Yongfook is a web producer and usability consultant based in Tokyo

I’ve been buying a lot of old candy recently, not for any particular reason other than the fact that the range of candy in Japan is absolutely mind-explodingly huge, so it makes for more efficient shopping if you think in terms of sub genres, like, “today I shall only buy blue sour things” or “on Sunday I shall purchase only all that is melon in flavour that has some kind of flying robot on the packaging, on the 2nd shelf up from the floor”.

There are a few candy stalwarts that have managed to brave the fickle Japanese public and have lasted many decades in their original form, without having to whore themselves out to consumer trends; unlike for example Pocky, which has a downright stupid amount of flavours now, catering for every possible permutation of fruit flavouring the human tongue can recognise.

So, for your very much l337 J@pan33z 7h1nG5 enjoyment, here are some reviews of those old, original sweets.

Bontan Ame (pictured above)

Bontan Ame is a fruit flavour sweet made from “bontan” which, curiously, is a fruit that nobody ever eats unless it is in the form of Bontan Ame. I’m guessing that Bontan is a kind of citrus fruit, going by the picture on the packaging, because the flavour really doesn’t give much away. I liken Bontan Ame to something like a Japanese version of Turkish Delight - very similar in texture and has that same delicate mildness of taste that you can never really decide whether it is delicious, or bland but strangely more-ish, like cocaine-laced Chicken McNuggets.

More importantly though, Bontan Ame are famous for being wrapped in paper that you can EAT which, outweighing such fanciful aspects such as “taste”, becomes by far the most preferred method of describing Bontan Ame to other people,

“so what do those Bontan Ame taste like?” “well, you can eat the fricking PAPER” “really? Shit. That’s awesome.” “I know!”

And so on. Anyway, its probably worth mentioning that Bontan Ame is by about twenty billion miles my favourite sweet out of the ones reviewed here today, and that it all goes tumbling helplessly downhill from here.

Hyou Roku Mochi

This is a sweet that comes in almost exactly the same packaging as Bontan Ame, complete with edible paper. The name, bizarrely meaning “SOLDIER SIX MOCHI” should be enough of a warning that you need to err on the side of caution with this candy - especially if that candy tastes as foul as this. A cursory glance at the ingredients list is all you need to reassure yourself that would you never, EVER want to put one of these in your mouth.

Sugar: ok Green Tea Powder: ok, fine. Soybean powder: yep, that’s ok too. Seaweed: WHO DIED AND MADE ME HEAD TASTER AT THE ROYAL PALACE OF INSANE CRACKPOT LAND

Which all combines to form a flavour I can only describe as the refreshing taste of SEA WATER combined with bat dung and ground up, discarded Chinese newspapers. It’s a bit like Bontan Ame except with the added bonus of having a curious aftertaste similar to that if you were to eat the shoes of a fisherman, only to then be bludgeoned to death with a big haddock and left to choke to death on your own blood and vomit.

Milk Caramel

Milk Caramels are, unsurprisingly, exactly what their name suggests. They come in the same box and packaging style as the above two types of candy, but in a cheerfully sadistic way have REAL (that is, inedible) paper wrapping each candy which has probably killed tens of thousands of children all over Japan in the last few decades.

Anyway, Milk Caramels are passable in terms of taste, but they certainly aren’t anything special. Very much an average caramel taste. And kinda milky.

Yoghurt Tablets (their actual name is YOGLETS)

Yoghurt Tablets look almost identical to prescribed painkillers, except they are huge, and cause more pain than they remedy. Contains dubious “yoghurt powder” which I am almost 100% sure is no more a derivative of yoghurt than smegma is. Tastes unusually citric-like, for something that is supposed to mimic dairy.

Which brings me skidding to a furious sidetrack - Japan has this bizarre fixation with yoghurt flavour things, whereby in various snacks you can enjoy all the delicious taste of artificial yoghurt, fortuitously bypassing all the obvious natural benefits of the real thing.

Although this doesn’t piss me off to the extent that fried goods in soup or the fact that they never made a sequel to “Remo: Unarmed And Dangerous” does, it is both annoying and peculiar nevertheless, and makes me want to set fire to my brain. Anyway, here is what I came up with in one short session at the supermarket, buying anything yoghurt-flavoured that I could lay my hands on, besides actual yoghurt:

Yoghurt Caramels

Like Milk Caramels, with the same bizarre lemony aftertaste as the above Yoglets. Contains no yoghurt.

Yoghurt Hi Chew

Hi Chew (soft chewy sweets) is one of those products that whores itself out to trends and you can typically find a new flavour of Hi Chew every few months, or find that an existing flavour has been temporarily culled, to sex up demand. Hi Chew has been known to exist in these flavours: Lemon, Strawberry, Grape, Orange, Apple, Peach, Pineapple, Cream Soda, Blue Hawaii, Cola, Melon, Strawberry Yoghurt, Pear and Apricot. As it is, Yoghurt Hi Chew tastes almost exactly what I imagine Yoghurt flavoured shampoo might taste like.

Lame Generic Brand Yoghurt Chew Bar

Some kind of crap, 20-yen chew bar that you might buy for your child as a joke, or use as bathroom sealer. Contains no yoghurt.

Yoghurt Drink That Contains No Yoghurt

By far the most peculiar is this one which not only like the above 3 does not have real yoghurt in it, but also goes one step further at stretching the threshold of yoghurt-related products by not actually being white, like yoghurt, either. This opaque, beige-orange coloured liquid is made from grape juice and has a small amount of fermented milk in the resulting watery, yakult-like beverage. Contains no yoghurt.

Yoghurt Balls

Haha balls! But seriously, if anything is worthy of the description “the evil curds of a rabid, lactating hippo please don’t put them near my face”, this is it. Yoghurt Balls score some points, seeing as they do actually contain some REAL dairy product in them, but those points are ceremoniously annulled almost immediately upon the discovery that the diary product is in fact CHEESE. This, therefore, quite satisfyingly explains their cheese-like taste and general cheese-like consistency. 0 POINTS. Contains no yoghurt.

*to my British friends or readers, yes I do mean “sweets” and no England is not dead to me just because I now use the word “candy”.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 1st, 2005 at 4:50 pm and is filed under Food Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.