From little mushrooms made of cookies and chocolate, to candy that looks like ramen, to gummies to candy..bamboo, Meiji makes some weird shit. And some of it is truly great. The rest of it? Perhaps over my head. I wish I could tell you the name of this latest offering, but let’s hold off naming it until we get a good long look at it.
Ok. From the looks of the box, I’d say we’re dealing with a fizzy candy of some sort, perhaps a dextrose type thing like Sweetarts? I’m way too quick with my detective skills though, because if I’d looked hard, I’d have noticed the peculiar thing on the upper part of the box. What is that?
What the hell is going on here. Did I get these at the candy store or the pharmacy?
That answers that-the pharmacy.
But when I take one of these pill looking things out of the packaging and give it a try, its not at all what I expected. The feel is somewhat like a thinner Sweetart, but the taste is pretty unmistakable: it’s yogurt. That’s a spoonful of yogurt on the front of the box. While I really want to say it’s lemon yogurt, apparently it’s simply plain yogurt flavored. And man, does that yogurt taste come through.
The pills themselves are very easy to bite into, and the entire eating experience for me was super quick. No real fizz to speak of, but there’s that underlying tart note that I originally attributed to lemon-instead, I think that’s just the inherent bitterness/tartness of yogurt they’re trying to emulate.
They’re good. Not really my thing, but they’re certainly tasty. I’m not sure why we need SO much wrapping involved-perhaps they’d get crushed without the blister packing? Again though, why put THOSE into another wrap? Obviously I’m not privy as to whether it’s because they cheekily want these to really look like medicine (they do after all make candy bamboo & mushrooms), or if the packaging is simply necessary to preserve them. Regardless, I appreciate the uniqueness.
From my friend who grew up in Japan, apparently these were a staple of his youth. And unsurprisingly, he told me that the translated name is Meiji Yogurt.
It appears to me that the Japanese love lots of packaging. Maybe it’s a germ thing. Which I appreciate, although the environment doesn’t…