Mitsuya Cider Soda Hard Candy with Hyuganatsu
One of the things I remember from my childhood was a candy called Lotsa Fizz. It came in strips of 5, and was sold fairly cheap by the convenience store near my house. Every once in a while I’d use my $1 or $2 allowance to buy some candies, and I’d work that particular candy into the rotation. They came in three flavours of orange, grape and cherry. They were flat, coin shaped candies that would fizz in your mouth. As a kid, this was magical and I would often times buy multiple strips so I could share the magic with my friends. I guess some part of me wanted to try and relieve the magical experience of fizzy candy with this product.
Nostalgia wasn’t the only reason I decided to purchase this though. I’ve never tried the actual Mitsuya Cider soda, but I do know that it is a very popular soda brand in Japan. It’s prominent enough that I recognized the name and logo, since it’s something that is on sale a lot over here in asian grocery stores as well. I guess it also helps that it’s owned by Asahi, one of the big conglomerates in Japan. That gives me a strange piece of mind, oddly enough. I figured since I don’t drink soda that much anymore, this is the next best way to experience the product. I was told that the process for making the candy and the soda use essentially the same ingredients but follow a different process, so I’m expecting the flavour profile to be very similar.
Contrary to popular belief among my friends, Mitsuya Cider is not alcoholic. We here in the west like to think of cider as containing alcohol, but the term is not used to indicate alcohol content in this case. 100% there’s no alcohol in the drinks or candy. That would be pretty boss though. Inside, you’ll see that each of the pieces is individually packed. If it wasn’t discernible yet, these things are your typical spherical hard candies. This particular bag comes has four flavours, their standard cider, peach, grape, and something called Hyuganatsu. I have no clue what that is, and I just assumed it was some citrus fruit similar to orange but not exactly. Kind of like how yuzu is a very specific fruit and not exactly a lemon. As it turns out, this is a cross between an yuzu and pomelo, a hybrid of sorts. If you don’t know what either of those things are, you’ll have to do some research on your own. I can’t be doing everything for you. Sheesh.
I was a bit surprised at the smell when I opened the bag. I figured since they’re all individually wrapped there shouldn’t be much of a scent. To be honest, it smelled kinda…bad. Like ass, actually. I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that’s because of the packaging itself, and not the candies. I really hope it’s not because of the candies. Anyways, let’s try these bad boys.
As I mentioned before, these look to be standard sized hard candies. They’re quite uniform in shape and look to be a bit smaller than the infamous quarter. Much to my delight, the smell upon opening the individual wrappers is much better than the smell upon opening the bag of ass. Let’s start with the peach one first.
It smells like…a peach. The smell isn’t quite like the super sweet smelling peaches you would get over here like fuzzy peaches or peach flavoured gum. It’s more subtle and floral. Upon popping it into my mouth, the flavour is exactly as it smells, very floral, subtle, and not too sweet. It reminds me more of a peach flavoured alcohol of some sort, then the typical peach flavoured candy. The fizz on this candy is immediate, and remaining consistent throughout, right until the finish. The aftertaste it leaves behind isn’t too strong, so I have no trouble getting into the next one, which is the regular cider.
The smell of this one reminds me of the generic ramune flavour. For those who are unfamilar, ramune is a japanese soda that became famous for the bottle it came in, which had a marble in it that would sit over the neck to reduce the amount of oxidation that happened, preserving that carbonation for longer. The original flavour was a sort of lemon-line type flavour that has since become a staple, generic flavour. If you’ve ever had it before, you can recognize it almost instantly. It’s not something you ever really forget. This one is no different, and along with the fizz, brings me back to my childhood when I used to get those little blind boxes with some cheap candies thrown in there as well. Not much to say about this flavour other than that it’s very spot on in capturing the soda-ishness of ramune. Whether or not that was what they were going for, I can’t say I’m crazy about it. This one feels like it’s leaving an impact on my mouth. Let’s hope I can make it through the other two. Next up is grape.
Perhaps it’s my general frame of reference, but for the most part I find that Japanese products do a very good job of capturing the essence of grape in their flavouring. I haven’t had many bad experiences with grape flavoured products from Japan. This is a stark contrast to my experience with western takes on grape which have a tendency to disappoint. This is no exception, and as I anticipated, this is the clear winner in this variety pack. It’s got that nice rich grape flavour that isn’t just sweet, but has the right floral, aromatic flavour to it. The best comparison I can draw to it is that it reminds me of a hard candy version of the grape Hi-chew. Except this one is fizzy and is supposed to be the muscat flavour. That’s another thing I notice about some of these Japanese snacks. They get real specific with their fruits sometimes, and go as far as to specify specific regions that the fruit is supposed to come from. Respect. Speaking of regional variations, let’s get into the final flavour. Supposedly it’s a special one since it warrants a specific call out on the bag.
Before writing this review, I went into this last flavour blind and didn’t know it was supposed to be the lovechild between an yuzu and a pomelo. When I opening this, I thought it was either an orange or a lemon, but couldn’t quite put my finger on which one it was. If this flavour is any indication of what an actual hyuganatsu fruit tastes like, it is very much like a mish-mash of citrus fruits I’ve had before. Before realizing pomelo was a possibility, I thought it had the tartness of a lemon, and the flavour mix of a grapefruit and orange. It is a little sour, got a slightly bitter aftertaste and of course the fizz. I can’t blame this piece, but after finishing it my mouth felt like it was cut up a bit (much like what happens when you have too many sour candies or too many hard candies in one sitting). I wouldn’t say this one is my least favourite, but I certainly wouldn’t consider this unique flavour to be particularly important of a selling point for me.
First, let me rank these four flavours in terms of my personal preference:
- Grape
- Peach
- Hyuganatsu
- Cider
I have to say that overall, I’m not crazy about the candies. Apart form the grape flavour, none of them really stood out to me as something I would grab or gravitate towards if I wanted a hard candy. The bag had about 24 pieces, and after sharing with everyone, almost everyone seemed to agree. It’s not something that seems to be popular around my social circles, though that might speak more to us than the candy itself. Either way, I wouldn’t really recommend this unless you love fizzy candies, or love Mitsuya Cider sodas in general.
