FRANK – Milk Chocolate Mini Eggs

I’m not a religious man. A spiritual man, perhaps, but not one that is attached or prescribed to any established religion. That being said, I love any excuse to take a day off. It’s no surprise that pretty much every holiday we have is marketed to death. Easter is no different. How we managed to get from the resurrection of Christ to bunnies, I don’t know. How we got from bunnies to chocolate egg laying bunnies, I really don’t know. All this being said, I grew up with a fond appreciation for all the weird crazy chocolate products that came out of the holiday.

While I have grown out of some of the seasonal items like Cadbury Creme Eggs, some I still enjoy to this day. Mini Eggs aren’t really anything special when you think about it – solid milk chocolate covered in a candy shell. None of those things particularly appeal to me anymore as an adult, but I guess the combination of it conjures up a very powerful nostalgia factor that keeps me coming back to it.

While not the classic Cadbury version, this one is by a brand I have come to know and love over the past few years. FRANK is the house brand of Canadian Tire. For the most part I have had good experiences with this brand, from dish cloths, to garbage bags, to their consumables. They have some pretty neat chip flavours, and some are actually quite good. I’ll get into some of those later on. For now, let’s look at how their mini eggs hold up.

I thing I really appreciate about the marketing of FRANK products is how they take a picture of the product itself, add a dad joke and some nice, simple drawings overlaid on the image to create a cute, memorable package. This package is no exception and does not disappoint. Even the colour scheme is evocative of the original eggs. Whoever came up with the idea to market their in-house products like this deserves an award. I love it.

I can’t really tell since I don’t eat mini eggs much, but they seem to be slightly smaller and less rounded overall. Everything else strikes me as the same and they did a solid job imitating the Cadbury ones. The only thing I can see missing is the signature brown flecks and spots that the original has on the candy shell. It’s not a big deal to me, since the shell itself has no real flavour anyways. Overall I’d say they’ve done a bang up job capturing what made the original great, from an appearance perspective. But as well all know, it’s what’s on the inside that counts.

The package smells exactly like I remember the Cadbury ones smelling like, so we are off to a good start. The texture of the candy shell is spot on and I’m instantly hit with the nostalgia bomb. The chocolate is basically the same as well, solid milk chocolate. I can’t be too sure, but I feel like this milk chocolate is slightly sweeter. Either that or both were always this sweet and I just didn’t realize it. Based on the ingredient and nutrition label, it does seem like these ones have an extra gram of sugar per serving.

I’d say I’m relatively indifferent between choosing these over Cadbury. That being said, I might end up with the Cadbury one in most cases, just because FRANK products can only be found in Canadian Tire stores at the moment, while Cadbury is everywhere (Canadian Tire stores included.) They are slightly cheaper, but with most seasonal candy and snacks, I wait until the day after the holiday when they go on clearance anyways. By that time the price difference is usually negligible. It’s probably for the best that these are seasonal, since I don’t think my body can handle having these on anything close to a regular basis. Would I get these again? Sure, but I would probably want to limit myself to at most a bag a year. These things are way too easy to overdose on.

As far as seasonal items go, this is a solid choice and if you see this at your local Canadian Tire store, I’d recommend grabbing one, if for no other reason than to relive the nostalgia of mini eggs at a reasonable price. This is also a great snack to be shared. I just so happened to have these things called “egg holders” and decided to fill them with chocolate and go around the office sharing them. Good times all around!

And with that, I leave you all with a Happy Easter! Enjoy your long weekend, and remember to gorge yourself on chocolate eggs, hollow chocolate bunnies, and everything in between. And I guess observe what the actual holiday is supposed to represent…if you’re into that kind of thing.