Watapachi Grape Candy

My husband was listening to some of crazy, cuckoo, rock 'em sock 'em dance music and I asked him, "What's this group called?" and wouldn't you know it...their name is Watapachi! This reminded me that I had some candy in the drawer called 'watapachi'. I have a feeling it is some sort of onomatopoeia for sour taste, fizziness, and popping? Just like dance music BADUMTISH

This is one of the cheapest & most plentiful of the Japanese import candies. I don't remember where I bought mine, but it's available in the UK at sushinoms & tofucute, and shipped from Japan on Candysan, Jlist, OyatsuCafe, and NapaJapan. Phew! So basically every place I've ordered Japanese candy from stocks this stuff - it's very light, so it makes sense that it would ship easily. It's probably also quite cheap in Japan, as it is clearly meant for little kids.

Being that I have the same taste as lots of little kids, I'm a big fan of cotton candy. I even prefer the very compressed packaged stuff to the freshly made ones. It might be because the packaged stuff never has wasps embedded in it, nor is it handed to you by a  murderous carny. Not that all carnies are murderous...but let's get real, the odds are pretty good.

Also, it's just a bit more substantial - and can have a stronger flavor than just 'blue' or 'pink'. So I was pretty excited by this one, knowing that grape is done very well in Japan and that it also promises bits of hard, popping candy.

It certainly delivered on the grape - it was a very strong and pleasant smell as soon as I opened the package. Unfortunately, it was SUPER sticky - way stickier than I recollect cotton candy being in the past. Ants across the country shuttered with delight. I think this was because of the embedded hard candy reacting a bit with heat, being embedded in more spun sugar, and all sorts of chemical reasons I guess. It made handling the candy a bit unpleasant, as I took it out in one big lump and had my entire hand stickified in the process. It was also a bit weird that it flaked into sheets - who knows what compressed cotton candy does after international travel, ya know? As long as the taste was good, I would be happy.

It tasted very strongly of grape, especially the bits with the popping candy - which was very strong and sour by itself. It was of course incredibly sweet, but having the sour bits spread around made it a bit easier to handle as an uh..."adult". I really enjoyed the taste & how strong and sour it was, and it was a good size portion that definitely fulfilled my sweet tooth. The fizziness of the hard candy was pretty powerful, but I sort of crunched my way through it rather than let it fizzle. Just like life.

I'd definitely like to try the melon soda variety, so I'm sure I'd give this another go sometime. If you like sugar and kinda fun, goofy textural changes I think it's worth tacking onto an order!