ZOMG, Candy!

There are a surprising number of candies that carry the Hello Kitty brand. I found these adorable little plastic barrels of compressed sugar candies in a Sanrio store next to Sanrio gum, lollipops, and hard candies. Each barrel was $0.75, and they came in Hello Kitty (peach), Badtz Maru (cola), and Pandapple (apple).

The candies themselves were little tablets that were similar to Tart N Tinies in shape and size. They were made from a compressed sugar that was fairly soft, like the core of a Smartie after you nibble away the outside rim (everyone eats their Smarties that way, right?). The peach was a faint pink, the apple a pale yellow/green, and the cola a soft light brown.

The Hello Kitty peach flavor was lightly floral and completely different from that of a peach flavored Jolly Rancher. Though it still didn’t taste exactly like a real peach, it was also far from artificial tasting. I would call it reminiscent of the flavor of a peach Asian gelatin candy (you may be more familiar with the lychee jelly version, but they do come in peach as well). The Badz Maru had a dark cola taste that was almost fizzy, and the Pandapple candies had a lightly sweet apple taste that was more like a Fuji than a Granny Smith.

These compressed sugar candies get an OM from me. I found them to be tasty, addictive, and cutely packaged. My only wish is that the little barrels were resealable (they have little pop top pull tabs, like canned sodas do abroad), but I think a packaging change would probably drive up the price.

I’ve seen these giant Smarties (BUY!) (not to be confused with Nestle’s Giant Smarties; outside the US, Smarties are an M&M-like sugar coated candy made by Nestle) in Walgreen’s candy aisle for a while now and finally decided to buy a roll.

I adore Smarties (BUY!), even if they don’t taste like much. These giant Smarties are basically larger versions of normal sized Smarties. Cybele on Candy Blog has a nice photo showing the size comparison, though I’m a little confused as to whether her Mega Smarties are the same as my giant Smarties (check out comment #12). Mine were also quarter-sized, so maybe I bought Mega Smarties?

The giant (Mega?) Smarties taste just like normal Smarties - the same sweet, lightly fruity and tart taste of compressed sugar. Yum! In the large version, the flavor differences are really noticeable because there’s so much more Smartie. I liked being able to really taste the flavor, but I think the Smartie was too big, and too much Smartie in one take. For some reason, the big ones didn’t come in white like normal Smarties do. Not that I could tell what flavor white Smarties are.

Like Cybele, I wished that the giant Smarties were more crumbly. Normal Smarties shed chalky power everywhere, and they quickly crunched up into dust. The giant Smarties are crunchier and sturdier and break into harder, grittier bits rather than that nice, soft dust. They’re not as hard as SweeTarts, but they’re getting there.

An O for the giant Smarties. Fun to try once, and visually entertaining, but I prefer the smaller version. The giant Smarties are texturally not as appealing, and they disappear too quickly because of their large size. Normal Smarties forced you to pace yourself.

Last week, I had the opportunity to visit The Big E with the YPMB. We marched in the parade and then got some spare time to poke around and eat FAIR FOOD!!

I got my first taste of maple sugar candy in the Maine “capitol”. I’ve wanted to try maple sugar candy since I was little girl reading about it in Little House in the Big Woods, when Laura and the family help sap the trees and have a big maple syrup party. Ma and the other womenfolk stirred and stirred a pot of maple syrup over the fire, and one of them yelled, “Quick girls, it’s graining!” and all the little kids had plates and saucers of snow, and they got the cooked maple syrup poured over their snow, and it hardened into candy. I first read that in first grade, and I still remember that scene (though I probably got some of the details wrong) because I wanted to try that maple candy so badly!!

I bought three varieties in “Maine.” The large chocolate blob in the photo is chocolate covered maple sugar candy with nuts. I’m pretty sure the nut pieces were walnuts. This candy had a crumbly texture. I’m not even sure if it was actually candy, per se; it looked and tasted like a pure chunk of maple sugar, maybe with a little butter added in an attempt to get it to hold together. The maple sugar taste was so strong that it completely overpowered the chocolate coating, which barely registered on my palate, and I found it way too sweet to be enjoyable. My friends ate it though. If you like the cloyingly sweet taste of fudge, you’d probably be able to handle this. I almost couldn’t bear the smell of it in my dorm room. An O.

The light gold maple leaf was basically just a molded, hardened chunk of maple sugar. If you took brown sugar, wet it so that it clumped, and then pressed it into a maple leaf mold, you’d get a good enough approximation of this treat. Another O.

The beautifully translucent amber maple leaf was maple hard candy. This gem had a wonderfully rich and mellow maple syrup flavor without the intense sugar overload, and it melted smoothly on my tongue. I’d give this an OM.

These days, candy that only costs 25 cents a box is definitely a rarity. I’m guessing that Cry Baby Tears (BUY!) are a retro/nostalgia candy that have been around for a while. From the looks of the packaging, Cry Baby Tears are supposed to be so sour that they make you cry. They certainly were tart and puckery, even if they didn’t actually bring me to tears.

Cry Baby Tears are little tear-shaped compressed sugar candies with Cry Baby stamped on them. You can’t tell from the pictures because the New Haven humidity wreaked havoc on them, but it’s there. They’re also not supposed to be all yicky and mottled looking. Again, the humidity. Grr!

Cry Baby Tears come in grape (purple), watermelon (green), cherry (red), lemon (yellow), and orange (orange). The cherry flavor is the weakest and overpowered by the sour, while the lemon packs a puckery kick, and the orange has a nice finish. The candies themselves are sour, and they also have a sour coating for a little extra wallop.

I’d give Cry Baby Tears an OM. They’re good and sour - so sour that I can’t eat too many before my mouth and throat start hurting - and that’s exactly what you want in a sour candy.

“First it’s candy…Then it’s gum!” is the Razzles (BUY!) tagline. And indeed, it starts out as candy and ends up as gum. Unfortunately, it is not a very tasty incarnation of either food group.

The Tropical Razzles flavors, according to the wrapper, are pineapple, strawberry-banana, tropical punch, tangerine, and kiwi-lime. All that matters is that they all taste and feel like a Flintstones vitamin. They’re grainy with that weird undertaste that reminds me a little of the taste of blood. Mmm. Blood.

The flavors don’t last very long in the candy form, and the gum form just tastes oddly generically sweet. The texture of the gum is also too stiff to be a pleasant chew.

The Razzle transition from candy to gum is bizarre. It breaks apart, then resolidifies itself. Kinda cool. If only it were also palatable.

I work in the entomology division of my university’s natural history museum, so when I came across these cute bug-themed candies, I just had to buy them for my boss.

These Bug City Candy Tarts (BUY) are compressed sugar candies that taste like SweeTarts without the tart and with a heavier aftertaste of sugar. The cartoony bug shapes of the candy are quite cute. The reusable bug jar is a nifty marketing tagline, but my boss informed me that any jar can be used to keep bugs in. Even jars without airholes should let enough air in to keep most bugs alive for several weeks.

My boss hasn’t unwrapped these Gooey Yummy Gummy Bugs yet, so I don’t know how they taste. Frankly, they’re a little too realistic looking, and I think the combination of the gummi texture with the grub shape may be more than I can handle.

I picked these up at Dave & Buster’s along with the SweeTarts Squeez. They’re technically not Asian candy, but Hello Kitty is Asian, so I’m filing her as such. I didn’t expect these to taste good, since the toy is the selling point here, and they didn’t. But that doesn’t matter, because it’s a tiny Hello Kitty eating watermelon, and it doesn’t get much cuter than that.

The little pink and white beads of candy are slightly smaller than Tart ‘N Tinys and taste faintly fruity. They’re made of compressed sugar with a light sugar coating, like Sprees and Tart ‘N Tinys. My blind taste test revealed that the white ones and the pink ones both taste the same. I’d guess that the faint fruit flavor is strawberry, but I’m probably biased by the pink color. Because it’s Hello Kitty, the pinkness may just serve to attract girls and could have nothing to do with the flavor of the candy.

The candy doesn’t taste bad, but it doesn’t taste like much and really isn’t worth eating. Besides, I think it looks pretty inside the container, so I’ll leave it like it is.

SweeTarts are one of my favorite candies, and Nestle/Wonka has added to the SweeTarts line (BUY) with Chewy SweeTarts (giant and mini), Sour SweeTarts, Giant Color Changing SweeTarts, SweeTarts Gummy Bugs, SweeTarts Rope, and finally, SweeTarts Squeez in Green Apple and Wild Cherry. Phew! Way to brand ‘em, Mr. Wonka.

I’d seen the SweeTarts Squeez near the cash registers in grocery stores before, but I’d never dared to purchase them. When my friend Cassie saw them offered as prizes at Dave & Buster’s, she “bought” a tube out of curiosity and was generous enough to give it to me after she had a taste. And by generous, I mean she realized that SweeTarts Squeez gel is like delicious sugared crack and threw me to the addiction sharks in order to save herself.

As far as candy goes, this stuff is neither complex nor refined. It’s just pure sugar in gel form with a sweet, tangy, and tart green apple aftertaste that, surprisingly enough, tastes just like a green SweeTart. The gel is fairly fluid (slightly runnier than toothpaste) and is chock full of sugar grains.

This stuff is addictively good. I’ve been eating it slowly by squeezing tiny dabs onto my fingertip instead of just squeezing it straight onto my tongue. It’s good enough to buy again, but too dangerous to buy often.

I am Asian, so you will be reading about a lot of Asian candy. Consider this part I of an open-ended series.

Lotte Cafe Coffee chewing gum

This gum tasted like weak coffee with too much sugar and cream. The flavor didn’t last very long, and once it was gone, the gum took on an unpleasant taste and texture. I was not a fan, but my mother, who likes her coffee weak with lots of sugar and cream, loved it. Go figure.

Meiji Apollo strawberry/chocolate thingies BUY

These little cones are adorable and delicious. It may be hard to tell from the picture, but they’re about the size of a peanut, sans shell. The pink top is strawberry (I think it may be flavored white chocolate), while the brown bottom is milk chocolate. The texture is wonderfully creamy, and the sweet strawberries ‘n’ cream smell is incredible. I’m a dark chocolate lover and usually find milk and white chocolate to be too sweet for my taste. These candies are on the sweet side, but I don’t find them offensive or cloying at all. Interestingly enough, they may be named after NASA’s Apollo command module.

Ramune Soda Fizzy Candy BUY

I polished these guys off at the restaurant, so I apologize for the poor photo from Amazon.com. The candies are snow white in color and look kind of like pills. Size-wise, they’re like fat Tart N Tinys. Taste-wise, they taste like Ramune soda, which can be found at any Asian grocery store. Ramune soda bottles have a very distinct shape. The bottles are stoppered with marbles. To open the soda, you break the seal and push the marble into the bottle’s uniquely shaped neck, where it rattles around while you drink the soda. The fizzy candy makers have tried to emulate the bottle’s shape with their plastic container, a design note that I appreciate.

Ramune soda (and, by correlation, ramune soda candy) is supposed to be lemonade flavored. I find the taste to be more of a generically crisp citrus flavor, which is quite enjoyable, if unremarkable. The fizzy part of the candies is far less noticeable than that of the Jones Soda candies, but the Ramunes taste much better and have no lingering aftertaste. The citrus flavor isn’t that strong, but it doesn’t have to compete with an overpoweringly sweet sugar flavor, so the citrus really comes through. The compressed sugar Ramunes are also slightly softer than the Jones candies, somewhere between a Sweet Tart and a Smartie.

I would definitely buy the Apollo candies again, and the Ramune candies are maybe worth another taste in the future. As for the coffee gum, I’ve given the rest of the pack to my mother. Good riddance.

Edit 09/05: The Apollo strawberry candies are worth a ZOMG!, the Ramune candies an OM, and the gum just an O.

Jones Soda Co. is probably most infamous for their Thanksgiving sodas that come in flavors like Turkey & Gravy, Cranberry, and Brussels Sprouts. I don’t know if I’m adventurous enough to try those, but when I saw Jones Soda Co. Carbonated Candy (BUY) while standing in line at the checkout aisle, I picked up a tin. It helped that the candy was Green Apple, not turkey, flavored.

photo courtesy of Jones Soda Co. website

First of all, I love the tin that these candies come in. It’s about the size of a big pack of gum (the 30-stick size), which makes it quite grip-able, and it can be opened by a flick of the thumb. When I finish off the candy, I plan on keeping the tin and stashing M&Ms or Jelly Bellies or something in there. Opening the lid reveals a customer-submitted fortune on the underside, just like the ones on the Jones Soda bottle caps. Mine reads, “‘jeans, the human napkin.’ -Merrilee, from Boise.” Utterly useless, but kind of cute, I guess. At least the sayings serve to drive customer participation, which promotes loyalty to the brand.

The candies themselves are about the size of an aspirin and have a J imprinted on both sides. My green apple ones were the same speckled green of a Sweet Tart. Also like Sweet Tarts, Jones candies are made of compressed sugar and share the same crunchy texture. The Jones candies have the added bonus of tingling the tongue as they dissolve. The slight fizziness is pretty neat, and the extreme fizziness that comes from chewing up the candies creates an addictively bizarre sensation.

Taste-wise, these candies are only so-so. The apple taste is very mild, and if you eat too many of them like I did, they leave a sugary aftertaste behind that’s rather unpleasant. I would’ve preferred a much stronger apple taste.

I probably won’t buy these again. At $1.50 per 50-count tin, they’re a little on the pricey side for a snack I only enjoy for the fizzy taste. On the other hand, they also come in Fufu Berry and Berry Lemonade flavors, and Orange & Cream, Cream Soda, and M.F. Grape are supposed to come out this year. Perhaps one of those flavors would tempt my palate more.