i am a total consumer whore: if it comes in a shiny new package, with new ingredients, in slightly altered flavors or colors, i'm there! but i must admit, i also have a soft spot for the 'classics' including the mighty Junior Mint.

besides being featured in a sitcom plot, Junior Mints are a simple panned confection, waxy dark-ish chocolate on the outside and a flowing mint goo on the inside. simple, but oddly addictive. to me, the Junior Mint is the ideal movie theatre snack (upsetting, since most movie theatres have replaced them with trendy crap like Nestle Bunch-a-Crunch. meh!) the only flaw in this otherwise perfect candy is that they're not exactly stable in sub-optimal conditions, with a dangerous tendency to rupture and form gross clumps of Junior Mint in the bottom of a box.

once upon a time, i purchased a box of Junior Mints from a dusty old drugstore that was apparently not in a very high-traffic area. the mints had crystallized into a strange, grainy, solid-but-not-too-solid version of themselves. I LOVED THEM (and have luckily suffered no ill effects from eating expired candy) but have never come across this phenomenon again.

for those of you who wish to recreate this delightful experience, i've found another candy mint with a similar flavor profile, but with a much less gooey center. ladies and gentlemen, i present you with the glorious Dutch Mint, also known by the rather generic moniker "Chocolate Dinner Mint"

best of all, you can apparently find these with some regularity at the $.99 Store. gourmet mints, on a budget! huzzah!