Tirol Chocolate – Soda Ramune Dagashi

Every once in a while I see something and everything in my brain and body tell me, “don’t do it!”, or “it’s a trap!”. When it comes to food and snacks I try to override that instinct as much as I can, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to try new things and explore new snacks. It usually works out, but there are times where it doesn’t and I have egg on my face. That being said, worst case scenario is I never do it again. Or I get incredibly sicked and traumatized, but knock on wood that hasn’t happened. Yet.

I bring this up because despite my gut throwing up some big red flags, I’m still going to give this a try despite the misgivings. I’m having a hard time convincing myself this won’t turn out poorly, but I guess we will find out. Soda flavoured candies are something I remember from my childhood, where Japanese blind box toys would come with little packets of candy. I can smell and taste them just talking about them.

These are basically what you would imagine if a candy had little soda pellets in them. Just like the candies I had as a kid, the are chalky and don’t lend themselves well to being in a chocolate. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but this is a situation where less is more. These pieces are packed with pellets, and it’s not something that works well.

The novelty of it quickly wears off as something weird and unsettling kicks in – the fact that this should not be chocolate and it’s highly unnatural. That being said, if I was to say what feels more unsettling between the texture or flavour, I’d say the flavour wins this one hands down.

The flavour isn’t much better as the burst of soda powder flavour from the pellets only enhances the soda-ish flavour that’s come from the chocolate. It’s really weird and the ramune flavour in particular has this weird after taste that reminds me of a moment from my childhood where I foolishly decided to drop a scoop of ice cream into a cup of soda. It had this weird curdled dairy type of after taste, which I’m getting here too.

Have you ever sniffed a bag of milk and thought, “boy this smells off”, pour it out and decide to take a quick taste and very quickly spit it out because you know it’s off? My instinct sort of wants me to do that with this flavour, but I trust that Tirol is a reputable company that has at least tried this before selling it. Either that or my taste buds are just not their target audience.

Do I regret trying this? No, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that. I will say that it is not something I would want to do again, and I even hesitate to consider giving it to unsuspecting victims, unless they decide to volunteer for it. I feel like this falls squarely in prank snack territory, so if that calls to you then by all means try to find this. Otherwise, steer clear.