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I want candy right now, but I guess that’s not surprising. I want candy all the time, under practically any circumstances. The part of adulthood that delights me the most is that I am allowed to buy candy whenever I want, unbound by the conditions (Halloween, the movies) that candy-eating used to require. Small sacks of treats make their way home with me on nearly every shopping trip—especially lately, when something sweet amidst the beans and bread supplies feels non-negotiable.
As a grown-up person, I like grown-up candy, which I think is an important distinction to make. My tastes have changed over time, shifting from Swedish Fish and Sour Watermelons as a kid to Gold Bears and crunchy-coated Berries in college. Now I want a gummy candy that looks at home in a spread of happy hour snacks, with an elevated flavor to match. (On the chocolate end of the spectrum, Whoppers and Buncha Crunch fandom gave way to a big-time love for Ritter Sport, in any of its myriad fancy varieties, but that’s a story for another day). After years of sampling chewy, fruity sweets, I've found that nothing strikes the exact right balance of delightful and elegant like Kasugai gummy candy.
Kasugai is a Japanese snack company that makes all manner of sweet and salty things, but it’s most well-known for a specific line of fruit-flavored gummy candies. I can’t tell you the product name more precisely than that because there isn't one: across the top of the packaging, decorated with a zoomed-in image of ripe fruit, bold letters spell out STRAWBERRY GUMMY CANDY or PINEAPPLE GUMMY CANDY in both Japanese and English—everything you need to know. The candies themselves are button-shaped, brightly colored, and range from opaque to semi-translucent depending on their flavor. They are, unfortunately, individually wrapped inside of the larger bag, which means I am liable to come to after a candy-eating frenzy to find myself buried under a heap of 25 small, spent plastic wrappers. There is no hiding that you’ve smashed a whole bag of Kasugai gummy candy in one sitting—and they are incredibly difficult to save for later.
The two best markets near my apartment (for reasons other than their candy selection, I promise) stock Kasugai gummies near the cash registers, so I have trouble coming home without a bag. It is in that way that I’ve tried 12 of the 15 total flavors; I’ve never seen ORANGE, WATERMELON, or CRANBERRY in real life, but would purchase each in a heartbeat if I did. All of the Kasugai gummy flavors are fruit, ranging from common candy fare (PEACH, GRAPE) to a little more special-feeling (YUZU, LYCHEE), except for one: RAMUNE, a Japanese lemon-lime soda whose name is a pseudo-loanword for “lemonade.” As a kid, I loved drinking Ramune at the sushi restaurants in my hometown, not for the flavor but the iconic bottle with a marble in the neck that clatters around while you drink. The Kasugai gummy version is pale aqua like the bottle and tastes a little bit like I imagine housecleaner would, but not in a totally unpleasant way.
Here are the top flavors of Kasugai gummy candy, according to my thorough research: KIWI is bright and sweet and the only variety to contain a textural element; thanks to the inclusion of actual kiwi juice, it has black seeds studded throughout. MUSCAT is green grape (as opposed to GRAPE, which is deep purple and reminiscent of Welch’s). It tastes like if a grape had an advanced degree, complex and slightly floral, and not entirely unlike a chic wine cooler. MANGO is great, juicy and warm, and smells so much like a bag of dried mango slices it’s kind of bewildering. But best of all is MELON, which is specifically light green Japanese muskmelon, prized for its distinctive netted exterior. This is not the stuff of a sad fruit salad; Kasugai’s interpretation tastes like a melon shot with a cartoon flavor-blaster gun, so strong that the smell hits you as soon as you open the bag. It reminds me of the honeydew boba teas I drank en masse as a teenager in Downtown Berkeley, saving all the pearls to chew on once the milky green liquid was gone.
What all the guides to grocery shopping right now aren’t telling you is that if you can, you should be putting some fun stuff in your cart amidst the shelf-stable stalwarts and long-lasting produce. It’s a wild time, and comfort food takes many forms; if yours, like mine, is more gas station snack than intricate baked pasta, you should absolutely lean in. A well-stocked pantry will always make me feel like I have my life in order, but it's the totally unnecessary extras that bring the joy. For me, that means a bag of bright green gummies hidden behind the peanut butter to rip open at 4 p.m. and, in the name of the sweettoothed nine year old I once was, totally ruin my dinner.
