Candy Review: Shuwa Puccho Gummy Stick (Cola)

Thursday, June 15, 2006 - by Brian

(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?)

So, despite being a little put-off by the ingredients, I opened the pack up and take a look. Despite the package saying “Shuwa Puccho Gummy Stick (Cola)”, they aren’t sticks at all – it contains 10 individually wrapped rectangular candies. I guess the stick represents the shape of the package containing the ten candies?

an unwrapped candy (click to enlarge)

They are very cool-looking with the brown and white stripes – very fashionable. Notice the white spot in the front left corner in the picture above? The candies have these little “pills” in them that are citrusy/lemony and a little bit fizzy. The candies also contain small pieces of what looks and tastes like gummi cola pieces. The brown candy itself is a bit like taffy, only it’s a little bit harder and it doesn’t stick to your teeth much.

So how does it taste? It’s phenomenal. My wife, who loves gummi cola bottles (so do I), said it is the best cola candy she has ever had and I have to agree. It was all I could do to stop myself from eating the whole pack at once. I am salivating right now thinking about it (the 10 candies are long gone). The combination of the taffy-like candy and the embedded citrusy “pills” and gummi cola pieces is incredible.

I am going to hunt these candies down in my local Asian stores and check the local world Market and if I can’t find them I may just order a dozen or two packs online. The packs run about $2.00 each, but most are shipped from Asia so the shipping is expensive. They also come in bags too and not just the 10-packs.

Below you will find links to places I found them online. It looks like Asian Food Grocer has the best prices including shipping – 10 packs will run me $21.55 (including shipping) so that’s only $2.16 each (or $0.22 for each piece) and they have other cool Asian candy I might like to try. The Shuwa Puccho Gummy Stick also comes in different flavors – I may get some of the other flavors to try too. I can’t imagine them being as good as the cola flavor though.

UPDATE: I just bought 6 packs of this candy and a bunch of other cool candy from AsianFoodGrocer. Look for pics/reviews soon. (You can get 10% off your order by using this code: sas10off)

• buy it at Asian Food Grocer ($4.55 to ship 10 packs to me)
• buy it from JBox

candy, sweets, japan, japanese, asia, asian, cola, gummi, gummy, review, reviews, coke, pepsi