I’ve had this candy before, but I think I had it by a larger, more well known company. For those unfamiliar, Konpeito consists of small round, bumpy balls of hard candy. The look and texture is what makes these candies unique. Flavour wise they’re really basic, and almost hard to figure out. Each colour of round ball does have a slightly different flavour, with only banana being easy to figure out. The purple ones have some kind of perfume flavour, but the rest are all generic fruit that I can’t really identify.

The shape of these is great, but only because they’re kind of ugly. It’s funny that such an odd looking candy can come out of a culture that’s notorious for making beautiful and perfect looking candy, Japan. These little lumps look like a mistake, as if a factory attempting to make beautiful round balls of candy somehow messed up. Even though they’re not perfect, I think they’re kind of cute.

The odd shape might also be there to make the texture work. I describe these as hard candies, but they’re actually a little more brittle than regular hard candy. If you try to suck on them you’ll find that after a few minutes they’ll just fall apart in your mouth, way before you get to the centre. This brittle texture makes them challenging to suck down to nothing, but really satisfying to crunch. While I always try to suck on these, I find my teeth unable to resist the soft crunch.

These are a fun little treat, but I’d be interested if someone made these with slightly bolder flavours. Maybe those making them have decided not to mess with the traditional flavours that may not be bold but traditional instead.