09.25.10
Senjaku Cherry Candy
In the great snack purge of ought ten, I had to (sadly) throw out more expired snacks than I wanted to because somebody’s reviewer eyes are too big for their reviewer…umm…stomach? Yeah, the analogy falls apart there a little but suffice to say, I find that I buy more snacks than I can review within the time frame of all their “best buy” dates. This saddens me and in the case of the “delicious fruits” something or other I found behind the water pitchers, scares me. I don’t think the things inside the package were gray and furry when I bought them. Yikes!
Anyway, I really ought to get on the ball and either 1. buy less snacks each outing (yeah right) or 2. review stuff faster (actually probably a better chance than number one, but still marginally slim). I lucked out with these little fellas because I did my grand purge a scant few days ago and lo! These expire at the end of the month!!! which means for the next few days they will be peachy perfect, even though they are hard candy and probably good through the apocalypse. So I quick gave everyone I know a cherry hard candy to munch on.
You know what? Rob will be shocked to pieces because for a hard candy, these are really good and they happen to be a Japanese hard candy. Rob is convinced that the Japanese haven’t quite learned how to make hard candies the way, say, Brach’s or Lifesavers makes hard candies. Our recent run with the Food drops illustrates this point: although the Mad Japanese Food Scientists nailed the flavor more often than they missed, they were still making fish soup and mayo cod roe into hard candy form. Japan doesn’t have a run on this either, remember it was Korea that brought us tomato hard candy. The fact that these cherry candies are not only decently munchable but actually quite good might make them doubly awesome because cherry can be done wrong in so many ways.
To start off, Senjaku Cherry Candy don’t smell particularly cherryrific when you open up the package (and may I take a moment here to note how pretty the packaging is? I love the little flower details along the edge) which might give one pause. On the other hand, they don’t smell of heinous cough syrup either and that make me quite happy. They actually don’t smell of much of anything really…perhaps a faint whiff of cherry if you think hard.
As for the taste, they are a nicely tart candy with the obligatory hard candy sugary sweet and they are deliciously cherry. The ingredients list Cherry juice and Cherry (I assume puree as mentioned on the front but they don’t specify other than to distinguish it from Cherry Juices) as well as “flavors”. I’d say this is about a 7ish on the “cherry as a fresh fruit” scale (actual cherries being 10) but they also ping at an impressive 9+ on the “concentrated cherry” scale. There is exactly zero chemical cherry flavoring taste so good job on “flavors” not being anything artificial.
One of my Guinea Pigs said that they remind her of her mom’s cherry pie. I’ve had her mom’s pie, her mom wr0cks the pies yo. Other Pigs have been very pleased by the taste as well. The only complaint I have is that the hard candy can get a little bitey so watch your tongues.
Rating of 4.5 Wasabi Peas out of a possible 5.
