02.14.06
Ultraman Candies
Well crappit! It seems I have a JSFR Valentine’s Day tradition that I totally forgot about…namely posting a review on Valentine’s Day. I don’t have anything suitably lovey dovey lined up. In fact I only have one thing that is packaged in red and it’s not…exactly…well you’ve already seen the pic. Ahhh February 14th; the day of hearts, candy, flowers and Ultraman.
Yeah. Well, at least it has candy going for it. And red. And maybe love if you can call the Japanese’s fascination with big city stomping monsters love. It has been a long, loooong time since I’ve seen any Ultraman so I can’t say for sure that all he did was battle city stomping monsters. I can’t even say for sure that he wasn’t a 50 foot behemoth all the time or whether he grew to the size of the enemy. I know he battled his evil twin Ultraman nemesis once through the skyline of Tokyo and I remember another stompin monster he battled which was rather large in size but almost everything else is lost in the fog of years. And of course, not being allowed to watch Ultraman regularly because it fell under the heading of “shows like cartoons that little boo and sis must not watch else their brains boil over and leak out their ears”.
However! This banning of an awesome monster stompin, big fighting silvery guy in a suit, TV show did not deter the tiny boo, and watching Ultraman when I could was one of my favorite pass times. That said…I don’t remember the rampant cheesiness that seems to plague the pictures on the wrappers. Take a look:
You got your posing Ultramans in the lower left corner, then the monsters Ultraman fought? Some cheesy planes and the futuristic cars. The lollypop was universally Ultraman, or at least as universally Ultraman as one can be given a sample size of two. Why? I don’t know. What I do know is that there is a review in here somewhere so I best get to reviewing it before I run out of space. On the web. Bwahahaha!
The Lollypop. Two comments here: Is anyone else singing the lollypop song in their head? You know…” L-O-Double L-Y, P-O-P spells lollypop. It’s a lick on a stick that’s bound to get you sick, it’s Lollypop for me!” No? OK, had to check. The other incidental is that one of the shows that I do remember, or at least a part of the show that I remember, is the one where Our Hero (whoissecretlyUltramanbutnobodyelseknows) has to leave from a dinner party in order to save Tokyo from that week’s stompin menace by becoming ULTRAMAN (it’s the best I could do without an HTML tag for reverb). He rushes out, after checking furtively that no one suspects! and raises his Ultraman summoning doohickey into the sky! For Tokyo! Huzzah (or the equivalent)! Except nothing happens because he has his fork valiantly brandished in the air. Ultraman don’t come for forks.
Ultraman does however appear to support the brandishing of lollypops. That cracked me right up.
(BTW, I’m real time reviewing this and if you’re wondering when I’m going to get to the review, I’ll let you know as soon as I can get into the lollypop. The poor sucker (Hee!) has gone done fused itself into its wrapper. OK, there it goes. Back to the review)
Woah! FROOTY! And TART(Y). The pop is a strange orange color, like a tangerine orange almost and it does appear to have suffered hard times while in transit or they had a lousy lollypop mold. It looks a little moodgy, like it got warm and then resolidified. It’s also really, REALLY, orangy/tangerine-y. Wow. I’m also getting a distinct chemical flavoring which is cause for pea point deductions. I’d say it was a 70/30 orangarine to chemical ratio. Meh. Weirdly, despite the numerous bubbles in the pop, it’s not that bitey on the tongue at all. I think it’s a soft hard candy, evidenced by its moodgy appearance and the fact that I haven’t lacerated my tongue yet. I’d give the pop a 2.5 pea rating.
I need a peppermint or something to clear my palate.
The Star. Why a star? Was Ultraman an alien thing that was summoned by a doohickey that was fork sized but not a fork? OK! I just did some quick Web sleuthing and apparently Ultraman was an alien and he accidentally killed Our Hero, so in remorse Ultraman merged his life with the dead dude’s and the two are one but only one at a time. Thus, the summoning. And Ultraman was 50 feet tall. Glad that’s settled.
My first impression of the stars are that they are Uuuuugly. Hard candy should not be reminiscent of sludge (unless Ultraman came from a sludge galaxy, but even then I don’t want to be eating something that looks like sludge. Ixnay on the ludgesay). Ooooo! Cola! And wow! Tart. It’s also a little fizzy like some of the other hard candies have been (and I enjoy the fizzy) but not quite. Maybe fizzy light. I’d happily snack on these; let’s go with a 3.5 pea rating for the stars.
The Ball. I…don’t know. Ball? Planet? Eyeball of Ultraman’s defeated foe? Your guess is as good as mine but it is ball shaped so ball it shall be. In terms of looks, the ball is miles ahead of the sludge star with its tiny Dum Dumesque construction and Ultra pale-light bluish clear coloring. Mine also looks like a cat’s eye marble. The taste is sugary and mild with maybe a hint of citrus…say grapefruit (but an extremely laid back grapefruit). There also seems to be a little something something in the core (hence the cat’s eye constriction) which is…errr…tart? Mine leaked vaguely tart a short time into the sucking and now the center seems devoid of filling. Hrm. Not the wow I was hoping for. The candy is also a little rough, watch the tongue. I’d go with a 3 pea rating; I can take them or I can leave them.
The Lifesaver. Oh come on, what else are you going to call it – the donut? This is the only shape for me that has any clear reference to the show. I remember Ultraman fighting his foes with a crossed arm maneuver deelie which spit out ring shaped bits of monster defeating…stuff. Energy? Shurikin? Krispy Kremes? Whatever it was, it was circular and put the hurt on the bad guys. Oh! Apricot. Hrrrmmmm. Apricot with a liiiiitle hint of chemical thrown in. That’s what eventually takes ’em down you know…the one two of apricot and hesitant chemical aftertaste. These aren’t as TART as the pops or the stars and certainly are frootier than the balls. Again, a good middle of the road candy (but a tad bitey on the tongue as well). I’d go with a 3 pea on this one too.
Totaling up my Ultrapeas, I see that Ultraman candy has garnered itself a
Rating
of 3 Wasabi Peas out of a possible 5.
