The Great Easter Chocolate Battle 2

  • April 1, 2018

Another year, another Easter, another face-off in Chocolate Easter products. This year: rabbits!

Three to be specific, all rabbits, all milk chocolate, all about the same size and identical price ($3.99). I’ve eaten one a weekend for the last three weeks… let’s see which was best?

The first was Lindt, who as far as I can recall pioneered this type of Easter treat. These familiar little rabbits have been available for years now, and I’ve eaten my share in years prior.

The taste was of course sublime: exquisitely creamy and moorish. This was the thinnest of the three (which is a plus) and almost impossible to not gobble down in one go. Maybe it was unwise to start with Lindt, for the taste would be difficult to beat…

Ghiradelli was next. The packaging is obviously much cuter than Lindt – more a character and less an animal – but their budget obviously didn’t run to a real ribbon.

The chocolate though… well it was bad. Sickly sweet, and possessing the sort of vaguely-coffee taste I associate with dark chocolate, I couldn’t stomach more than a few pieces. KLS was equally unimpressed, and unfortunately some of this guy ended up in the garbage. Easily worse than Lindt!

Lastly came Godiva. The packaging as you can see is impressive, and the feel of the foil is soft and delightful too. This guy was just nice to hold, and I was optimistic about what I’d taste inside.

Opening it was a treat too: the foil splits into two halves rather than a single sheet. But the taste… the taste… it’s awful. One bite was all I could manage before being repulsed. I was reminded of dollar-store fake-chocolate, and while KLS is still bubbling away at it I expect a good amount of this bunny will be trashed as well 🙁

So it was in the end no contest. Lindt effortlessly won the Easter chocolate rabbit contest. But was it better than the otherworldly Cadbury rabbit I bought last year? Alas I never found that product this year, so we’ll never know…

Oh, and Happy Easter to everyone! 🙂

  • Posted in Miscellaneous
  • Robert

Buried Treasure

  • March 22, 2018

Last year I went on an expedition into a tomb that had been sealed for decades: a crawlspace upstairs in J & J’s house. I found some startling things in there, mostly in great condition, and one of the most remarkable was this:

The Game Of Time And Space eh? This beauty was published way back in 1980, and is a board game made for and by ‘anoraks’. Back then I would have loved it!

Here’s what it says on the back:

Note that the complexity claims to tend low…

The game includes a big board, some boring plastic pieces (instead of cardboard versions of The Doctors?) and loads of cardboard tokens.

Here’s the board:

And a closeup of a very fanciful depiction of Gallifrey:

And here’s a selection of tokens:

Gameplay is a little like Dungeon and consists of the player moving around the board trying to find several treasures which are initially face-down and often protected by monsters. A selection of items can assist with movement, combat etc. and once the player has the pieces he is after he returns to Gallifrey to win.

A read of the rules seems to contradict the summary on the back: this game seems overly complex and tedious to play. I couldn’t convince KLS to have a go, but I imagine the item wrangling and large variety of rules does not a quick-and-easy game make.

Look at this quick reference rulebook for instance, which every player gets a copy of for reference:

As I said, by nerds for nerds 🙂

It’s also got very little to do with Doctor Who, in the sense you could easily change some names and art and the game would be the same. Shouldn’t time travel or regeneration been themes?

One day I’ll play this, and possible I’ll update when I do. But for me it’s an ancient and treasured part ‘of the collection’!

Operation NYC

  • March 14, 2018

Last weekend we took a two-night trip to NYC.

We hadn’t been for years, and just wanted to shop and eat and visit a museum.

We took the train down, which is always fun, and stayed in a nice hotel right in the middle of the CBD.

It was very cold! But the streets were filled with people and we didn’t let the temperature stop us 🙂

After we arrived we hit the shops, somehow managing to drop mad dollars at Kinokuniya. Naturally I bought a load of postcards as well. Did you get one yet?

The next day after breakfast we visited the Intrepid, and aircraft carrier docked at a pier right in the city.

It’s part of a museum that includes a submarine, Concorde and even a Space Shuttle! It’s very good and highly recommended.

After a siesta we managed to drop even madder dollars at Koreatown cosmetics and Kpop shops before heading into Times Square for some lights!

And how pretty they were! If I look nervous in this shot it’s only because my face was freezing off.

Then the next day – after a bit more k-town shopping – we traveled home in our own private ‘roomette’ on the train. It even included a meal in the dining car.

It was a great little trip. We’ll probably make this a regular getaway 🙂