Snail Mail Derailment

Much to my delight, a package arrived in the mail today! I'll put this all in an internet box so you too can have the joy of opening something up.

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Spoiler

My favorite resident of Japan Schazer not only sent me a package, but protected it with DEADLY SHARKS



Unfortunately, they are very shy DEADLY SHARKS and revert to silhouette when you try to photograph them straight on.



Never one to do things by half measures, she's also warded the inside of the box just in case an intruder made it past the first ones (possibly by threatening to expose them); these ones also guard some incongruously floral stationery, which is delightful.

It was a cute, fun box, but the contents were even more exciting:



Candy! As a man with an incorrigible sweet tooth, I couldn't wish for anything else. Now, the packaging on these items (and all the ones to follow) have little to no English on them, so figuring out what I'm about to eat is a matter of pictures and guesswork, which just makes it more interesting. And surprising. So here we have 1) hard candies in three peach flavors (which is very cool, and also the only one of these products that I could read everything there was to know about the flavor on), 2) some... I have no idea, honestly. Apples and honey things? I can feel that they're large and squishy, but this bird is not revealing his secrets. Then 3) some lychee-flavored hard candies. Lychee is my favorite fruit of all time, for those not in the know. Delicious.



Up next is 4) a bag of Sweet March, which seems to be mixed-berry-flavored gummy drops, 5) a different sort of lychee hard candy, this one very small and round, and 6) pomegranate collagen gummies. I have a friend who swears by these things; I eat them when she buys them because they always taste really good. The thing about Japanese gummy candies is that unlike American ones (which typically have one gummy consistency all the way through), they're usually a gummy skin surrounding a softer, more jellylike center. I really like that!



And there's still more! (She really packed that box to the gills.) There are 7) mango gummies; two two-flavor gummy bags, one 8) pear and Asian pear and one 9) kiwi and golden kiwi; and 10) a mixed tin of Sakuma Drops. I don't know what Sakuma Drops are, but they resemble these fancy older hard candies I like that are hard to find anymore. This might be very nostalgic for me; that or very surprising. Either way, it comes in a tin, which is great; I am instantly convinced of a product's quality if it comes in a tin. Same with frosted glass bottles.



Then there's 11) a bag of hard candies with liquid or gummy centers that appears to have lychee, strawberry, orange, and lemon. There's also 12) a bag of mango smoothie gummy cubes, and a bag of what I didn't realize was another bag of the same lychee hard candy from before until I looked at all the pictures at once. For some reason, I thought that this one was lychees and cream (which, by the way, needs to be A Thing).



I also got 13) some possibly-liquid-filled gummies in pomegranate and... elderberry? Blackcurrant? I don't know. Small black tree berries. Or bush. Plus 14) melon gummies, 15) mango caramels (which sounds amazing), and 16) a handful of mystery hard candies. Those could be decorative starbursts on the wrappers, or they could be abstracted lychees. Who knows? Either way, the last thing is a tube of coffee something. Coffee beans? Chocolate covered coffee beans? Little espresso-flavored nuggets? The package elucidates nothing.

I'm planning on recording my reactions to these things as I eat them, so I'm not going to read anything Schazer says to explain the candies until after I've tried them all. no spoilers pls

14) My first gummy was the melon one, which was great. Things that are just called "melon" usually have a flavor that to me seems like a midpoint between cantaloupe and honeydew; it's hard to go wrong with either, so both is even better. It's really nice eating fruit-flavored things that actually taste like fruit, rather than fruitesque sweetness. These ones were solid gummy candy, unlike most of the rest of the gummies.

4) Mixed berry seems like a pretty safe bet; these do not disappoint, and they have that great gooey-in-gummy texture I love so much. Yum!

9) Moving along to a different flavor in the same genre, the kiwi gummies are amazing. The two varieties are visually almost indistinguishable, but I don't care; they're both delicious. Kiwi's one of those foods I forget I really really like until I'm eating it. I suspect the abundance of sickly-sweet strawberry-kiwi things makes me forget that by itself kiwi is great. It's definitely got me excited for the pear ones.

8) Unfortunately, it seems these ones either got too hot or had some moisture in the package. Or were a factory error, who knows. Either way, they've fused into one patchwork gummy mass of pear tastiness. Any given bite is pretty much guaranteed to get some of both flavors, so I can't really examine them separately.

2) These were the ones I was most curious about, and also the ones I got most wrong. First of all, that's a sour plum on the package, not an apple like I originally thought. Second, where I originally thought they were very large, soft gummies, they're actually entire preserved fruits. The taste is hard to describe. It's plummy, but there's also a strong, fermented flavor; it's very salty, and has a vinegary finish. They'd go great with some sharp cheese, or maybe in an onigiri. Has a pit, so I'm glad I took a bite rather than popping the whole thing in my mouth and chomping down.

7) You can really tell these ones came from an American brand (Dole); they definitely have that actually-tastes-like-mango mango taste that I associate with mango confections from everywhere but the United States, but they're also noticeably sweeter than anything else I've tried. And dusted with sugar. Granular sugar though, not powdered, which is nice. Powdered sugar always tastes dusty to me. The solid gummy was a nice change after the very soft plum things.

12) The smoothie cubes were really good, and really interesting. I originally took them for gummies, but they're actually pressed from little granules of... stuff. I don't know what, obviously; the texture is very reminiscent of the time I made jello, then froze it instead of refrigerating it. Probably gelatin-based, but not gummy. They fall apart in your mouth, then melt. I really like the mouthfeel on them.

16) I've just eaten one of the mystery candies, and I'm still not sure what flavor it is. It has the perfumey quality I associate with lychees, but the candy is very mildly flavored. That, or my mouth is burned out from shoveling gummies into it and I can't taste anymore. Actually, you know what, the starbursts on the wrapper are the same ones from the large bags of lychee hard candy. Mystery solved, candy confirmed for lychee.

That is way too much candy in one go for a nominal adult, so I'm going to have to try the rest later. Thanks so much to Schazer for this very thoughtful and delicious gift!

fakeedit: Because apparently that WASN'T too much candy, I ended up eating more while I proofread. 13) The pomegranate-and-whatever gummies had melted too, but this was even funnier because the black ones were an entirely different texture and were sugar-dusted; they formed these big, hard inclusions in the gummy red mass. I did find out they weren't liquid-filled, though; the core of the pomegranate ones was just a different sort of gummy, colored clear and mildly sweet. If I tore the gummy around them, they could be popped out whole. I mostly didn't, though; the texture of eating it all at once was nice and varied.