UHA Puccho Budo & Ichigo Candy

This whimsical candy comes to us from UHA, makers of the elegant CuCu candies reviewed here. It comes in two flavors, strawberry (ichigo) and grape (budo).

As seen in the photo, out of the package it looks like a piece of cut taffy with jam in the middle. Or a very pale jam-filled cruller. Or a pig in a blanket where the pig is jam and the blanket is taffy.

Initial taste tests failed. This is a soft candy, and there's not much going on until it's chewed. Once chewed, it released flavor notes of sour, artificial grape/strawberry, bologna. and candle wax. And at the end, a piece of harder jelly filling.

Further inspection being needed. Candybowl took a fresh piece and nibbled away the white wrapper to reveal the jam center. Clearly, the wrapper is the source of the wax and bologna flavors. What Candybowl could not have predicted, however, was that the hard jelly filling is not like a sausage at all -- it's a series of small pellets. Those jelly pellets have the texture of a Rowntree Fruit Gum, and account for the burst of fruit flavor at the end.

In sum, an odd candy with some clever engineering, but far too flawed to receive high marks from Candybowl.