i am a huge fan of malt, in candy or milkshakes or in a teaspoon straight out of the jar (well, maybe not so much.) i am not as huge a fan of malt liquor, but i suppose there's still time to up my street cred. at any rate, one of the first candies in which i encountered malt was the venerable Whoppers, which has a decently malty center, but covers it all in a thin layer of waxy fake chocolate (thanks, Hershey's, for your continuing efforts to destroy chocolate!)

much better are the malted milkballs that are covered by like 1/2" of genuine milk chocolate, such as these beauties manufactured by the georgia nut company. a good malted milkball is OMG GOOD, and something that i can easily eat until i become violently ill. if that's not a ringing endorsement, i don't know what is.

but, back to Whoppers. recently, as with practically every other product these days, a selection of "limited editions" have appeared on store shelves. i've seen both reese's peanut butter Whoppers and strawberry milkshake Whoppers. this past weekend, i indulged in the strawberry milkshake variety, and i must say, they're kind of not so great.

to be fair, it's not easy returning to the waters of mockolate after you've been swimming around in the real thing for so long. at least this doesn't really even pretend to be chocolate, with a coating that smells like lip balm and is disturbingly flesh-colored.

these are far from inedible, they're just really, really sweet. i still like the slightly salty hit of the maltball center, but the coating is overpowering. i don't quite get the milkshake flavor, just a vague (VERY vague) fruity essence behind a waxy sweet-sweet-sweet coating. i still ate quite a few of them-- no surprise there-- but i probably would not buy them again. i'll stick with real chocolate with real cocoa butter, thanks.