Welcome to Darden Studio's Lemon Candy Review. In this new blog feature, we'll be sharing findings from our never-ending quest for quality lemon-flavored confections. Rather infrequently, studio controller and lemon enthusiast Joyce Ketterer will offer a critique of the latest lemony treat to reach our studio. Junior draftsman and label junkie Noam Berg will weigh in on the packaging design and typography. Candies will be evaluated for overall flavor, lemonyness, sourness, and texture.

For our inaugural review, we sampled some sugar-free hard candies from New York's very own Aron Streit. Known to NYC Jews young and old for Streit's Matzos, these guys have been making kosher food products since 1925. These candies are not only sugar free, but kosher for Passover. Here's what Joyce has to say about 'em:

Flavor: I keep waiting for the flavor to show up. It starts, but never really develops. Jolly Rancher make a sugar free candy with a much fuller flavor, so it's not the sugarfree factor at work here.

Lemonyness, sourness: There's some citrus here, and potential for a good flavor, but again, it doesn't develop so it's not even worth evaluating. Not a complete flavor.

Texture: Classic hard candy, perfect form factor and consistency for throwing at a bar mitzvah.

Noam on the design:

“This is a re-packaging of an Israeli candy, so there's two different aesthetics going on here. The outside is a very safe, conventional candy package. Eye-catching yellow, informal font, and appropriate clip-art. It works.

The individual candies feature a Hebrew label, with a bit too much outline and shadow for such a small size. The manufacturer's logo looks like it hasn't changed in 30 years, which I like.”