A recent Saturday afternoon found me cruising the aisles at a large downtown Chinese market that I’d somehow never been to in all my years of living in this town. Naturally, I made a beeline for the candy section. All the usual suspects were there – Kasugai and Lotte gummies, White Rabbits, and a few other things I’d never seen before.
“Ooh, a new flavor of Pocky,” I said to myself. No, not out loud, in my head – what, do you think I wanted all the other shoppers to think I was crazy? “The box is kind of pretty. Wait, what the… Brazilian Pudding? What in the blue blazes is Brazilian Pudding?” The only things I could name that came from Brazil were Brazil nuts, jaguars and Brazilian waxing (and we are so not going to go there on a family website). None of those things had anything to do with pudding or Japanese chocolate-coated pretzel sticks.
My curiosity had to be satisfied, so I picked up a box. After all, there was a toucan on the front, and I’ve never been steered wrong by a product with a toucan on the box. (OK, the only food product I know of with a toucan for a mascot is Froot Loops, but I’ve never had a bad bowl of Sam’s finest.)
