In my Candy Addict staff profile, I joke that I adhere to a strict organic, vegan diet to balance my rabid candy consumption. Though that’s not entirely true, if it were I could find sweet organic, vegan refuge in Zootons. What are Zootons, you ask? Well Zootons are beings hailing from Zootopia, of course! And they are here to save Earthling children and adults alike from bad candy.

And how do they do that, you ask? Why, by generously sharing their homeland’s chemical-free, fertilizer-free, gelatin-free, organic, vegan candy with “out of this world taste” of the same name. Naturally! And in the spirit of promoting healthy habits and practicing what they preach, Zootons also donate a percentage of their profits to Healthy Child, Healthy World, a non-profit organization campaigning for healthy environments for children.

And while these are all excellent reasons for both vegan and omnivorous Addicts to give Zootons a try, we all know that when it comes to candy it really just comes down to taste (I mean, if it tastes like organic dirt it still tastes like dirt, right?), so let’s get to the important stuff. Zootons come in four varieties: Gummies, Colas, Jellies, and Sours. And here’s my breakdown:

Read More »

Here at Candy Addict, we’ve already determined that when it comes to sour candy, there is sour, and then there is sour. I had pretty much given up my search for anything which would satisfy my sour-deprived taste buds, until I came across X-Treme Sour Candy. It had the picture of someone’s head being blown up, the “Caution: X-Tremely Sour” warning and it even came in a cute little rocket-shaped container.

The thing which made me buy it was actually the health warning, in small print, on the label: “CAUTION: Eating multiple pieces at the same time or within a short time of each other may cause an irritation to sensitive tongues and mouth. This may vary from a slight irritation to a severe reaction depending on the individual.” Yippee! Candy eating as an extreme sport? I’m in! As you can imagine, I wasted no time on these, especially as the flavor mix included cola, strawberry, apple, and blue raspberry.

The candies are individually wrapped, with the color of wrapper relevant to the flavor inside. Each candy is about the size of a nickel – so fairly substantial, really. The first sensation you get is of extreme sourness (similar to a WarHead) – the kind which makes your tongue curl and your hair straighten.

Read More »

(from the Puccho website)

I love trying foreign candy that I’m not even sure what it is. I had no idea what “Shuwa Puccho Gummy Stick (Cola)” was when I got it. All I knew is that it might be gummi and might taste like cola. My wife bought it for my birthday in March from Play-Asia with another larger videogame gift, but the candy just arrived last week (yes, it took that long).

So, I look at the wrapper and there is a handy sticker on the back with an ingredient list in English. Some of the ingredients are a bit scary. Here are the weird/scary ones:

• Lactic acid bacteria drink (lactic acid is in milk, right? but bacteria drink? That doesn’t sound appetizing)
• Glycerol esters of fatty acids (what the heck is an ester?)
• Tartaric acid (ok, I have heard of tartar as in “cream of tartar”)
• Sucrose esters of fatty acids (more esters, but from sugar this time?)
• Bee’s wax (Bee’s wax? In a gummi candy?)

Read More »

Japanese Strawberry Milk Wata Gum package
(click to enlarge)

This is one of the weirdest/coolest candy that I have come across in a while. It’s called Wata Gum (Wata means cotton in Japanese) and it looks sort of like cotton candy, fiberglass, or multiple sheets of toilet paper packed together. It’s soft and light like cotton candy and pulls apart like cotton candy, but when you put it in your mouth and start chewing it turns into gum! Freaky!

It’s also supposed to be fizzy, but I experienced no fizzines whatsoever – maybe the package wasn’t sealed and it went flat? Meiji Wata Gum comes in a number of different flavors -Orange Cola, Strawberry Milk (both reviewed below), and also Vanilla Cola, Cream Soda, and Green Apple (and maybe more).

Orange Cola: This taste was very similar to the Super Cola Shigekix I reviewed. It had an odd cola-ish flavor that was overshadowed by an orangey/citrus flavor. It was quite tasty.

Strawberry Milk: This one smelled exactly like Strawberry Quik when I opened the package. It had a nice, not-too-strong strawberry flavor to it. Very good.

Like I said, this stuff was crazy odd, but cool nonetheless. I definitely suggest giving it a try. It may be weird and freaky but it’s pretty tasty!

More pics of the Wata Gum
Buy Orange Cola Wata Gum at JBox
Buy Vanilla Cola Wata Gum at Amazon

Japanese Orange Cola Wata Gum out of package
(click to enlarge)

One of the fun things about trying foreign candy with no English writing on the package is that you have no idea what to expect from it. Sure, I could Google it if I could figure out what it’s called, but where is the fun in that? Today’s review is of three different flavors of sour hard gummi candy called Shigekix. I had no idea what this candy was or even what would be inside the bags. All I knew was that each bag had a different, cute, colorful character on the front.

It turns out that Shigekix are small (see picture below for size) gumdrop-shaped (only smaller) hard gummi candies. I know, hard and gummi don’t seem to go together, but that is the best way to describe them. They are harder and chewier than your average gummi and after you chew on them a bit they soften up. Each one starts out with 10-15 seconds of a reallly sour kick and after that the sour diminishes and the real flavor comes out. Even though these are small, they last a while – most of them lasted about a minute, and some I could even make last two minutes if I really savored the flavor.

Shigekix Super Cola
Cola flavor! Oh yeah! I have mentioned before how I like cola-flavored candies, so I was excited to try this one. Unfortunately, I was a little disappointed in it. After 10-15 seconds of intense sour, the cola flavor starts to come out and while it was good, it was a bit too lemony for me and not cola-y enough. Still good, just not as good as I had hoped.

Shigekix Ultra Ramune
I wasn’t sure what flavor this actually was at the time. It’s called Ramune and it is described with the words soda and lemon also. (Since trying them, I looked it up and found out what Ramune is – it’s essentially Japanese lemon-lime soda.) It had a heavy lemony/citrus flavor and seemed to have a very faint mint flavor in the background. This flavor packed the best beginning sour punch of the three and was my overall favorite of the three.

Shigekix Super Grape
The grape didn’t really have a big grape flavor to it – just a hint of grape with the sour/citrus. The grape flavor came out as I chewed and sucked on it, but it never really came out but was stuck behind the sour/citrus flavor. It also seemed to get much sweeter the more I stuck with it – sweeter than the other two.

Summary
Overall, these were really fun candies to try. They are totally different than any candy I have had before. They start out sour and end up as a hard gummi. There are actually a few more flavors of Shigeki – I know there are lemon, melon, and peach and there may be more. Of the three I tried, I’d have to say I liked the Ramune flavor the best of the three, but they were all good and definitely worth trying.

• Shigekix website
• My closeup photos with notes
• A Flickr Photoset of The Shigekix Moment (not my pictures, but funny)

Buy Shigekix online:

• at Jbox
• at AsianFoodGrocer

(click for closeup with notes)