05.28.07
Kasugai Hakka No Kuni
Do you know how hard it is to find blue JSF? There’s a blue Meltyblend…which I’ve already reviewed. There’s a blue Pocky…which I’ve already reviewed. Oh, and there is a blue Ramune which…I’ve already reviewed. I wandered all over my Second Favoritest Asian Grocery Store looking for anything blue that I hadn’t already done. I found a ton of red things (did red two days ago) and even more green things, which would work if I were writing in Italy, and then this one blue fella. Apparently my second most favorite Asian Grocery Store is a red/green kinda place.
Naturally I picked these fellas up, but mostly because they were blue (and nothing else in the store was) and not because I thought they would add any extra pizzazz to the JSFR. If you take a look at the picture, you might notice the prominent PEPPERMINT on the front and the back lists exactly two ingredients: Sugar corn syrup and artificial flavor. At the end of the day all these really are, are peppermints.
The candies are neatly packaged in individual wrappers that you have to pry apart versus just twist open like most hard candies. Plus, they have this funny little castle deelie printed on them. I don’t know why a castle but maybe the Japanese on the wrapper explains it. Or maybe there is just a castle. Who knows. Once you liberate the peppermints, you get a rugged looking lozenge which is about as big around as a quarter and about as thick as seven quarters stacked up on each other. Pretty beefy if you compare them to the Brachs line up. They reminded me a lot of those weird fruity hard candies with the bumpily tops and the gooey centers save these were peppermint through and through.
And they were peppermint too, with a hint of something else. Maybe a slight mintholation or maybe a blend of peppermint and something else or maybe, seeings as there are only two ingredients, the something extra is a smacking of artificial. Whatever it is, there is definitely peppermint and definitely something else lurking in the background which makes the peppermint taste…different. Half my Guinea pigs weren’t so fond of the something extra and all of them thought that Kasugai Hakka No Kuni were…serviceable. I think that sort of reaction just fails to meet the 3 pea definition so in accordance, I’m giving Kasugai Hakka No Kuni a fairly high
2.5 wasabi pea Rating out of a total of 5 wasabi peas.
