Today I have some concentrated milk candy to review.

The packaging caught my eye right away because it was so plain. In a sea of bright colors, happy mascots, and pop stars, this pale pink box stood out. The packaging is made of cardboard, and it’s about the same size and shape as a pack of Starbursts. (Just a few inches shorter.) The design is very minimal, and the colors are quirky. The text is navy blue, the box is white, and there are green, pink, and red accents. This design doesn’t wow me, but it did draw my eye on the candy shelf because it looks so different from everything else. 

Opening the candy, I was pleasantly surprised by the little sliding tray! Inside the cardboard tray, there are tiny puck-shaped candies wrapped in silver foil. Everything is really conveniently packaged and well put together. The candy wrapper designs are surprisingly playful. They have cute little cows doing human things. ( I seem to have a businessman-cow on this wrapper.)

The candy itself doesn’t seem to have any smell, but the foil wrapper does. It smells really metallic, which was a little off putting.

When I bought this candy I wasn’t sure what it would taste like. I have had milk candies from the Asian Food Market before, and I hated them. They sat around forever and no one wanted to eat them. I was thinking that these would be some sort of sweetened condensed milk candy, because “high concentrated milk” was written on the packaging…and I was right!

These little pucks are sweet, buttery, milky, goodness. They remind me of the salty milk flavored Chelsea I reviewed last year.

These candies are really delicious. I’m glad this tiny plain little box caught my eye.

© Maria Smith http://poison-and-antidote.net

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As a kid I hated grape flavored candies, but now I can’t get enough of them! I tossed these grape punch tablets into my cart the second I saw them.

The box is pretty small, roughly as big as a pack of cigarettes, and it features three purple cartoon-y grape mascots. (The one on the far right looks a lot like Mr. Sparkle to me. Maybe it is an intentional joke?) The color scheme is purple heavy, but the little hints of orange, red, and green prevent it from looking monochromatic and boring. The design and exaggerated expressions are playful, so I can see this appealing to kids more than adults.

Inside the box there is a silver plastic bag with three trays of tablets. Each tray is made of foil and clear plastic, which makes the candy look medicinal, and each tray holds 6 candies. If I didn’t know any better I would think these were some kind of lozenge or calcium supplement. While these look like something I would buy at a drug store, they smell sweet like a mild grape jelly.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect with these tablets, because I can’t read the box. Would it fizz? Will it be sour? Sweet? Well, it turns out that these are just sweet, chalky, tablets that melt on your tongue. There isn’t any surprise or wow factor, but the flavor is very sweet and fruity. I liken it to a glass of grape juice made from concentrate.

At first I was a little disappointed by how mild these candies were, but once my first tablet dissolved I found myself wanting another. These are pretty addictive, I’ve already gone through my first sleeve of tablets already! I don’t know if I’d buy another box, but I am enjoying these quite a bit.

© Maria Smith http://poison-and-antidote.net

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I liked the strawberry puffed corn snacks so much that I bought these coconut ones.

The design is a bit different than the strawberry variety I purchased before. This time, instead of a cute little face there is a little mascot that seems to be a mixture of leprechaun and hillbilly. I don’t see how he relates to the coconut flavor, so maybe this is a general mascot for this brand? I’m not really sure. Also, on the back of the bag there is a short song and writing that seems to be a game or puzzle. If so, that is a pretty fun detail. Overall, I liked the design of the strawberry bag more, but this bag isn’t terrible.

Inside, the little corn puffs are a light yellow, similar to buttered popcorn. The strawberry variety was curved, like a cheese doodle, but this brand/flavor is shorter and fatter. (More like a tater tot.)

These have a strong, sweet, coconut smell that is really plesant and tropical, but the actual flavor is a little bland. These coconut puffs taste just like I am eating Kix cereal with coconut milk. The flavor is light and airy, similar to a coconut wafer, but the corn flavor overpowers the coconut. Since I really like Kix cereal, I enjoyed these quite a bit.

If you like Kix cereal, or coconut wafers, you’d love these. I enjoyed them, but the strawberry are still my favorite.

© Maria Smith http://poison-and-antidote.net

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Even MORE Chocorooms!

My other Chocoroom flavor reviews:

• Original (Chocolate)
• Caramel
  
• Strawberry
• Purple Sweet Potato
• Macadamia
  

This is the last box of Chocorooms I have in my stash. 

The packaging for this flavor is very vibrant. The combinations of red-violet and green are stunning. I think this is meant to be a fall flavor and design, but I’m not sure. (The Purple Sweet Potato was definitely a fall release with an obvious fall color scheme.) The box is smaller and thinner than the Macadamia version I reviewed a few days ago, so it’s more like the original Chocoroom box than any of the specialty flavors I have had.

Inside, the chocolates are smaller and not individually wrapped. For this flavor, the little chocolate mushroom cap is sunny yellow with a plain biscuit “stump.”

I was kind of surprised by the smell. These don’t smell like a sweet potato at all. In fact, these smell more like a flavored/specialty coffee to me than any sweet potato I’ve ever had.

When I ate one, it confirmed that these weren’t quite sweet potato. While there is a sweet fruity/vegetable taste, these are really more like a mild flavored coffee than anything else. Maybe sweet potatoes are roasted differently in Asia? Even though these don’t taste like a sweet potato, they are pretty yummy.

So far I don’t think any of the specialty Chocorooms I have had tasted like what they were supposed to. If you like mild flavored coffee, you might enjoy this version (my mother does), but my favorite so far is still the Macadamia.

© Maria Smith http://poison-and-antidote.net

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It’s a rainy day here in New Jersey, so I figured it was the perfect time to try some instant phở.

The packaging is similar to most of the cup ramen I have had. The container is a styrofoam bowl filled with seasoning packets and dry noodles. The only difference is that this time they included a teeny little fork! Having an included utensil is really handy and a nice touch. The packaging design is typical for an instant soup or Ramen. It uses bold colors, images, and text. While I wasn’t wowed by the design, it is very functional.

I added all of the packets and the hot water, then I let it sit. Once it was ready, I noticed that it smelled very salty. According to the nutritional info this serving contains 82.8% of my daily sodium intake! Wow. (A lot of instant ramen and soups are VERY high in sodium.) Once I got past the salty aroma, I can also smell artificial chicken and a citrus-y oil. (Maybe lemon? Lime? I’m not too sure.)

I tried to eat it with the fork included, but it was extremely difficult. The noodles were heavy and fell right off the fork. After a few attempts I ended up switching to chopsticks, which worked much better.

This phở is very salty. I went through several glasses of water to try and balance the salty flavor and I didn’t even make a dent in the soup bowl. I can taste artificial chicken, some sort of flavored oil that I can’t quite place, and bits of dried veggies. I am not sure what the little peppercorn shapes actually are…because they are soft and spongy. (They absorbed the salty chicken flavor.)

While I like the convenience of this instant soup, the utensil supplied is almost useless, and it is extremely salty. I couldn’t even finish my bowl.

© Maria Smith http://poison-and-antidote.net

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Time to finally dig into some of the stuff I bought from the SunSeng Market.

I love the slight variations in design for all three flavors of Ichitan Green Tea. They all follow the same template, but the colors and images change to relate to the flavor. For the unsweetened version, the design is a bright spring green with a natural fabric texture and fresh plants. There is also a cute little grasshopper! The plastic wrapped design actually has a matte texture which feels really great in your hand and photographs nicely. (Always a plus for me.)

Although this tea is unsweetened, the scent is sweet like dandelion honey.

Some green teas can taste grassy, but this is really refreshing. Although it isn’t sweet in a sugary or syrupy sense, it is sweet like honeysuckle or other edible flowers. There is no bitter after taste, like tea that has been steeped too long, and it tastes like an actual brewed tea (not like Arizona).

Unsweetened tea was something that I never enjoyed as a kid, but now that I am older I have realized a lot of those “sweetened iced teas” were barely teas at all. This is a really refreshing drink, and one of the best unsweetened bottled teas I have ever had. It isn’t bitter or over steeped, and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys tea. (I bet you could drink this hot as well.)

© Maria Smith http://poison-and-antidote.net

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