Maken Gummy (Cola flavor)

This gummy's packaging lets you know very well that it's made for kids, especially those who think they need to put up a peace sign any time a camera is pointed at them. That is something that I always associate with life in Japan and I can say that I haven't seen someone do that since returning to the U.S. No, instead of peace signs, I see duck faces and people sticking their tongues out or pulling idiot faces by treating their mouth like they were trying to form a balloon animal with it. I really miss the peace signs.

Though the candy's fingers appear to be making a peace sign, it's actually scissors from a game of rock, paper, scissors (jan-ken-pon). If you look carefully at the packaging, you'll see that the main figure is a fist and surrounded by the "rock" and "scissors" illustrations. Also, the bottom is a parade of rock, paper, scissors hands. You can see that my intro was totally misplaced, but it did allow me to criticize the way young people in two different cultures take their pictures taken.

This is produced by a company called Sugimotoya. It specializes in the sort of boring candies that your grandmother either keeps in her purse for her own enjoyment or disappoints you with. I'm talking about hard candy, yokan, jelly candies, and gummies. Among their more dubious offerings are tomato and umeboshi (sour pickled plum) gummy candies. They also sell gummies which include vegetables like asparagus, carrots, and onions. I guess they want grandma to feel like she's giving you healthy treats. For a full catalog of the horror, you can go here and download one.

This is the perfectly molded plastic that held the floppy gummy. I'm guessing it was made by pouring the mixture directly into this mold than sealing the back with plastic.

When I peeled open the, frankly impressive, packaging, I was hit with a chemical smell which was not in the least bit appetizing. After laying the gummy down on the plate in order to get a picture of it, I discovered why this was packaged as it was. It adhered like glue to the plate and was hard to peel off to actually eat. That, combined with the scent, made me seriously concerned for what this might do once it hit my stomach, but I have to make sacrifices for this blog.

The gummy tastes very intensely of cheap cola flavor. It was as if someone took a generic store brand cola beverage and boiled it until it was distilled down into a nasty, super intense poor quality cola flavor. If you've ever had a really cheap off-brand cola that has gone flat, you'll have some notion of how this tasted. It was also oddly sweet and had a strange artificial taste due to the use of sorbitol.

This stuck to my lip a bit going in and it was very firm and chewy. Like Japanese marshmallows, it is quite rubbery and chewy. This was actually slightly worse though as it had a consistency closer to that of a gummy worm.

This was frankly a pretty terrible way to consume 46 calories, but I have never met a cola-flavored candy that I thought was decent, let alone good. It looks amazing and is perfectly formed, but your enjoyment ends the second it enters your mouth (provided that you can scrape it off any surface you place it on). This wasn't inedible, but it really wasn't enjoyable. I think I could have done better using this as a sticker on mirror in a public restroom and freaking people out. It certainly would have adhered well and is of a color that may make people wonder where such a curiosity came from.

Source: Oyatsucafe "Dagashi box" (part of a $15/month subscription box)

Random Picture 35

In my other blog, I mentioned that one of the things that I get a kick out of are "unamerican American things". I'm sure that there are likely unjapanese Japanese things in the U.S. as well, so I'm not mocking the Japanese or anything, just enjoying the irony and ludicrousness of what I stumble across. I saw this curious display of "U.S.A. Premium Cola" outside of a grungy discount supermarket next to a grungy discount green grocer that I buy my carrots and onions at. The soda isn't made in America and has Japanese writing everywhere except on the design-challenged label. It's clearly one of those Japanese products that is marketed as "American" for reasons I have yet to understand.

The weird thing about it isn't only that it's only 39 yen (47 cents) a can, but that it's also a diet soda. While it's common back home to find soda for sale for very low prices, it is extremely rare to find anything cheaper than 50 yen here, and usually those are tiny little cans that only contain about 200 ml. of drink. I guess that if the flat-tasting and third-rate RC Cola can call itself "Royal Crown", then this crappy stuff can sell itself as "premium".

Cola and Lemon Squash KitKat

The concept for this KitKat is an interesting one, though not necessarily a good one. Instead of offering one dubious flavor as a limited edition weird flavor, they are offering two in the same box. Each box contains two fingers of lemon squash and two of cola. This probably helps Nestlé Japan sell to people who are interested in the more palatable of the two flavors and have no choice but to buy both. Of course, we all know which one is going to be lamer.

Does anyone like cola flavored candy? Seriously. Is it a flavor that works outside of carbonated liquids? When I was a kid and was trick-or-treating or got a lollipop and couldn't choose the flavor, cola was always a disappointment. Of course, the fact that a given flavor doesn't "work" never stopped Nestlé Japan before, so why hesitate now?

Okay, I shouldn't prejudge the flavor just because every other cola candy on the planet is a disappointment. And, I shouldn't judge it solely on the fact that it smells like every other cola candy I've ever had. I will judge it based on the fact that it tastde like flat, generic cola mixed with fizzy generic-tasting "soda" powder. It was okay, but nothing to write home about.

The lemon squash one held far more promise because lemon chocolates can be good. This smelled promising, which is to say, lemony. Also, the pairing of sour lemon with sweet white chocolate sounds like a good balance. In reality, this wasn't as good as the Valentine's day lemon KitKats that I've had before. It's not bad, mind you, but the lemon flavor is spoiled to some extent by the addition of a fizzy generic soda flavoring in the powder between the wafers. This flavor is similar to the one in the Caplis KitKats that I recently reviewed. I think they added something in to give it a slight alcohol flavoring that makes it slightly bitter.

Neither of these is great. Both are, at best, "interesting". If you are interested in trying something unique, then pick this up and give it a sampling. You won't hate them. You may like the lemon squash version and be indifferent to the cola. I got this at a 7-11 near one of my local stations for 120 yen ($1.37). If you can't find it though, it's not worth tracking down.

Random Weekend Picture 4

Bottles of cola-flavored gelatin dessert are being sold in a Pokka vending machine near the end of the street I live on. I'm not sure if you're supposed to eat it with a spoon as the picture on the label indicates, or if you're supposed to drink it as the bottle shape seems to imply. Either way, I'll keep my 120 yen ($1.33).

Note that "up" is often used in Japanese English as a way of saying "increase". I have to constantly correct students who think it's correct to say "level up" or "skill up" when talking about improving their abilities.

Kirin Cola Shock

Wouldn't it be cool if "Cola Shock" involved actual shocking? I'm not talking about a cattle prod to the tongue or anything, but just enough of a juicy jolt to wake you up at the end of a long, hard day.

Unfortunately, there is no actual shocking of any kind involved in Kirin's Shock. And when I say none at all, I mean it. Kirin could be sued for false advertising if it operated in a country where that sort of thing happened. As it is, the Japanese are not litigious sorts, so Kirin can imply any sort of experience they like through misleading naming and there's not a damn thing we can do about it.


I do not drink alcohol of any sort, so you can thank my husband for the existence of this review. He came across this at the local 100 yen shop for about 100-150 yen ($1.05-$1.44), but he can't remember exactly. As an impulse buyer who doesn't write a snack blog, keeping costs in mind is not really a priority for him.

I did a sniff and sip of this just because I'm writing the review and I felt obliged to do so. If you knew how much I hate the smell and taste of most booze, you'd know I made a supreme sacrifice. When I opened the can, I got a strong scent of nondescript booziness. After pouring it into a glass and sniffing it, I mainly smelled the familiar bouquet of cheap cola drinks. I'm talking about the store brand stuff that no one likes and parents buy for kids who haven't yet developed a refined cola palate.

The taste was horrible to my tongue. It tasted like cola-flavored cough medicine. It seemed like someone mixed too strong cola syrup with some sort of alcohol and didn't carbonate it very much. This was decidedly on the flat side and I strongly prefer very bubbly drinks. However, to get a more reasonable sense of how tasty this was, I went with my husband's response. When I asked him if he'd buy it again, he laughed and said, "not even close." Even though he has drunk rum and Coke, wine, and beer and enjoyed them, he really didn't care for this. He said he couldn't taste the alcohol very much and it simply tasted like bad cola to him.

This is pretty terrible, and at 5% alcohol, it's not going to buzz you more than beer. It's also 224 calories per can which could be spent on something far more enjoyable. Obviously, I wouldn't recommend this because the only "shock" is that it's so awful.

As a side note, several bloggers who have seen this in shops and advertised in public spaces have done some hand-wringing about this in terms of marketing to minors. It clearly says on the can (in the sizable black box you can see on the picture above) that you must be 20 or older to buy this. In fact, it says it in two places and has the characters for "o-sake" (alcohol) on it in the white circle. Add to that the fact that many markets that sell alcoholic beverages have an alarm on the register which tells the check-out person when someone buys this sort of thing that they can't sell it to anyone under 20 and you can see that there's no attempt being made to trick people into thinking this is a soft drink.

And another note, Kirin has desktop pictures of their ads featuring a Japanese babe. If you're into that sort of thing, you can download the pictures here. One interesting point about these pictures is that I had to say that I was 20 or older to even gain access to the wallpapers. Kirin is clearly being careful, even if they are selling a horrible drink, so they deserve props for that.