Off Topic Post: Treatsie Box Review (October, 2013)

                So I finally got my first Treatsie Box in the mail! [If you don’t know, Treatsie is a subscription service, for $15 a month they send you unique artisan candy] I was so excited for this, I got home at 10:00 pm (MBA program – we have a lot of late nights) and the first thing I did was run to the mail box.  Now of course, the lights by the mail boxes in my community were out, so I was trying to juggle the junk mail in my hand, my mail key, the key to the package locker, and my cell phone (being used as a flashlight) in an effort to get this package out of the package locker.  

                My first impression of the box – it is really tiny.  I did a lot of research into this before I subscribed, seeing other people’s pictures did not prepare me for how small the box actually was.  I am a huge discount shopper – I like to get the best bang for my buck, so spending $15 on candy already was a huge challenge for me.  Seeing the size of my box made me super nervous.  I already knew what I was getting thanks to the Treatsie website, but again – pictures are really deceiving. 

(You can kind of see my coasters there for size reference)

                Inside I have two packages of toffee (almond toffee with milk chocolate and caramel corn toffee with milk chocolate) – both from Craftmade Toffee, a salted lavender caramel and a Thai peanut butter cup from Alma Chocolates, and a mini crispy crunch organic chocolate bar from Taza Chocolates.  Thus far I have tried the caramel corn toffee and the salted lavender caramel and they are both amazing – the toffee especially.  I usually don’t go for toffee in the candy aisle, but oh my gosh this stuff is amazing.  I know this company specializes in corporate gifts, and I can guarantee that anyone who receives these would be impressed.  The salted lavender caramel is also good, to me it has a really interesting after taste (not great, not bad – just interesting).  The first tastes I got were definitely a salted caramel, so I think the lavender really comes out more in the aftertaste.                 

                I was really nervous about the Thai peanut butter cup – I read the flavors online and I know there is coconut in it, I hate coconut in pretty much every form.  Just sniffing the cup, I could only really smell the dark chocolate.  After taking a bite, I really felt like I was eating a Thai curry, I know the coconut was there, but it was really a minor flavor.  The salty notes kind of took over and that really saved the chocolate for me.  The crispy crunch chocolate bar tastes great.  I’m not a huge organic eater, so I don’t know if organic chocolate really makes a difference, but I love darker chocolates (the darker the better as far as I am concerned), so this did taste great to me, the texture however was a bit grainy to me.  The almond crunch toffee had more ‘traditional’ toffee flavors to me, and it was also great – but not as much of a stand out at the caramel corn was. 

                Overall, I love what I received, but I am not sure that this box is really worth the $15 a month to me personally.  I love artisan candy – and I acknowledge that it is expensive.  But I am more used to boxes like Ipsy (www.ipsy.com) where you pay a certain amount, but the retail value of what you get is a lot higher than the price tag.  That makes it worth the monthly gamble for me.  In this case, what came in the box was (according to retail value)

-          Salted Lavender Caramel – $2.25 ($22.50 for ten)

-          Thai peanut butter cup - $2.25 ($22.50 for ten)

-          Crispy crunch bar - $2 ($10 for five mini bars)

-          Caramel corn toffee 2 oz package - $1.60 ($13 for an 8 oz. package)

-          Almond Toffee with milk chocolate 2 oz package - $1.60 ($13 for an 8.oz package)

Total retail value - $9.70

        Of course with this, particularly with candy you can take into account shipping.  I will say that they did a great job – we were told that boxes would ship out on Monday and I got mine by Wednesday.  Usually my Ipsy bag takes almost over a week and a half to get to me once it is shipped, but then again make up is less time sensitive in comparison to candy.  They were smart in their shipping though, I live in Florida so even though it is mid-October, we still hit the 80s during the day, and they did include cold packs in their package to keep the chocolate cool. 

          Overall, I think I will try this for one more month.  I’m not really sure if I received ‘my money’s worth’ this month (and I had super high hopes because Halloween is literally a holiday to celebrate candy!), but the products are great.  I’m not sure I can sustain this one for a long time, it is pricey for candy, and I am still in grad school.  But after I graduate this will probably become more of a monthly thing for me.  The nice thing is that there is no wait list and you can cancel online easily enough, so I think that it would be pretty easy to skip months by canceling and re-subscribing when I am ready.