxes of this taffy on amazon.com

Bites of taffy were fairly easy to bite of from the bar. You have to bite and stretch to get a piece off. But it is taffy, so that is to be expected. It was nice and chewy, but not overly so. My jaws weren't tired after eating the whole bar. The banana was understated and subtle, not overpowering like you might get with Laffy Taffy. As bits of the taffy stretch more and more it can become brittle and crispy. The crispy bits fade to chewy as you chew it, but it adds different levels textures, which I like.

Overall, I liked this taffy. It is somewhat obscure here in CO and I would have to go out of my way to pick some up. So, I don't think I liked it well enough for it to become a staple candy in my diet, but I would probably pick it up occasionally when find it.

I give it 3.5 cavities out of 5