Kabaya Tough Gummy – Kiwi Spark
I’ve seen Kabaya gummies before, mostly from the same product line of Tough. They are iconic for that intense, tough guy packaging and coming in a tiny pack of gummy cubes. I can’t be the only one that’s guilty of grabbing a pack and squeezing to see just how tough or hard they are.
As cool as they always seemed, as a kid the value proposition didn’t seem to be there. As a kid I wanted quantity, not quality necessarily, so the concept of paying the same price for a small pouch of these over a big pouch of subpar gummy bears seemed silly and illogical. But as I’ve gotten older I have come around to the other side of preferring quality over quantity. Well, most times.
And that’s how I came to purchase these, in finally ripping off that band-aid and see what I’ve been missing (or potentially dodging) all these many years. Logically it would have made more sense to go with their OG flavours or the standard assortment. But I am still a child at heart and gimmicks draw me in like moths to a flame. Plus, what could go wrong with kiwi?
The two flavours here are golden kiwi which is sweeter, while the green kiwi is the tangier one. Or so I assume based on the packaging. But generally golden kiwis are the pricier ones because they are sweeter and less common than the green ones. Only one way to find out if it translates here.
These little gummy cubes are very firm and feel almost like they would be roughly the same consistency as chewing into a bouncy ball. You know the ones, where you slam it on the ground, only to lose it to the sky and only have a 50% chance of ever catching or finding it again. These cubes are relatively pricey, so I won’t be trying that today.
The texture certainly lives up to the name – they were really tough indeed. I stand by the bouncy ball analogy because I do get those vibes from these. They put up a lot of resistance on the initial bite, and it feels like you may not get all the way through the piece on first bite. It sort of bounces between your teeth the first few tries before it catches the gummy flesh and rends into it. These are certainly firmer, if not as firm as Haribo.
The green cube is like eating a cube of kiwi juice – if you’ve ever had a fresh kiwi and tried to lap up some of the juice that squeezes out, you’d know what this taste like. It’s sort of impressive they even got the aftertaste down pat on this one. The golden kiwi flavour is largely the same, but the overall flavour is slightly more straight forward in terms of kiwi and sweetness, and lacks the tangy after taste that green kiwis have. Both flavours are done quite well, but I can’t help but think of apple juice for some reason. That’s not a deal breaker by any means, just an observation.
So thankfully, I enjoyed these enough I would consider branching out and trying other flavours. I am a bit grateful I didn’t find these when I was younger, since it’s entirely possible I would have lost quite a few teeth to these. If you have soft or loose teeth, maybe stay away from these.
