Mike and Ike are old school.
But I’m sure you noticed on your last visit to 7-11 that there’s all sortsa nu skool flaves for the kool kids.

(And I mean koooool. Check out their Web site. A bad indie pop tune starts playing amid shadows of skaters. And – I swear I’m not kidding – you can tag the site. Of course, I love that it’s Flash…and you can only do these types of things with Flash. )

Thanks AP Photo for the AP Photo

Here’s one I hadn’t seen before that my wife picked up tonight: Mike and Ike Tangy Twister.

The box is orange peachy. Strange. So I expected orange, peachy, maybe tropical flavors. But they weren’t. Also, inside the box was a plastic bag… Ok – kinda makes sense. I mean, tonight I also opened a box of Good ‘n Plenty and they were not in a plastic bag in the box and let me tell you – they couldn’t be staler. Like gnawing on a rug. I love my candy tough as nails, so I aint complaining. My point is that if I’m manufacturing Mike and Ikes or Good ‘N Plenty, I’m probably more concerned about the unwashed masses and their love of things fresh…so I’ll look past the extra packaging.

But let’s look past the box color and the white plastic bag in the box and let’s talk about the goods. There are 5 flavors:

Raspberry: kinda maroon in color and I’d say taste like a raspberry. Pretty good real flavor there – tangy, as advertised and almost sour but not lemon-sugar-texture sour. These are Mike and Ike pills: solid shell, chewy inside…you know.

Green apple: Yep – tastes, at least right when you put it in your mouth, like all the other green apple candies. Not bad. The taste dissipates a bit too fast. And again – as advertised: tangy.

Pineapple: Well goddam good for Mike and Ike to go with pineapple. No one does pineapple! But this wasn’t very tangy and if I didn’t know from the box to expect pineapple, I wouldn’t have guessed it as pineapple. Also wasn’t that tangy.

Orange: ok now. this is a good orange flavor. Again, ephemeral (look it up). But it actually tastes like orange. Not like fake orange. For that brief short minute it tasted like I was drinking orange juice. Nice job.

Cherry: typical cherry flavor but the best tang of the bunch. This one seemed to linger in the mouth longer than others too.

Bottom Line: Good. Some good flavors. Some real movement in flavor profiles. Generally tangy. But if you eat these by the handful like me, you will probably just get a general sour candy experience that won’t be worth remarking about.