Puccho – Milk Tea Tapioca

While it would be fair to say that most Japanese brands of snacks, candies and other confections are fairly experimental, I’d say that in the realm of chewy candy Puccho is one of the crazier ones. Part of this is just due to their formula of having a chewy taffy like candy with candy pieces inside. This leaves them lots of creative wiggle room when it comes to textures.

I’ve mentioned before that I prefer Hi-Chew in terms of overall experience, but certain flavours you just can’t find with them, like milk tea. Hi-Chew seems to prefer to stick with capturing the flavour of various fruits, and that’s perfectly fine. But they’ve dabbled in non-fruit flavours occasionally. Whether they would do milk tea is unclear. At least, not yet. Who knows what the future holds? Puccho in general gets a little more creative with what their willing to try out, and I respect them for that. Enough to give some of their weirder things a try.

The flavour is like if someone took a milk tea, turned it into a caramel and took tiny gummy pieces that were made to mimic tapioca and shoved them inside. It’s basically like chewing a bubble tea. Not saying you wouldn’t chew your bubble tea, on account of the tapioca, but you catch my drift. It also has a strong milk-like, dairy aftertaste which indicates they used milk ingredients to mimic the flavour from start to finish. I actually wouldn’t be surprised if the piece was made using a caramel base, now that I think about it. The little gummy pieces inside are fairly simple in the way of flavour. Much like actual tapioca, it just kinda tastes like little chewy balls of sugar. These are much smaller and firmer, and I’d wager the chance of choking on one of these is much lower. Not that I would put that to the test. Nor should you. Let it be known I don’t condone choking on balls of any size. Or choking in general.

The texture of this is chewy, but it’s much softer and less bouncy than Hi-Chew. I would liken this to a caramel, while Hi Chew is more like a gum. This gets softer the more you chew, while Hi-Chews remain bouncy like a chewing gum. To each their own as I often say, but my preference is for something that maintains chewiness throughout. Part of this is offset by the extra gummy pieces they have inside. They are quite firm gummies, and remind me of Haribo. Like biting into super tiny brown little squash balls. Not that I’ve ever chewed on a squash ball, but if I was to theoretically do so, I imagine it would be similar. You know, like when you smell a fragrance and your minds eye can imagine what it would taste like.

I may not prefer this type of texture to something more gum-like such as Hi-Chew, but the flavour of this is quite spot on. I might actually consider getting another stick of this if I see it on sale. I’m not a huge fan of bubble tea, but I do enjoy it occasionally. I feel like this is a less damaging alternative to drinking one, and may help curb the thirst for a time. If you enjoy milk tea, I’d recommend these for sure. If not, maybe stick with some of the fruitier flavours from Hi-Chew.