So I Ordered a Bunch of Japanese Snacks: Part 2

After surviving the first half, which mainly consisted of fried salted everything, I decided to try the candy side of things. Starting with...

The Fruit Bowl

The bowl came broken.

First, I don't understand why my fixed pictures end up back to their original rotation. Oh well, just crane your head 90 degrees and keep reading.


Oddly, in this package was a toothpick (you can see it on the left side of the bag). I have weird luck with items so I honestly thought it was some kind of mistake, like finding a hair in your food, but another item also contained a toothpick, so it must have been on purpose. If US candy ever contained a toothpick in it, someone resembling Honey BooBoo's mom would have already sued the company for having swallowed it.

Ah maede elebendy billyun dullurs.

The smell of the candy made my stomach turn a little, but I decided to give it a try anyway. To my surprise they were fruit gummies (which explains the nasty smell. Although my favorite candy, gummies smell like ass.) Japan also has a kind of edible containers, like rice paper wrappers. In this case the fruit "bowl" was a very stale plain wafer that read "ICE CREAM" on the bottom. I still don't get the toothpick. Is there some sort of faux pas about picking up tiny pieces of candy with your fingers in Japan?

I decided to further my cavities with...

Cherry Squares, Mini Cola, and Terrifying Egg Thing

Is this what it's like to be illiterate?

The Cherry Squares were the other thing that came with a toothpick. They were gummy just like the fruit bowl.

The Mini Cola were tiny little crunchy bits that were actually pretty good! They have kind of a sour candy/cola taste that I would actually expect to find in the US.

Please don't sue us Coca Cola.

The Terrifying Egg Thing was the thing I was most hesitant to try (at least until I found the Strip of Skin, which I'll get to later.) I looked and felt like a marshmallow but I knew, just knew, that it would have something inside that would probably be a garish yellow.

I was right in that it contained something, but it was just chocolate. Crisis averted.

Looming on the horizon was...

Cola Balls

That "hairdoo" on the talking one should have been a warning.

Initially I expected these to be chocolaty until I looked at the package closer and saw a glass of soda on the right. At that point I assumed the things talking and smiling (and, in the far right one's case, looking constipated) were soda bubbles.
 

The balls were much paler than the package suggested (durr hurr). Instead of being soft, like the egg thing. When I bit into one though it was chewy, and had an oozing, bright yellow core like a cyst. One Amazon reviewer mentioned one of the items was gum, and that she had already eaten several pieces before realizing. With the gummies I was careful to be sure the first one completely dissolved before eating more. In this case I realized it was gum. It had no specific flavor I could pinpoint, but if it really was trying to be cola flavored, who wants cola-fresh breath? (A cola flavor did linger in my mouth afterwards.)

I don't like it when my candy oozes.

I have since renamed them Gum Cysts.

My stomach began churning after all the sweets, so I decided to change it up a bit with

Corn Potage

The more excited the mascot is the more cautious I am.

What is potage? Apparently a thick soup, and what can get thicker than solid, crispy form?

The sweetness hit me like a fist. I often forget people like their corn incredibly sweet since my family is more of a salty corn type. Once I got past that they weren't half bad and had more of a savory taste and smelled absolutely delicious.

It was enough to get me back on the sweets track with...


Candy Cigarettes, Vermin Discs, and Grape Box

Well what else was I supposed to call the Vermin Discs?

Along with candy birth control pills Japanese children also get to smoke candy cigarettes. I know the US used to sell them as such before redressing them as "candy sticks" with pictures of superheroes on them. I have, however, ran across candy cigarettes in rare places in the US.

Having been disappointed with my saccharine cigs I decided to dress things up a little.

I also drink black candy coffee and write dark poetry about candy.

They taste better than their US counterpart. Where the US ones are chalky and flaky, these ones are a sweet mint and solid.

The Vermin Discs were sour and powdery, leaving a grainy, floury paste behind, like the dusty sweepings of a Sour Patch Kids factory.

The Grape Box was filled with four or five very fake grape flavored gum balls.

The strangely mundane continued with...

 Crackers

Cracker

 They were crackers.

Mini Chow Mein Noodles

I wonder what the littler guy is worried about. Probably global warming.

These were completely plain and expected as well. Of course, I was stalling, stalling the inevitable, but now I was down to the last two. The finale, the creepy, the weird the...

Squirrel Balls and Strip of Skin

Hurr durr

The Squirrel Balls were poofier and much, much sweeter than I was expecting, especially after the crackers of noodles. I suspect they were made from rice flour.

Finally, there was the Strip of Skin. The picture made it look much better than the tiny little window they had on the package. Inside I could see a yellowish flat thing that had a texture of an old person's skin. When I had first started this venture I took one look at it and said to my brother "I'm really not looking forward to trying that" but here it is friends. That time is now.

I opened the package and took it out or, at least, I tried. Instead part of it broke off. I fished it out and set it on the plate.

It's more horrifying out of the package.

"Maybe it wouldn't be so intimidating if I smelled it?" I thought to myself.

Oh God.

A gross, saucy garbage smell reached up and gripped my nostril hairs so hard it made the pineapple worm in the back of my brain stir from its slumber. I didn't want to taste it, but maybe it would be okay, like a soy sauce flavor. I peeled it off from the plate, which it had immediately stuck to, and licked it.

No.

This thing was shat out from Satan himself before being pounded flat by a billion tortured souls. I tried to eat it again, this time biting down until a piece was almost loosed. I almost gagged. I couldn't do it. It went in the trash, which was then set on fire and prayed over.

This package didn't have a cutesy mascot on it because the mascot would have been Cthulhu.

Or her.