Name: Bug Factor Arackneggz Candy
Origin: Candy Made In USA; Toy Made in China
Found at: 99-Cent-Only Store, Cypress
Cost: $0.99
]
Ingredients:
Water, Invert Sugar, Sugar, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Alginate, Xanthan Gum, Potassium Sorbate (a preservative), Artificial Flavor, Artificial Color FD&C Red 40 Lake, Sodium Acid Sulfate, Sodium Benzoate (a preservative).
Why I Bought It:
How could I not? Halloween is a less than a week away. But I warn you kids: when you're out trick-or-treating and you are given the choice of this or Snickers, take the Snickers. Trust me.
But perhaps I'm not one to judge. I'm not in the core demographic for the product. First, I don't watch Nickelodeon. Second, I don't relish the thought of squeezing the contents of a toy spider's rectum into my mouth. And most importantly, I take anything described as “Fruity Slimy Candy!” not as a selling point, but as a warning.
Tasting Notes:
I snipped the plastic bag to open up the plenum, then lifted the sack above my open mouth, and squeezed. The thick liquid that oozed out was sickeningly sweet — a sugary hit I liken to chugging straight pancake syrup from the jar. You know that red stuff at IHOP that seems to breed diabetics? Yeah, I think this is the same substance.
And I'm not even sure that this is what the makers (Cap Candy and toy maker Hasbro) intended. The picture on the package seems to suggest that there ought to be actual egg-shaped candies inside. But the whole stock that 99-Cent-Only store carried were already liquified.
I did, however, detect chunks in the slurry, like there had been something else in the sack that had long disintegrated, and now I was eating the leftover chewy bits of the placenta.
Every succesive taste I took afterward wasn't as off-putting as the first. But I think it was because my mouth got over the sugar shock. Instead, it felt like a heavily-sugared cough syrup. Which brings me to an idea: since children hate taking cough medicine, and they'd presumably love this — fill this bugger up with Robitussin!
Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, Edwin Goei went by the alias “elmomonster” on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.