Popin' Cookin' Oekaki Gummy Land

Hey guys, we're back with another sweet review (pun intended!)

This set was gotten from Tokutokuya for RM 13.90. You can get it in some other places as well but I haven't seen any besides there.

Generally what you do with this set is you make your own flavoured candy gummies with the provided materials in box; which consists of a bunch of cookie cutter shapes that varies from pack to pack, there's no way of telling exactly what's inside, a few sachets of gummy powder and flavourings as well as a 'pallet' of sorts where you make your creations.

You pretty much achieve this by using the included dropper to 'colour' the shapes with the flavoured water. There's some instructions in the front on what colours end up tasting like what flavours, but its still totally up to you whether you want to follow it or not. 

Even if you can't read Japanese they make it really easy to understand what sorts of flavours you get when you mix the colours. You can apparently make diluted versions of each colour as well, by adding a higher water ratio in the pallet; but I find that it dilutes the flavours a little too much to my liking.

Inside, you get the usual bundle of sachets, a plastic pallet, cookie cutter shapes and a dropper.

Its a shame that its not too easy to see what shapes you will get inside. I think I landed with one of the more generic-shapes ones. I was hoping that there would actually be a dolphin shape inside (as indicated by the packaging) but I guess this will have to do. The plastic is fairly tough, so once you're done you can keep them as cookie cutters or stuff to make those cute bento box decorations.

All laid out, you pour in the whole packet of sweet smelling gummy powder into the largest section of the pallet, and fill up the appropriate colours. Each reservoir has a water level indicator so you likely won't overfill it by accident. Yellow is lemon flavoured, red is grape flavoured and blue is ramune/soda flavoured. Of the three primary colours I liked the yellow the most; it tasted strong without being ridiculous, which is a good thing!

I decided to go with one of the smaller shapes first, and followed the instructions to get the appropriate colours; except for the brown (a mix of all three primary colours) which kinda tasted like a watered down cola. You have to shove the shape all the way down till the powder is almost overflowing out of it before you get to work.

Colouring up the shapes is pretty easy; you grab the dropper and drip in the colours you want to 'paint' the gummy with.

Once the colour is in, it's sucked up by the powder so even if you put more on the same spot it doesn't mix, so you can get creative without worrying that it'll turn into an ugly mess. Pretty neat!

After that you give the gummy a short while to dry and you can just pick it out of the mold using the included fork. The back of the gummy will be coated in a little bit of white powder where the liquid didn't get through and will be a bit lumpy. You can take care of it with a quick squirt of extra colour before you put it aside.Then use the fork to even out the powder again before you make a new gummy.

Now the biggest problem I have with the kit here is overflow. When you start getting near the bottom of the powder, the gummy tends to either get stuck to the bottom of the pallet or extra colour starts coming out the sides.

The kit is maybe good for maybe four gummies before it hits this stage, depending on which shapes you used. In the end there was a little powder left over which I couldn't do much with so I squirted it with some colour and let it solidify there. A gummy's a gummy.

Personally I found this kit quite enjoyable. For starters the colours are nice and vibrant; and the flavours are quite pleasant as well. They weren't horribly sweet and neither were they too strong.

The only flavour I didn't really like was the Ramune, but that's mainly because I don't like Japanese Soda flavour to begin with. The rest tasted quite strong, with my favourites being lime and orange.

The gummies themselves weren't as tough as the ones you can get at the store, but instead were slightly soft, but they held their shapes well and frankly they were delicious.

Spire sez: Honestly speaking, this would be one of the kits I would love to play around with again. Its fun for kids who are creative, and it's real colourful so it satisfies the need to learn-and-play. The gummies are pretty tasty too; I just wish they gave more of the gummy powder; I'd gladly pay extra if they provided maybe two sachets instead of just one. On top of that the pallet can be kept for real watercolour works and the shapes can be kept as well, I say this kit deserves it's high ratings.

Silvy says: It was a fun and entertaining kit! My only peeve would be that the instructions were pretty vague (if you didn't search it up on Youtube that is) and the gummies didn't dry up fast enough for me to remove them from the molds! Oddly hypnotizing and relaxing to work this out, have a great time with your friends (and get sugar high right after that!)

Spire's Ratings

Flavor: 4/5

Price: 3/5

DIY level: Easy

Fun:  5/5

Silvy's Ratings

Flavor: 5/5

Price: 3/5

DIY level: Easy to Average

Fun:  5/5

Snickers Pumpkin Halloween Candy

Oh look, two updates in the same month! Amazing!

This one was also on the backburner for quite a bit of time, being halloween candy and all. I picked this up for about RM 4.99 at Cold Storage during Halloween season last year (and that's when I ate it too, this isn't a few month old candy bar!)

In terms of size it's a little bit smaller than your average Snickers bar but it's thicker. It looked pretty promising because well, I'm more a fan of chocolate than I am of sweet candies and gummies so I decided to just gloss over those last year. That and I have to watch my health a little more so I get to be picky ;)

I was surprised by the level of detail on the chocolate. I'm quite used to seeing candies that look nothing like what's advertised on the wrapper; especially seasonal ones seem to suffer from that the most. Taste wise, its your regular old Snickers bar minus the wrinkles and the nuts. The chocolate tasted a little creamier than usual but it could just be my imagination.

Spire sez: If you like Snickers, you're getting the exact same thing here but in a slightly different package. It's also a fair bit more expensive but you're paying Halloween Candy prices so it's somewhat justified. I quite liked the fact that they didn't incorporate nuts in this iteration, and that the fillings were caramelly smooth. I hope they bring it back this year.

Spire's Ratings

Flavor: 4/5

Price: 4/5

DIY level: Nonexistant

Fun:  2/5

Puchi Deco Tezukuri

Hey gang, we're back with something a little different, a deco candy post!

For the life of me I cannot read Japanese, and I can't seem to find the actual name of this kit either save for what the English ingredient label said at the back. But what IS obvious about this kit is that it gives you a bunch of pre-moulded chocolate treats to decorate and either eat (of course!) or give to your friends.It was priced at RM 24 when purchased.

This kit and the others in the same series have the girliest boxes I've ever seen in my life; they're completely pink for one, and if the lace and sparkley gem prints don't give away that this is for girls well....perhaps it's time to get your eyes checked. Please ignore the expiry date, we tend to write our reviews at random after we actually test out the kits so we're not actually messing around with expired candy here.

The kit itself didn't really have that much in it, consisting of the moulded chocolate cakes and cake slices, a sachet full of sugar decorations, a tube of white chocolate and a bunch of rather cute packets to store your candy in once you were done.

Here's a closeup of the chocolates themselves. Each one was a milk chocolate with a layer of white chocolate on top. They looked pretty plasticky to the point they almost looked like toys but they smelled pretty good.

The next order of business was to heat up the tube of white chocolate. This would act as the 'glue' for all the sugar decorations which consisted of candy shapes (flowers and hearts of various colours) and colourful nonpareils. Since the chocolates came in some extra packaging we just reused them as a place to store the candies while we worked.

Now here came the hard part. The kit doesn't give you anything to help you decorate your goodies, so we resorted to using toothpicks to help attach the candies, which is really tricky. You see, both Silvy and I have these giant ungainly hands that aren't capable of handling the delicate task of decorating such tiny things, but we tried our best anyway.

First you attach a glob of white chocolate and then stick on a nonpareil or a candy onto it. Sounds simple doesn't it?

Considering how LONG both of us took to decorate six candies, we had to reheat the tube of chocolate at least 3 times with fresh bowls of hot water. This is what happens when you give a pair of adults with questionable decorating skills something like this.

We did have a lot of fun decorating these candies of course, and when bagged up with the included plastic bags they did look pretty adorable. 

We didn't bundle up everything however, for what's the point of candy if none are sacrificed for the sake of taste. So like all good supporters of natural selection; we ate the ugly ones. These are pretty cute things to give people as gifts honestly, but it also makes a fantastic passive aggressive gift to those who lack the coordination for tiny things.

Spire sez: Despite being plastically in looks, honestly they were pretty delicious. You do feel a bit bad chomping down on something you so meticulously made but the fun involved in making them is worth the effort. You also end up with a lot extra white chocolate left over and that itself doesn't taste half as bad either. My biggest gripe would be the price, which is a bit ridiculous for the amount of stuff you get inside. I would have expected somewhat better chocolate quality at least coming from something at this price point and the fact that the box advertises pink coloured chocolate pieces which were nowhere to be found.

Silvy says: I loved it! It was fun attempting to test out my artistic skills piping the melted chocolate nicely on the 'cakes' and decorating them painstakingly one bead/flower at a time. Taste-wise wasn't all too bad either, despite the initial impression that the 'cakes' looked rather plasticky and inedible. I just wish we could've 'baked' the cakes instead of getting pre-set ones. 

Spire's Ratings

Flavor: 4/5

Price: 3/5

DIY level: Moderate-Hard

Fun:  4/5

Silvy's Ratings

Flavor: 3/5

Price: 3/5

DIY level: Moderate-Hard (precision is needed!)

Fun:  5/5

Morinaga Henshin Chews

Hey all! We're back with another installment of Sugarnoms! We wish we could update more often, but both Silvy and I have been very busy! New jobs and such tend to make you extra occupied. 

Anyway, this time we have two rather interesting candy chews. Morinaga has a lot of different candies under their belt, but when I saw these Henshin candies (henshin meaning transformation) I had to give them a go.  

Basically, they come in two 'flavour' sets. One being Banana Strawberry and the other being Banana Orange. The front and back of the packaging shows the kind of flavours you get when you mix any particular two flavours, with a mystery 'popular drink' flavour if you mix in a 3rd flavour. They sort of encourage you to get both at the same time, if not to experiment. Thankfully they aren't expensive, the price going at roughly RM 3 and up a piece depending where you get 'em.

As you can see, banana and orange becomes ramune (soda) flavour, while strawberry and banana becomes melon flavour. Throw in an extra flavour from another pack and it becomes that special 'popular drink' flavour.

 Here's what they look like outta the packaging. They're slightly sticky but they were nice and thick. I tried each individual flavour before getting down to the mixing.

The orange tasted nice, slightly tangy but not overbearing. This was my favourite of the lot.

Banana was pretty neutral, tasting only a hint of the fruit itself.

The strawberry was surprisingly muted tasting, despite blasting my face with strawberry scent when I opened the packaging, but it didn't taste artificial so it was actually quite pleasant.

Now on to the mixed flavours.

The melon flavour more or less tasted like melon, though it still tasted rather muted but it was nice and mellow.

The ramune flavour on the other hand, only smelled like its namesake but didn't taste like it. It was still alright but I feel it fell rather short.

The 'popular drink' flavour, if you didn't guess yet that it was cola flavour. Sadly the mix tasted like a real weird cola, but thankfully the flavours that made it up weren't quite discernible after mixing.

It was really fun to twizzle though.

Spire sez: Its sticky, thick and slightly sweet. Tends to get really stuck in teeth. Personally I find it quite nice in small quantities, and if you chill it a bit, you can chop up the lot into segments for drawn out enjoyment. It's easily eaten out of the packaging too, so it gets plus points for being mess-free. 

Spire's Ratings

Flavor: 3/5

Price: 4/5

DIY level: Nonexistant

Fun:  3/5

KitKat Dark Chocolate

Spire here with a short but very sweet bit of sugar to share!

Now, a KitKat is an absolutely normal thing to come across in your average grocery store. Well, with the exception of those weird flavoured KitKats Japan is constantly churning out (really, Sakura flavour? if I wanted flowers I'd go and eat them myself)

So to my surprise I came across these dark chocolate KitKats in Jaya Grocer. They're not cheap at all, pricing close to RM8 a bar, and they melt really easy.

I had to refrigerate mine as soon as I got home, else it would have gone out of shape. At any rate, the packaging is quite tough (none of that weird paper stuff going on here) so  you CAN feel the quality that you are paying for. Here's the back, if you'd like to see the minute details. It ONLY has 10.3g of sugar in it :D

Sorry, but we can't provide a picture of the bar inside it. It didn't last long enough for a picture!

Taste wise, it was a very rich, deliciously dark chocolatey KitKat. It wasn't so sweet, and it wasn't all that bitter either, but rather that delectable middle ground between them. It tasted great cold as well as warm (though a teensy bit messier) I'd strongly recommend it if you have a bit of extra cash you want to splurge on some tasty dark chocolate, but not enough to go and grab a premium chocolate bar. 

There's a slightly cheaper 70% dark chocolate version as well, but it didn't survive the journey home. Oh well *sniff*

Spire's Ratings

Flavor: 4/5

Price: 2/5

DIY level: Nonexistant

Fun: Delicious