Pyramid

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Pyramid

These enchanting gems were bought in Beiramar mall at a stall near the bookshop. I bought them , furtively: they seemed such a wanton luxury, and I didn't permit myself to open the bag in the street but waited until I had made to my car thence all the way back to Trindade and up my stairs and through the door to open the bag and deliriously pop the sweetie into its rightful home... 

And I can declare without equivocation  that they are magnificent, their platonic geometry so pleasingly contradictory in the rounded wet cushioned cavern of the mouth. It's a huge pleasure to feel their edges soften, and the rough sugar surface  melt into smooth salival syrup: intoxicating. 

 The sugar encrusting, so blatant, so bling, suggests the most decadent moments of the 1920s- very Gatsby- as are those wonderful Deco colours.

They are surely the most jewel-like of our sweets so far, and the most suggestive of mystical transportation. 

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Segments of rock

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Segments of rock by Doces Campestrini

These are small sections of sticks of rock. I had already chosen and bagged some sweets, but then I saw these, so beautiful next to the cash desk: I had to get them too. 

The flavors are okay. They really belong to a pre-modern, pre-clinical age of sweet manufacture, and are a little unsophisticated. The orange is acceptably Kia-Ora orangey- slightly fizzy (like Spangles, if you remember them?). The green is convincingly apple-ish. The white one has a buttermilk flavour that does take one a little by surprise. Best is the pink which does a solid sex steamy strawberry kiss: a real behind the bike shed snog to boast about on the bus home.

Like many sweets you want to chew them the instant they arrive in your mouth. Usually I'd counsel against this but with these sweeties I'd suggest that this was the right way to go about extracting the best flavour: to crush them between your molars in a prompt, unprincipled manner. 

The thing that got me, really got under my skin and made me impulse buy was the green. That emerald green really just hit me smack in the eyes and I was smitten,  helpless. I became quite stupid and I had to take these sweeties home. 

You don't, these days see this colour often,. It's a bit out of date, and very fin de sciecle like peacock feathers or hippy communes in bottle green velvet jackets and  floppy fedoras. I love how it combines with the citric yellow and I love the nearly but not exact geometricity of it all, which reminds me of stencils. And, of course, broken gemstones.

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Docile's Maxmallows

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 Maxmallow

 

Shape and colour

The shape is architectural, a joyful spiralling, very Coney Island. It seems to date from the oh-so-distant days when postmodernism might have promised hope.

The colour, likewise, is purest seaside resort: Brighton, Blackpool and Skegness in four glorious sun-faded pastels. But does it convey the vital ingredients of any seaside day trip: easy pleasure, plastic tat and a kiss-me-quick hat, a snog or more with a stranger, fish and chips, cheap music, cheaper beer, and more than a dash of seediness? All serenaded by a thudding hangover the next day?

The Oral Experience

At first the Maxmallow is very soft, like the faintest brushing of a butterfly's wings on your cheek. It's flowery, floury. A dry kiss. Aloof... or shy? 

Then, stealthily, the Maxmallow melts sweetly. You run your tongue up its twisting grooves, removing the sugary dust. And it gives itself away with gracious pacing, an adagio by Ravel. It is first spongy, then (yes!), more compliant, dissolving, melting but still somehow airy. It mesmerises, it is Redonesque, indeed -the Odilon Redon not of brooding Noirs but the lofty Chariot of Apollo. And thus brings to mind not so much the the carnal pleasure-seeking of the English working classes but the refined escapism of opium scented salons.

 

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Jelly Berries

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Jelly Berries

Gomets Pudim Creme e frutas

Coloured gum, sugar encrusted,  mounted on a white creme base to, just about, suggest a jelly mould.

 They are more or less conical, a shape very pleasing in both hand and mouth. The encrustation of sugar on the surface is lovely to the tongue. That sugary roughness melts to give way to smoothness, an effect erotically stimulating for reasons which you, dear reader, might perhaps enlighten me?

How about the flavours? The idea is that there is a creamy base with a fruit flavour above.

Well, they are not fantastic, the difference in colour being more decorative than indicative of any flavour associations we might make. I do discern a difference with the lime, but that might just be my imagination.

But when taken simply as decorations the colours are, indeed, jolly: bright yet harmonious. 

They would look very nice on arranged on a silver tray as a vehicle to serve drugs such as ecstasy to a assortment of your more louche acquaintances*, perhaps in an ultra modern but just a teeny bit retro apartment overlooking the Thames. You could accompany them with colourful cocktails in martini glasses and  and music by Goldfrapp.

*Will we ever  be louche again?

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Vampire Teeth

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Vampire Teeth

This being Halloween, what could be more appropriate than this delightful product?

The teeth are soft, the gums pliable, both deliriously sweet with a little lemony zing: wonderful. It's lovely how they melt into little gelatinous bits in your mouth, how your saliva transforms into a sugary sauce.

 You could really go crazy on this stuff, and if I hadn't had the privilege of a repressive Scottish education I would surely have devoured the entire pack in one giant scoff and gone back for all the rest in the shop.

The appearance is not charming though is it?  Be honest. It's foul. There is something very nasty about detached body parts, even when obviously manufactured. And this is the case no less when they are eaten than when they are used for other functions (yes dildo manufacturers, I am indeed looking at you). 

And why "vampires"? The canines are hardly developed. I suppose the cannibalistic aspect of vampirism is present in the idea that you are consuming another's flesh but you wouldn't, no matter how hungry or devoutedly Transylvanian eat another's teeth, even those of the fairest peasant virgin in the village. I hope not, at least.  And you wouldn't eat those of another vampire...or would you?

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Jelly beans

 

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Jelly Beans

These are a nice size in the hand with a pleasing  shape. 

 They are shiny and smooth but the inside is slightly grainy in the mouth, and when that grainy stuff melts in your saliva it becomes a sugary paste. This isn't disagreeable by any measure. It feels nice to crack the bean shell in the teeth- somehow transgressive given how perfect the shiny bean shape is.

They're in bright children's cartoon colours. There isn't much difference between colours of beans when it comes to flavour, with the exception of the light blue which is aniseed and slightly medicinal: in other words, a delight. 

Note: there is is no black. The question of the absent black is interesting because it seems to me to be a missed marketing opportunity- I state this based entirely on memories as when I was a child the black sweets in packets were prized far above the others, and I even suspect the manufacturers played a sort of game by not distributing blacks too commonly, so children bought more packets just to obtain them. 

However, their absence may be no bad thing:

https://nypost.com/2017/04/06/mans-jelly-bean-obsession-nearly-kills-him/

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Amore

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Amore

These sweets are better than the real thing- not so tart. There are black ones too, but I thought the red photographed better. 

I take a long time to chose the sweets which hamg in a row in a local shop. It sells a weird assortment of undesirable goods- ugly ceramics, hideous plastic flowers, readily destructible cookware. 

How they decided to sell sweets is beyond me. But there is a row of about twenty packets and although the shop has very narrow aisles and is tightly stacked with  the aforementioned rubbish and God knows what else, and I feel quite claustrophobic and irritable, I cannot help but take a good deal of time deciding what to chose.

I swing from one choice to another then  another then back again: licorice balls, or amores or banana candies or sweets in the form of eyeballs or teeth (yes teeth!)...

Paying in the shop taked an eternity because for a good many customers the function of shopping and specifically visiting this awful shop is mainly social and they try to engage the saleswoman  (who in fact isn't friendly in the least) in dialogue. For some reason it takes them ages to get their payment cards from their purses and put them in the machines and they must narrate each action in detail. It takes forever for them to discuss whether a bag is necessary, and a further eon to put their purchases in the bag.

Anyway, eventually I've paid and escaped from this vile shop, and though wearing my COVID mask, I'm too overwhelmed by relief and happiness to wait until I get home and, tearing a corner, of the plastic packet, I sneak one of the sweeties under my mask and into my mouth and dream.

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Piglets

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Piglets

At first I thought they were baby hippos, but according to the packet they are piglets.

The baby colour is effective though and as kitsch mini sculptures the manufacturer, Docile Alimentos of Rio Grande de Sul, can be proud.

However...these are not as nice as their other sweets. The taste is the same (sweet + lemon) but the shape is not right. The irregular shape of the piglets just doesn't feel at all good in the mouth. And passing your tongue across is rather hateful. I think our mouths desire regularity in the forms of sweets. That's surely  why pastilles and gobstoppers are so pleasing. The shape sensation of these piglets is so unfortunate that one wonders how the makers didn't realise. 

Well, should you happen to receive a pack perhaps as a gift then the best way of consuming them that I found is as follows (I advise you use a timer, as one's instincts seem to lead one to forge to hastily ahead):

Place one the piglet on your tongue

Leave it there for up to 15 seconds

Draw saliva across it with a sucking action. 

Repeat the sucking action every 10 seconds very slowly for a minute

Move the piglet with your tongue to the your cheek, leave for 10 seconds

Shift piglet  to your molar . Chew with a single very gentle jaw action

Repeat 15 seconds later.

Ditto, until the sweet is gone.

 

The great advantage of this technique over chewing the piglet the moment it arrives in your mouth is that is that the it will not then immediately break into tiny but surprisingly hard fragments, from which it is much less easy to satisfactorily extract flavour. 

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