With the recent dismal weather, I needed some candy to cheer me up. Specifically, I needed candy presented by a flightless bird named Kyorochan. It’s true—while once I was annoyed by dear Kyorochan, I have now come to love her lack of wings and penchant for wacky costumes. When browsing the kids’ candy aisle, I couldn’t resist the Chocoball Gateaux Chocolat, mostly because the package featured Kyorochan dressed as a painter. With a beret. Holding a fork in her beak instead of a paintbrush. Ostensibly in an apartment in Paris. But the cake in the tableaux is missing, apparently because it has been whisked away to Japan and turned into Chocoballs.

Gateaux Chocolat comes in various packages, undoubtedly to trick small children into tricking their parents to buy more than one pack of the exact same candy. Having no children, I was forced to trick myself into thinking I also needed the package featuring Kyorochan pondering the clouds, thinking, “I found a cake cloud.” (At least I think that’s what it says.) You may not be surprised to hear it tasted the same as the other package.

But that taste was…yummy! Good, not-overly-sweet milk chocolate covering a crunchy chocolate center. A package was just enough to eat in one sitting, a sitting spent crunching and staring at the picture on the front. Which is probably how a lot of kids eat Chocoball, come to think of it, except they most likely sit there imagining Kyorochan’s jet-setting life in Paris, whereas I know the picture was actually taken in her Tokyo apartment which they just decorated to look like Paris for the shoot.

It should be noted I had to wait five minutes for a three-year-old girl to make her candy choice before I could get down on my knees to browse the kids’s candy. Her dad, standing nearby, kept asking, “Are you ready?” and she kept shaking her head no. I pretended I was looking at the gum until she finished. I can't fault the girl for taking her candy seriously.

It should additionally be noted that I just looked up the word kyoro and found out kyorokyoro means shifty or restless. It’s possible Kyorochan is evil after all.