Candy Corn is Disgusting: a review.

Well, it’s officially the first day of Autumn - though you wouldn’t know it by feeling the outside temperature (a balmy 80 degrees). We figured this would be a great day to begin taking a look at some of the season’s limited edition Junk Food offerings. Of course, there will be a few of these articles sprinkled throughout the season, so consider this part one. Anyways, without further ado, let us start off with…

Brach’s Donut & Pie Flavored Canty Cornts

Let’s start this section of the review off by saying neither of us are fans of Candy Corn. You might even say...it’s fucking disgusting. Abhorrent. There was a joke made by Lewis Black a while back about how all candy corn was produced over 100 years ago…

Yeah, that one. Anyways, our sentiments are pretty much in line with that way of thinking. So when we heard they were updating the formula for the first time in over a century (presumably), we figured eh, what the hell...how bad could it be? Answer: it’s kind of a mixed bag - no pun intended. Yes, I have already scoped out the bridge I’ll be jumping off of after that one, thank you very much.

The Flavors

In the “pie” collection, we’re treated to a measly two flavors - Pumpkin and Apple respectively. As for the “Donut Shoppe” (yes, they really put in that pretentious fucking ‘e’), we are treated to original, chocolate and strawberry “glazed” flavors. Lastly, we picked up a bag of caramel candy corn, to round out this smorgasbord of mediocrity.

Apple Pie

This was by far, the best of the bunch. The only decent candy corn we’ve ever eaten. We’d even go as far to say that we’d buy a bag of just this flavor if Brach’s smartened up and actually offered it. It was in that uncanny valley of flavors, in that it didn’t just taste like an artificial apple, but it somehow managed to taste just like a slice of pie. I don’t know what kind of black magic they had going on when they conjured up this flavor, but we sure wish it had carried over to any of the others we tasted. That brings us to…

Pumpkin Pie

Oh my fucking god. The one thing worse than actual candy corn, is pumpkin pie candy corn. If the flavor was supposed to be pumpkin pie Yankee Candle Corn, then maybe you’d have a case for accuracy. We really thought original candy corn was scraping the bottom of the barrel, what we didn’t know, is that there was another 50 feet below that. Now this may have been user error, as we tried the Apple Pie first. Well I’ll tell you, it wasn’t. We went ahead and re-tried this flavor after trying ALL of the flavors, and still think we would’ve rather eaten feces. Actual feces.

We award this flavor zero points, and may God have mercy on it’s soul.

Caramel

Yep, that’s sugar. We figured that if you mixed one of the best types of candy with one of the worst types of candy, you’d end up with something at least inoffensive, and for a change, we were right! These basically taste like cheap caramels with the texture of candy corn, and considering that the texture is the least offensive part of candy corn, you really could do a lot worse here...and we did! We’d say if you’re going to buy a bag of candy corn (for whatever reason), go with this one. It might not have the pretty colors of the traditional confection, and it might not taste as good as the apple pie, but this is the best bang for your buck since the apple pie is bogged down by being paired the the abysmal pumpkin pie. Really though, just buy a bag of caramels...what's wrong with you?

Original Glazed Donut

You know when you go to your local farmers market, and they’ve got the fresh, organic, farm to table candy corn that they hand picked from the vine? Well neither do we. But we imagine this is what that candy corn would taste like. Glazed Donut is a bit of a stretch, in that regular candy corn is basically made of donut glaze that isn’t good enough to grace a donut. So instead for these, they took the glaze that IS good enough to make it on a donut, and made it into a candy corn. All in all, not bad, not great. Would certainly take it over regular candy corn any day of the week though.

Strawberry Glazed Donut

Yup, it tastes like generic artificial strawberry. Derek has likened it to the flavor of a RingPop. Being 30 years old, I (Zach) will take his word on that. They aren’t gonna win any awards with this one, but they could certainly do worse *cough*Pumpkin Pie*cough* They also seem to have just plain given up on the “donut” aspect of these flavors at this point. It’s not bad, it’s not good, it simply is.

Chocolate Glazed Donut

If you have a friend that REALLY enjoys the taste of chocolate frosting, you can fuck up their whole day with these. They start off tasting pretty much like cheap chocolate frosting, then slowly devolve into that Yankee Candle flavor profile that we had become so accustomed to with the pumpkin pie flavor from the other bag. While not quite as heinous as the aforementioned Pumpkin Pie flavor, these were still pretty darn bad. In conclusion, fuck this whole-ass bag.

All in all, these bags were only $1 a piece… and we’ll say that’s $3 you won’t be getting back. Why not use that $3 to buy something decent, like…

Pumpkin Pie Kit Kats

Remember when we said how the pumpkin pie candy corn tastes like how a yankee candle smells? Well, these Kit Kats smell like a Yankee Candle, but taste like honest to god pumpkin pie! Quick, someone call Brach’s and tell them to hire the guy who created the flavor profile for these bad boys, because he fuckin’ nailed it. Kit Kats are no strangers to making weird and unusual limited edition flavors, but it's nice to see them FINALLY making their way out of Japan and into the States. We would say buy yourself a bag of these not just because they are a delight, but to encourage Kit Kats to put out more limited edition & seasonal flavors. I mean, after tasting these, the idea of something like a gingerbread Kit Kat at Christmas time has us drooling. In conclusion, Candy Corn bad, Kit Kats good.

Well that’s going to do it for our first Junk Food review of the Halloween season! If you’ve tried any of these candies, let us know down below, and don’t forget to give us a follow on Instagram where we’ll be posting a lot more Halloween content every day between now and October 31st!