Friday, March 18, 2016

Teddy Pop - Asian Food Market

Teddy Pop - Asian Food Market
Happy Saint Patrick's Day everyone! (Well the few minutes left of it anyway.) The last two years I went all out and cooked up some fancy holiday-themed recipes, but...it's Thursday night and it's been a very long work week. I am barely sane as it is, so I'll be typing up a few reviews for some green colored packages in my food stash instead. It's win-win! You guys get multiple posts on the blog, and I clear out a tiny corner of my food haul. First up, something I've been looking forward to for months, Teddy Pop! (Plus this is not only green but RAINBOW themed. If that's not festive, I don't know what is.) 
The bag is a little beat up after being tossed around my food stash, but the design is still crisp and clean. We have a seemingly simple illustrated bear face, but it's been filled with geometric shapes in varying shades of green. It's really different from all the other products on the candy shelf at the Asian Food Market, and the overall look reminds me of children's products from IKEA. Actually, everything about this package has a Eastern European flare to it. The typeface, the colors, the layout...I dig it!
Upon further inspection, the stuff inside seems pretty neat too! We have 6 different fruit flavored bear candies, two of which are new to this bag, and each in a wrapper has a name on it. I can't read everything on the packaging, but the general gist is that each of these candies has a name on it because the candy itself is somehow related to the Save the Children foundation. I'm guessing some of the purchasing money goes towards the foundation, and that by having all these names on the candies it boosts sales with consumers trying to find their own name, like when Coke came out with the name tag-style bottles. (I know it suckered me into buying a Maria bottle and I'm a Pepsi drinker!)
Lo and behold, inside I has a bunch of individually wrapped rainbow bears with different names on them. I sorted them out and it looks like I only got a few repeats, which is really impressive.
Can I just say, these little wrappers are gorgeous! We have bold pops of color, a simple design, six different flavors, and all these unique names. If the candies taste even half as good as they look they'll be worth the purchase.

I grabbed a few of my repeat names, and a few others at random to flesh-out my pseudo rainbow and bear-shaped-cavity causing goodness, and gave each flavor a try.


Red (cherry) - Mariko starts out tangy and artificial, and kind of cough-drop-y, but it gets more tart and refreshing as it dissolves, which makes it more authentic. Not bad at all!
Orange (tangerine) - Kana's zesty, sweet, tangy, and pretty darn authentic. However, if you didn't know that this was tangerine I think you'd easily confuse it with your run-of-the-mill orange.
Yellow (lemon)- Shunta is new to this line-up, apparently, and I'm not sure if it's replacing something else or if it's just a new flavor being added to the original mix, but to me, this tastes like lemon lime soda. It's very light and almost fizzy! Very refreshing, and this flavor in particular reminded me of the Soda Kids Candy I reviewed a few years ago. (Which had AMAZING packaging too.)

Green (green apple)- Mirei is another light and almost bubbly flavor. It's kind of like the Jolly Rancher version, only less tart and much more floral. This one is too floral-heavy for my tastes and I really didn't care for it, but I'm not a fan of green apple anything.

Purple
(grape)- Ikuto is deep and complex, like concord grape juice. More grape candies need to be like this, and not that gross medicine-like artificial grape flavoring. It's very similar to the Kasugai gummy, but in hard candy form.

Pink (peach)- Wow, this is the first time I've had a peach candy I haven't liked. Kaoru is really artificial and if I didn't see "peach" written on the bag, I don't think I'd even know what it was. It reminds me of generically fruity lip-gloss, or cosmetics geared towards preteens. Not a fan of this one, although it looks super cute.

Overall, these things are AWESOME! You get a lot of variety in the flavors and names, and everything is so nicely put together. You have a lovely modern package, bright and colorful candies, and very detailed candy molds. You can even see little seams on the backside of these candy teddy bears! If you want something cute and fun to share with your friends, you won't find too many candies more awesome than this. Every flavor might not be a winner (I'm looking at you peach), but one bad egg won't bring this product down.
© Maria Smith http://poion-and-antidote.net
Like me on facebook to keep up with all my foodie adventures

No comments:

Post a Comment