Are these available in England?
http://www.amazon.com/Reeses-Miniatures-5-3-Ounce-Bags-Pack/dp/B000WL174K

They are through this site: http://www.americansweets.co.uk/reeses-22-c.asp

There are at least a couple of other similar sites. Other than that, I don't think Hershey's has official distribution in the UK. I don't recall ever seeing Hershey's products in Italy nor Portugal either.

I ask because we're bringing items for a charity auction at the Filk convention in a couple weeks, and we're looking to bring things that English folk might crave but which they otherwise might not be able to easily get.

That American Sweets site looks like a great resource in that regard, thanks!

I wish I had access to Lion bars here. I'd pretty much trade any and all products Hershey makes for that one product. Excluding products licensed from Cadbury and Nestlé of course.

All things considered, of the Hershey stuff easily available here in Canada, the Reese stuff is my favorite. And Kisses pretty much rank as the lowest form of chocolate I've ever eaten (including some chocolates that were well past their prime "eat by" dates).

You can get regular Reeses here. No idea about the mini ones though.

English folk, or US expats? I'm not sure that many English or British folk "crave" these US products that they've never tasted -- I think most people on this side of the pond have only heard of Twinkies from Ghostbusters, Reese's Pieces from E.T., and so on. Mind you, perhaps at a filk convention that's exactly the effect you're looking for?

Peter

A bit of a topical subject with Kraft taking over Cadbutys. I'm not taking sides, but I don't think I've read a report that didn't go along the lines of: "I hope Kraft aren't thinking of bringing tasteless American style chocolate here"

They are pretty lousy. They're like chocolate-flavored wax. I don't remember them being so bad when I was a kid.

Oddly, there's nothing in the list of ingredients that stands out as being that odd. It's Sugar, Milk, Cocoa Butter, Chocolate, Soya Lecithin, and Vanillin. The first four are obvious. Soy lecithin is an emulsifier, which probably just helps keep them from turning white, and vanillin means "artificial vanilla extract".

The only thing I can think of is that chocolate is a mix of cocoa solids and cocoa butter, so it effectively lists cocoa butter twice. I wonder if they've distilled the lower-melting-point fats out of the ingredient they list as "Cocoa Butter" in order to make it less melty.

The plain milk chocolate bars are still pretty good. It's clearly different chocolate.

Agreed that most English rightfully look down upon most US chocolate. Hershey's bars and kisses are just blech I agree. On the other hand, there are some really delicious and unusual things you can get here if you look past basic chocolate.

Any other ideas of kinds of little inexpensive things that might work well in a charity auction that are easy to bring on a plane?

I am sure I've seen some of them in shops here recently. The packaging looks different, it's orange all over with yellow writing, maybe they are a different thing?

I'm a fan of peanut butter, but lots of people I know are not, still I think it would be a cool thing to bring, along with boxes of twinkies. I have no idea what they are but always wanted to try them since I saw them on Ghostbusters (as already pointed out) as a kid.

One American thing I'd also like to try is a slushy. We have them here, just not the scale you seem to have over there. I also imagine that the burgers are made with this same multiplier in mind, but that could just be wishful thinking

Cheers

Cris.

Edit - I think I should point out I am not saying taking a slushy on a plane it a good idea

He can sneak it in his pants.

Better than a Reese cup, IMO, is Nutella with natural peanut butter. Which is nothing but mashed/pressed-smooth roasted peanuts - not that artificial stuff typically advertised on TV (Jif, etc..). Though Nutella is chock-full of palm oil unfortunately. But better still is some nice hazelnut chocolate like Ritter's Praline with the same peanut butter.

I think it's due to some basic differences in the recipe. I was reading about that recently- that Hershey starts off with different milk, for one thing.

Another thing they've just started doing is replacing 'chocolate' with 'chocolate candy' in the description of the product. Their definitions are a load of legalese that basically means they're gonna sell you crap now.
Mmmm... chocolate crap!

People with too much spare time have already listed the various ingredients of Nutella around the world. Its listed as unspecified vegetable oil for the Nutella in the UK. I've never seen Nutella + Peanut Butter in the same jar though.

They've already got the right shape with the "Kisses" product. Pretty soon it's going to be impossible to buy anything remotely close to containing original/real/expected contents. I suppose they're working on changing expectations though.

Around me, if you go buy/taste a "Chocolate Eclair" 19 out of 20 times you're going to be eating some oil-filled piece of shit. It might as well be a Twinkie.

Blasphemy. You have to combine them yourself. If you're fancy you can even use two hands instead of one to prevent cross contamination of the jars. When I have company over and have to set the table, I'll even provide two butter knives.

Ahh. I thought you meant you could buy a jar that contained both. I've seen peanut butter & jam/jelly in the US so thought there might be a Nutella variant.

It's unclear that you're intending Reeses Cups to be "artificial stuff", but I encourage you to look at the labeling:


What that essentially says is that the peanut butter is made from peanuts, sugar, and salt. Which is about a thousand times better than what you get in a jar of Jif. It's odd that the candy is better for you than what is nominally real food.

Actually, Bitt is correct, the peanut butter in Reese cups is pretty good. I was referring however to the Jif and similar products being artificial. And also a joke back to Nutella, that while tasty is pretty much brown Hazelnut-Chocolate-flavored oil.

The peanut butter I buy doesn't have any sugar and it's great. Nice roasted flavor. It's from a house brand of the Loblaw company, though I've seen a product labeled as 'natural' from Kraft as well. I've also bought similarly plain roasted mashed peanut butter at Costco, but I don't know if there are any popular national brands other than the Kraft jar I saw (and that's not a popular offering here in fact). Mostly you'll find Jif and similar sugar-loaded peanut butter-like spreads.

Eww. Looking more closely at the ingredient lists, roughly 75% is oil or sugar. Nasty but tasty.

Hmm. Looking at the brand I used to eat years ago, it is 95% peanut and the remainder is sugar, preservative and salt.

Re: Nutella


Yeah, you should try some on a plain sugar cookie or mediocre shortbread.

President's Choice Just Peanuts is the stuff I've been buying since 2002, when I first started eating any peanut butter on a regular basis.

For some reason I thought it did have salt (used in the roasting) but they claim it doesn't on their site.

When we were doing a lot of trips to the UK, we would bring the Business Developer that was working the project Jack Daniels. Probably doesn't help you much, but when people talk about taking stuff over, that is the first thing that pops into my mind

For Tony,

If you want something that isn't strictly United States "American" but definitely one of the most North American products you're likely to find, consider Maple Syrup or Maple Syrup derived products like hard candies.

However, this is definitely heavier and more expensive than Reese peanut butter cups.

OOOO, great idea.

Don't forget the horehound candy and rootbeer barrels.
lol

And the Beemans gum, a Moon Pie, and some RC Cola.

I just wanted to chime in and agree that while Hershey's Kisses and even the bars are pretty awful chocolate, their new product, Hershey's Bliss is pretty damn yummy. I'm partial to the milk chocolate variety.

And I loooove Reese's Cups. Mmmmm...

Though, if anyone here has a Trader Joe's near them, I highly recommend their brand of chocolate/peanut butter cups.

On my first trip to New York it was the first thing I bought, for that exact reason.

Other than that I didn't bother much with chocolate on my trips to the US. I was far more interested in Carl's Jr, In-N-Out Burger and the Triple Quarter Pounder with Cheese from McD's. You guys have so much choice when it comes to dead cow in bap. We get to choose McD's or Burger King and that's it.... unless you find a Wimpy that's still going.

I'm going to have to pay more attention to the packages.

There is a strict definition on what the word Chocolate means, So much coco so much coco butter, yada yada. It meant a level of quality had to be maintained in order to label it chocolate. So they do an end run by putting "chocolate candy" in the ingredients.

I do seem to recall reading an article where the candy companies wanted to replace the coco butter with alternatives, but were rebuffed by them that control the definitions, don't remember if that was the FDA or Congress.

edit: http://www.hersheys.com/nutrition-professionals/chocolate/composition/chocolate-types.aspx

I did a little googling after I posted that and found the change (for Hershey, at least) to have taken place in late 2008- a lot of complaints popped up in September of that year.
Yes- the FDA has a very specific definition of 'Chocolate' and so Hershey substituted 'Chocolate Candy', 'Chocolatey' and some other similar words in product descriptions where they changed the recipe to less than the FDA's definition.