These are interesting. On the one hand, they’re simply a ginger flavored hard candy. On the other hand….they’re straight weird. No, I don’t think the Vietnamese text is weird, but I certainly think the gigantor ginger pictured seems a bit off-putting. Look at it, it’s like a disease growing in a lab! Shoots coming off the sides, the color a mix of turgid brown and urine yellow. It’s delight! Honestly people, I joke. It’s what I do. Because, while I really do think the design of this bag is a bit jacked up, it draws me in because of that, rather than repelling me. Just like the cat at the Humane Society that literally didn’t have fur on her butt when when we met her, who had apparently been homeless for a year, and had developed a taste for eating plastic. True story. She’s been living with us for 2 years, picked up by Jonny Guru Jr. She goes by the name Montel now: As you can see, she’s a bit-ahem-more than healthy. All she HAS is fur all over the place, as well as a hankering for non-artifically sweetened Ginger Ale. See? She’s down with the ginger theme too. The point is that I’m attracted to the odd, the rejected, and the potentially misinterpreted. So this bag of ginger hard candy had me very excited. There’s been a ton of ginger flavored candies cropping up left and right, and while most of them are fine, it takes something a bit different to illicit a purchase from me now. The jury was still out when I opened the bag. Oh. They’re basically the same thing as Chimes– a chewy ginger candy. Nothing wrong at all with those, but…they exist already. Nope. I was wrong-by a lot. They’re deceptively small hard candies, which you KNOW got me stoked. Love me some hard candies. I was thinking this morning as to why exactly I love hard candy so much. And I think, after pulling out my never-used degree in Psychology, that it has something to do with the idea that they don’t go bad, so they’re always there. Probably stems from me being an only child, and not having many kids to play with as a lad. Except I wasn’t. There was this “brother” guy: Read into that what you will. But there’s something there-potentially on a hoarding level- that I supposed I could “deal” with and analyze. But I won’t. There’s worse conditions I could have. Back to these candies. It really is simply a ginger flavored candy-no additional flavors, no other pronounced edges. It’s a bit spicy, but not too strong, and the flavor lasts and lasts. These are the first Vietnamese candy we’ve reviewed (I’m pretty sure), an my translation isn’t SUPER, but I don’t think there’s too many ingredients in these. All in all, I like these. This company also makes a tamarind hard candy, and THAT I’d love to try. But I think I might buy these if I stumbled across them again. Of course they’re not available for us in the states to purchase, but for these…I would say that’s not a huge deal. Like I said, there’s a lot of ginger candy out there, and while these are good, they’re not worth buying ticket to Asia, and bringing an spare gigantic canvas duffel bag, only to shuttle candy back in. Not…that I’m planning on doing that anyhow. This year.
The candy looks like a metal plate. The brother guy is freaking me out.