You may remember the Nobel candy company from their unsettling attempt to popularize a soy-sauce-flavored gummy. I'm happy to announce they are back with more strange gummies for the spring season, again based on popular Japanese snacks. This week I present a Nobel double feature starring Ichigo Daifuku Gummy and Warabi Mochi Gummy.

Ichigo daifuku is a popular sweet that at first glance seems to have been invented by a sugar-crazed fourth grader let loose in a well-stocked Japanese bakery. Consisting of a large strawberry coated in sweet bean paste then covered in a thick layer of whipped cream then wrapped in a thin piece of mochi and dusted with powdered sugar, ichigo daifuku is messy, soft, chewy, tooth-achingly sweet and incredibly good. Ichigo Daifuku Gummy is a small, cream-flavored gummy filled with a tangy strawberry sauce -- not so cavity-inducing, to be sure, but not so exciting or tasty either. I like the flavor of the creamy mochi with the strawberry sauce, but for some reason these make my throat hurt whenever I eat one, a weird tickly pain that I do not, it should be noted, experience when I eat an actual ichigo daifuku.

Warabi mochi is another well-known sweet, a popular snack eaten during warmer months made from warabi (bracken, a type of fern). Jiggly cubes of fern-flavored mochi are dusted in kinako, resulting in a cool, herbal, vaguely nutty and very light dessert. Warabi Mochi Gummy is a warabi-flavored gummy so subtly flavored all I taste is the kinako paste inside. While I'm happy to eat a candy that actually tastes like kinako (hear that, Aero-chan??), warabi mochi is not supposed to taste like kinako; it's supposed to taste like warabi. Where's the bracken, Nobel? Where's the bracken*?

Nobel gummies seem to be for the Japanese-sweets lover on the go, someone who doesn't have time to sit and enjoy a giant strawberry covered in five kinds of toothache or a plate of trembling fern Jello. Either that, or they are for very fastidious people who don't like to drip powdered sugar or kinako all over their nice suits. Japanese Sweets for Busy People. I suppose they get the job done.

*My research for this review led to the disturbing discovery that warabi/bracken is known to be carcinogenic and has been linked to the high rate of stomach cancer in Japan. This is terrible news, as I love warabi mochi. Wikipedia, you are a blessing and a curse.