Apteekkarin Salmiakkipastilli

When you've tried as many kinds of salmiac as I have, you start to notice patterns. I mean, they're all bad, but they all fit into their own category of bad.There's the hard-candy-that-calls-itself-hot-but-really-isn't kind, the sticks-to-your-teeth-so-the-awful-never-goes-away kind, the saltlick-licked-by-a-deer kind, and so on.

So, when I saw the Apteekkarin Salmiakkipastilli, I had a pretty good idea what I was getting into from my Apteekkarin Pehmeä Salmiakkipastilli review and thought it'd be a great candy to share with my friends.

I was expecting basically the same thing, just without the "Pehmeä". Of course, I'm not sure what "Pehmeä " means, but I figured it's either "menthol" or "yellow packaging". This is what I found inside.

The candies looked like your typical hard candy, but they had a slightly rubbery texture. Not squishy rubber, more like the rubber on running tracks - or even asphalt on a hot day.

"They look like rabbit terds," one of my friends added before taking a whiff of one, "doesn't have much of a smell, though."

The taste wasn't very intense - in fact, it was fairly subtle. At least, until getting past the outer coating. The middle had quite the kick, but not nearly as strong as some of the Tyrkisk Peber I've tried. It was tolerable, but not something anyone would want to keep eating any longer than they had to. And as such, this earns the almost edible rating.

Fazer Missä X

On the sidebar, there's a box that lists the ratings I've used for reviews on Salmiyuck. And since they're used to describe different kinds of salmiac, obviously they're all synonymous with "bad". But after experiencing Fazer's Missä X, the Salmiyuck rating scale will be broken forever.

The word "experience" truly does describe what eating Missä X is like. It's more than tasty, more than delicious, it was... delightful. In fact, so much so that I had to carefully review the packaging to make sure that Missä X was, in fact, salmiac.

Missä X's texture is much like other jelly-based salmiac and, like many of the mixes, each color is a different flavor. The coating is most certainly a mix of sugar and salt - actually, it's the perfect mix. There's even a bit of sour (or maybe it was just the salt), that seemed to tie everything together.

This high opinion isn't just my own - I was amongst friends when I opened the Missä X, and they too were delighted. "This stuff is incredible," one friend said, "and they're even better when you combine the different pieces!"

"I'd absolutely buy this," another said, "Finland should totally open a store in America. Or at least, sell this at movie theaters."

There was one oddity with the Missä X, and that was the black pieces. Why such awful-tasting bits would be included in such a bag of wonder was beyond any of us, but they were easily set-aside to be discarded. After a few short minutes, this is all that remained of the Missä X:

Even with the inedible black pieces, the Missä X earns the rating-system-breaking rating of absolutely delightful.

Amanie Pepper Drops Extra Hot

I've been out of town for quite a many weeks, but returned home last week for the Thanksgiving holiday to visit with friends, family, and unfortunately some Salmiac.

Although my friends are wary to taste anything I give them after suffering through Dracula Piller, they had all drank enough to be willing to try not just one, but three different Salmiac candies. The first one I opened up was Amanie's Extra Hot Pepper Drops.

"You denounced an entire country based on this stuff?" my friend Dan commented as he picked up a piece, "it doesn't smell that bad." He then popped the piece in his mouth, and I had one as well.

Although my Salmiac palate is much more refined than most of my peers, it doesn't take a connoisseur to recognize bad. After sucking on the pepper drop for about a minute, he couldn't take it anymore and spit it out. I held on a little bit longer and asked what he thought of it.

"The taste was good for a second—"

"Wait," I interrupted, "did you say good?"

"Err, I should say, good by comparison. It was somewhat normal, and then it started... uhh... leaking a bad flavor."

Clearly, Dan was unprepared for powdered yuck found in the center of most of these pepper drops. I enquired further, asking what the flavor was like.

"It's hard to say... salty battery acid?"

That sounded about right. The battery acid taste started getting to me as well, so I spit the pepper drop out and chased the flavor with some Diet Coke. For the record, that combination was even worse. But one thing that was noticeably missing from these extra hot pepper drops was the hot.

"They weren't hot at all," he confirmed, "I couldn't taste anything past the bad. Which, by the way, is still going -- this is like a Jäger shot that just won't end."

As for the others, the general consensus was "awful", "terrible", and "seriously, people eat this stuff?" But as far as pepper drops go, Amanie is no Pirkka, but they still are inedible.

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Look for the other two other reviews later this week. Also, I picked up a small batch of some fresh, salty licorice at a German grocery store nearby where I'm staying.