I really wish there was an inexpensive way to get Jelly Babies in Japan. I can’t find them anywhere except in the UK and Australia. I sometimes buy them over the internet but the shipping charges to Japan are triple or quadruple the actual price of the product:(
If anyone wants to trade Japanese sweets for its equivalent in Jelly Babies, give me a shout!
Two words: Belgian chocolates
I like to try foreign sweets, but rarely like them as much as the sweets I am familiar with. Iceland has a bizarre licorice and ammonia sweet that is sort of fun to eat in a masochistic way. Japan has some sweets that are okay, but some that are horrible. Ice cream with red beans in it? I’ll pass. The flavor wasn’t horrible, but the texture was. I don’t usually like Chinese sweets that much, but have never actively disliked them.
I’m not counting stuff like Belgian chocolates, which aren’t very different from good US chocolates.
I like all Japanese candy I’ve tasted, but especially macha- and azuki-flavoured stuff.
Also a huge fan of both Dutch and Scandinavian licorice.
Currently hooked on hard candies from China, Chun Guang “coconut crunch”! (Navy blue and white wrapper, they come several to a bag, I buy them at the Asian grocery.) They aren’t crunchy and are made from toasted coconut. Lovely like caramel!
They are heavenly, I cannot get enough. (Save yourselves!)
I also buy the individually wrapped mango gummies, Lot 100 is the brand, I believe!
I’m not huge on sweets, so I lack an encyclopedic knowledge. In Cameroon commercial sweets are lacking- chalky chocolate bars that don’t melt and the occasional bag of melted hard candy imported from Malta. But the locally made sweets were delicious- homemade taffy stretched on a big nail nailed to a tree, yummy little sesame cakes, and always bags of delicious candied peanuts.
In China you could find tons of candy, but none of it was very good. I much preferred the ice cream, which came in a billion flavors. One called “bitter coffee” was really a rich dark chocolate, and there was one with a red bean core that I adored. If you were so inclined, you could fine sweet corn or green pea ice cream.
Japanese candy is fun if for no other reason than they seem to be more open to weirdness instead of launching yet another iteration of chocolate-peanut/peanut butter-caramel. I’ve also found that their fruit flavored candy tastes unbelievably authentic compared to most American candy.
There’s a lovely Japanese candy that’s actually white chocolate, but tastes like melon. It even looks like little half melons. Yubari melon chocolate.
I love candy from all over the world.
Japan does candy up well, as I see many here have already discovered. Whenever Thais go to Japan, they always bring back sweets for gifts, and they’re always good.
I like what I call “foreign Smarties.” In the US, “domestic” Smarties are like little sweet tarts that come in a roll, but in foreign countries, they are a completely different product–something similar to M&Ms.
The Vietnamese I know are always pulling out and offering me things like this. (The kẹo kéo is the only one I actually like, though I don’t eat much candy anyway.) A lot of it I just don’t get, like that stuff which can best be described as sheets of coconut flavored plastic. What’s up with that?
Then there’s Turkish Delight.
This is making me want to resuscitate the International Candy Exchange (by far my greatest work on the SDMB).
Japanese gummies and chewies are great (the fruit flavor ones). I especially like the green grape flavor, it tastes exactly like green grapes, and nothing like “grape” flavor. Here in NYC you can buy them all over, not only at ethnic groceries. You just find a wider variety of flavors at ethnic groceries.
At indian groceries I loooove the balls of tamarind paste mixed with sugar (and I think an eeensy touch of chili, but unlike mexican variants they aren’t noticeably spicy). If I don’t stop myself I can eat a whole box in a sitting. I think they’re actually made in Thailand. I like Indian sweets even though they are SO SWEET like they’ve learned how to concentrate sugar into its most potent form… but they don’t seem to have a lot of packaged sweets - mostly fresh cooked at a bakery-type place. There’s a fried sweet cheese thing with a cream filling I always like to buy. And a yellow crunchy thing flavored with honey.
In my last Exchange package I got double salted licorice which was foul beyond belief but never fear I sent my partner something disgusting as well – NECCO wafers. LOL.
Salmiak licorice and tamarind candy are two of my faves!
Sesame candies are pretty good too.
Asian and Middle Eastern candies that involve sesame seeds are always favorites.
Also, an Indian friend of mine growing up always had on his coffee table a bowl of candy coated fennel seeds. The covering was like that of a Jordan almond. I loved them.
Yes, I came here to mention the sesame seed crunch. I love that stuff. There is also a sesame nut brittle, with lots of nuts, almonds and maybe cashews, sold right alongside. I love that stuff even MORE, even if it’s not very good for my hinky teeth - so delicious! I think it’s made in Greece? I’m not much for candy, can take it or leave it. I get migraines if I eat too much chocolate, and I am weary unto death with typical American chocolate/peanut, chocolate/peanut, chocolate/peanut combinations. Boring. (Its as bad as American food drowning in melted yellow cheeze n’ bacon bits).
This. First had it when I was little in Japan. It was always a treat.
Ritter Sport chocolate from Germany is pretty darned good too.
Oh yeah, the one with the butter cookie is amazing. So is the one with the marzipan inside.
There are very good chocolate bars made in Chile. I got hooked on those, otherwise I don’t really eat candy at home or abroad.
I Mexico, a common “candy” is a Piloncito, a pylon-shaped product made of crystallized raw brown cane sugar. In regions where sugar cane is grown, the most common “candy” is just chewing the pulp of a cane of raw sugar that falls of the truck.