American candy. Not American brand candy which different outside the US, but actuall American candy. It’s all so bad quality and vile that it would never sell outside the US and not even be legal to do so in many places.
First of all, licorice is good actually, though black jelly beans are trash.
One time I bought olive flavored gummies from the Asian market because I love olives and I was curious. Absolutely horrible, didn’t even finish one.
Salted liquorice.
I had a Norwegian friend who waxed lyrical about this stuff. So when I saw it for the first time in a shop, I grabbed a packet to nibble on while waiting for my train.
Plain black liquorice is delicious and salt makes everything taste better, and the Norwegian seemed like a nice, relatively normal person who enjoyed other things I liked. This was a low risk choice of mid morning snack, I thought to myself.
I was wrong. So very wrong.
This stuff tastes like it was peeled off the bottom of a shoe after walking through the city all day. It’s not salt either, it’s freaking ammonium chloride.
To paraphrase the Wikipedia:
The mineral is commonly formed on burning coal dumps from condensation of coal-derived gases. It is also found around some types of volcanic vents. It is a product of the reaction of hydrochloric acid and ammonia.
And Scandi’s put this on liquorice and like it. Even the kids. Madness. It took my all not to heave into a bin after trying it and like six cups of black tea to get the taste out of my mouth.
I gave the Norwegian the rest of the packet and he laughed at me while I watched him eat it because I looked so horrified.
Swede here, that Norwegian shit is weak. This is what we like.
It hurts, but it’s delicious. Svenskjävlar! is the world’s saltiest licorice.
Lmao, you all are built different or something. How many can you eat before it starts melting your tongue?
That’s an easy one - Durian bonbons from China. Durian is also known as the “stink fruit”. You need many hours to get that taste out of your mouth
I like fresh durian but the candy tastes like rotten onions to me. There’s also a kind of durian twinkie. Tried it once, almost threw up.
Black Death. Tastes like I’d expect a chemical burn to taste.
Licorice, that funny retro looking shit with the black and bright colors
Allsorts, we call em. They taste of chalk and disappointment.
Twinnings did an Allsorts flavoured Earl Grey at one point that was the best thing I ever drank.
I’m one of those that rather like Allsorts though, the bobbly jelly ones particularly. I wouldn’t really call Allsorts liquorice though, liquorice flavoured maybe.
I’m seeing a lot of black licorice mentions, but there’s a special hell for Läkerol’s menthol black licorice.
That sounds delicious what
I need to find this
:adds to shopping cart
Black licorice.
I firmly believe candy should be sweet; not bitter.
Bitter? You must have had some weird fake crap. I’ve never had any liquorice that bitter, and I’m Swedish and love liquorice.
If we had pearls here in Scandinavia we’d all be clutching them right now.
Surely you looted some pearls back in the 700’s from innocent townsfolk.
And even if it’s not sweet, it can at least be tangy, sour, or tart.
Black licorice just taste like fucking death
It is evidence of how bad life used to be. If that shit was the treat, what was normal food like?!
Ah, yes, the world before refined sugar, lol
There’s fake black licorice, and there’s the real stuff. Two very different experiences!
Came here to say this and saw this comment.
This is the correct answer.
Related anecdote: When I worked an offshore rotation with people from all over the world, I made an effort to bring candy that I’d never seen outside of Scandinavia. It was always amusing to see people sampling candy I liked when they weren’t used to the ammonium chloride branch of flavors.
And once I brought this:
Everybody who weren’t Norwegian, Swedish, or Finnish (sadly we had no Danes on board) absolutely hated it. Especially the Americans and Brits.
Everyone except Mario, that is; a Croatian geophysicist. He loved them. His voice still lives rent free in my head over ten years later, saying “Sweet candy is for kids”
A few trips later I brought one of my favorites for basically the same result, but this time with Jim (from Illinois, iirc) complaining that it made his mouth physically hurt:
Mario loved that one even More.
The only thing everyone on board liked was the obscene amount of chocolate my navigator brought every trip.But to answer the question: Twizzlers. I bought some when visiting the US a couple of years ago. It tasted like oily sweetener (as in, clearly not actual sugar). That’s when I learned that American and European wine gum are flavored very differently.
Footnote: Durian and durian chocolate is quite alright once you get used to the slight farty smell from each packet you open.
I will defend my rubber flavoured twizzlers til the day I die. Do they taste like you shouldn’t be eating them? Absolutely. Will I still eat an entire bag of twizzlers at the movie theater every single time? You betcha.
Yeah, American candy has about the lowest standards. Canada isn’t much better, but there’s a noticeable difference in the quality of chocolate in common chocolate bars. We once did a side-by-side comparison of KitKats (we live right on the border) and the difference was stunning.
We once did a side-by-side comparison of KitKats (we live right on the border) and the difference was stunning.
Bad comparison on that one. KitKat brand in the USA is an entirely different company that the rest of the world. So they aren’t even the pretending to be the same recipe.
If you like KitKat, try and see if you can find this one:
.
It’s similar, but better.One American candy I actually like is Reeses peanut butter cups.
I try to be as anti-Nestle as possible, which meant giving up KitKat, my favorite candy. I found these a few years ago on norwegianfoodstore.com and they’re soooo much better.
Damn, I wish that site existed when I lived abroad.
I love this site! I only order from them once a year because it’s expensive (I usually ask for a gift card for Christmas), but they have so much awesome stuff. The paprika Pringles are to die for.
My first thought was that this is terrible ai lol.
Well, it could be (I just grabbed it off of an image search), but the product is real and found all over Norway.
Take a bag of those pebers and dump them in a bottle of vodka. Let them dissolve overnight. Bring to a party and you will be instant friend of any scandinavian.
Substitute vodka for some quality moonshine for extra bonus points from us northern scandinavians.
Stop this. This is how poison like Malort is made. We dont need to create its successor.
Same in Canada. Everything is fake. You’ll see transmission fluid before you’ll see any real sugar in the ingredients.
I’m a brit and have loved tyrkisk peber and other “salty” liquorice etc. sweets for a long time. I had a big bag of the hot and sour flavour and was rather sad when I ran out.
If you feel like DMing your name and address to an internet stranger who may or may not send you anthrax spores, I can mail you a resupply stash on Monday.
sweet candy is for kids
I vibe w Mario. I haven’t had either you mentioned, but they seem my speed. I go for the saltiest licorice you crazy Scandinavians can come up with.
(am an American who warns people off my candy stash, but they still try it and think I’m pranking them)
Sometimes it’s a hit. I was going somewhere with an Uber in Houston once, and the driver needed to stop for gas. I took the opportunity to head inside the gas station for some supplies, and while I was queueing and minding my own business while the guy in front of me had his stuff scanned by the cashier, and he suddenly said “Oh, and his stuff too”, offering out of the blue to pay for my stuff. (Seriously, does that happen sometimes? I’ve never heard of it before nor after. He must’ve been in a good mood). I wasn’t holding much stuff, so sure why not, once my initial WTF-factor had worn off.
I gave the guy a tin of Tyrkisk Pepper as a token thank you (I happened to have some I bought at my home airport that I planned on leaving at the head office). When he asked what it was I just said “Scandinavian candy, be careful”. He actually liked them.
any American chocolate tastes like vomit
Only if you didn’t grow up with it. Also it’s just Hershey (and derivative brands, which is many)
American or South African chocolate products.
NOT an anti-American/-Saffer thing. They add butyric acid, which tastes like vomit to the rest of the world. (Accurate, as vomit contains it).
Presumably because the market there have been trained to expect that flavour for some reason. To the rest of us, a US or ZA origin is usually a sign to avoid.
That reason is because Hersey chocolate was the first chocolate the common American could afford and the processing method that Hersey used to produce it would create butyric acid from the milk. Now they add it back in because customers complained when they refined the process.
While in American, in right there with you. Aldi fortunately imports a good selection of chocolate so not all of us have to suffer.
Aldi has such awesome chocolate! Thanks for pointing out the reason.
I tried to like the Aldi chocolate bars but they leave this strange fatty coating in my mouth after eating them. I don’t experience that with other brands.
Those Choceur bars are pretty good. My favorite treat are Droste pastilles but the aldi bars will do.
That explains a lot, thanks.
Oh my God is that why I taste vomit if I eat a Hershey’s bar then drink a glass of water
A colleague came back from the US with a big back of mini Hershey’s flavours. Most were ok but I legitimately thought the standard plain flavour had spoilt.
Growing up and living in the US and then accidentally learning to taste the butyric acid after tasting chocolate without it made me sad :(
Turkish delights tend to be terrible. Insanely chewy and sticky, floral and just unpleasant. I also tried some sweet “goat cheese and spice lollipop” candy from mexico i didn’t care for much.
Black licorice fucks though. I’ll stand with the swedes on this one.
You actually like salmiak? Or just black liquorice?
Yes to both, although i’ve only had the salted licorice a couple of times. I’m betting some brands would kick my ass, but so far so good.
I got a monthly food box for my wife a number of years ago. Each month they sent snacks from a different country.
I can’t remember which country it was from, but one month we got some round, hard candies. It was one of the most unfortunate things I have ever intentionally put into my mouth.
I don’t even remember the flavor (licorice, maybe?), because my brain attempted to bleach it out.
Everything else was usually tasty, though.
My wife looked it up. It’s a hard licorice candy with a salty filling from the Netherlands called Napolean Zwart-Wit (which loosely translates to “tarred scrotum”).
That may have been one of the Scandinavian countries. Sorry.
If you have any leftover, plz send.
Edit: Not our fault this time, but thanks for the tip!
When I was a kid someone gave me a “buttered popcorn” flavored dum-dum sucker. It tasted so terrible that it gave me a taste aversion to real buttered popcorn for nearly 2 decades.
I was coming into this thread to mention buttered popcorn flavor jellybeans.
It was bad.
… Those are my favorite
😦
Well, it’s a win win. You can have them
Black licorice. Or anything containing black licorice. It’s just fucking disgusting.
