This is a weird one. I bought these from our friends at CandyHero.com, just expecting to love them. But I didn’t. And then I did.
Told you it was weird. First, let’s look at the bag. It’s funky, mysterious, and from what I could see, it appeared as though I was gonna love it.
Fazer has recently been climbing the charts for me as far as interesting candy goes. They make LOTS of licorice varieties, and also those excellent fruit jellies we reviewed a few months back. This bag though, Missa X, looked to be a licorice and sour gummy mix. Yes, please.
Visually, I was in love. Such punchy colors, such perfect little shapes. I jumped in on the licorice first, and certainly wasn’t disappointed. Slightly salty, not too hard at all, with a nice approachable flavor. Really good. Then I tried the yellow piece.
Whoah. On the one hand, it was tasty, but there was a weird flavor I was picking up, and just couldn’t track. What WAS it? Was it..soapy? No, maybe it’s…an artificiality? Some sort of plastic like taste? I simply couldn’t put my finger on it. So I did what I do with all candy I buy that isn’t great: I took it to work.
But here’s the rub: out of the 100 or so people that I work with, only 3-4 like licorice. That’s just stupid, but it’s true. So I took some to my homey Brian, and warned him that they were weird and likely not that good. See, Brian got into licorice after I encouraged him to try my go-to gateway licorice: Katjes Salzige Heringe. I defy anyone, regardless of whether they think they don’t like licorice or not, to not love these. The point is that now he’s very open minded when it comes to trying different kinds of licorice, which IS MORE THAN I CAN SAY ABOUT THE REST OF YOU JABRONIES! Ahem. Anyhow, Brian took some, and looked me in the face, and said “I like them. They’re tasty”.
Was there something wrong with me? I took another small handful and ate a few. Yeah, I did really like the taste, but I did before as well-and then. once again, that peculiar flavor I couldn’t pinpoint cropped up again. But after eating it a second time, I think I realized that I DID like that taste, it was just very different and new. Or, more likely, I was filled with self doubt and was worried that Brian was going to take my job, so I gave it a second look.
It was around this time that I realized that, not only did I like them, but I REALLY liked them, so I did the predictable thing: took them home and ate the rest of the bag while watching “Will & Grace” in bed, alone. Or maybe it was just Youtube, but dammit I was watching something.
These are different, and to be honest, I STILL don’t know what “that” taste is, but I really dig it. Sometimes you just “don’t know”, like this lady, from Seinfeld:
“Sometimes Jerry, …I just don’t know”.
Hey, I feel ya. I didn’t know, any almost missed out on something very tasty. But you know what saved me? The Candy Gurus minions. They’re spreading people, believe it.
Fazer Missa X sounds like something Jar-Jar Binks would scream.
That’s all I got.
That’s some funny shit. Too true.