You can't deny that this looks like a lot of fun. After all there are dinosaurs involved, and dinosaurs are always fun (as long as they’re not trying to eat you alive).

I would say that as candy goes, this one come very close to being a dessert over being a candy. People complain regularly that some of the things I review on this site are not in fact candy, this is one of the times I might agree. Having said that, I've photographed and prepared this treat, so I'm not turning back now. The preparation for this treat is a little labour intensive. More importantly it's rather time consuming. If you want to eat a couple of dinosaur islands then you've got to wait about 3 or 4 hours. The process to make them isn't that hard, however you have to follow the Japanese instructions (we had a technical issue but it worked out).

When you're heating up the contents after mixing it up, the smell of chocolate is very strong. By the time you’ve poured them into a mould and have gotten them to the chilled state, the smell of chocolate is pretty much gone. After you spend the 3 or 4 hours (most of that time is chilling in the refrigerator), you have two brown lumps on a plate (one looks strangely like a dinosaur foot as well, I'm sure it's a secret bonus). The red "lava" sauce you pour on top does decorate your islands up well, as do the plastic dinosaurs. It's actually kind of fun to eat as you can pretend that you're saving the world from the large (bird or lizard) menace.

It's not just a chocolate smell that's seemed to have left, there's virtually no chocolate flavour to these islands either. The pudding on its own is fairly bland with only a hint of chocolate. The lava sauce on the other hand is full of taste, and I wish there was more to cover up the lack of flavour from the islands. The thing that the islands did bring is a nice wobbly texture. It was also nice to have something that came out of the refrigerator all nice and cool. The plastic dinosaurs added nothing to the taste or texture of this treat, but they were still fun.

This is a very involved treat, and it might not technically be a candy. It tastes fine, but the gimmick of eating islands is the real focus here.