Saturday, December 6, 2008

Crimio Hard Candy (strawberry)


"Engrish" is a constant fascination for foreigners both in Japan and abroad. We amuse ourselves with the twisted versions of our words that the Japanese incorporate into their advertising and product names. While we're perusing engrish.com and entertaining ourselves, the Japanese are snickering at our mangled pronunciation of words like "karaoke" (or as they say in the U.S. "carry-okee").

I'll admit that it was the engrish on this package that persuaded me to buy this candy. I couldn't help but think of things like how this must be the candy you buy for convicts. Perhaps you can slip one to your law-breaking lover in the conjugal visit trailer to freshen his breath before your liaison. Actually, "Crimio" is meant to stand for "creamy-o" as in fresh cream mixed with strawberries. (The "i" sound in Japan is like "e" in English. )


The candies resemble a peppermint, but smell sweetly of strawberry. I'm not a great fan of strawberry, but a whiff of these made me keen to sample them. They smell great. The outside is smooth and just a little sticky. The flavor is a really impressive mix of the tartness and sweetness of real strawberries with a milky undertone. The information on the box states that these contain 3% real strawberry. It's also interesting to note that these are colored naturally with purple carrot and purple potato.

These are very good. If you like strawberry, you're almost certainly going to love these. If you dislike it, you'll probably still like them. The only down side is that these aren't sugar free. While they're only 17 calories per candy and you're unlikely to put away all 8 candies at once (not that you might not be tempted to), I'm guessing that isn't going to help your teeth much. Still, as an occasional treat, these are super and I strongly recommend picking them up if you have a chance.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I really enjoy strawberry cream candies. I believe I tried a Werthers version and I really liked it.

15 minutes on the treadmill to burn the 136 calories seems worth it.

ebidebby said...

Boy do those look like CremeSavers. But they certainly do sound delicious.

Orchid64 said...

Hi, Marvo, and thanks for coming by and commenting! Your site is such an inspiration to me and I've been reading for a long time (long before I starting commenting).

Ebidebby: Hi again and many thanks for commenting. I've heard of Cremesavers, but never had them. They may have been introduced in the U.S. after I came to Japan (or I simply wasn't eating candy when I was in the U.S.).

Kelly said...

That was what i thought of too, candy for criminals! haha :)