Rare Sweets from Around The World!

Rare Sweets from Around The World!

There are certain sweets that are known around the world. Whether these are cola bottles or similar gummy options that are around, with fruity flavours and tasty packaging, some flavors are well known.

Today, though, we're going to talk about a treat or two out there that's a little unusual. Far be it from us to decry that these sweet options don't fill a niche, but they are a little rare and odd. Here at the Sweet Hamper Company, we're trying to incorporate as many of these rare finds into our sweet and chocolate hampers.

Rare Sweets

First of all, we're going to talk about some of the odd candy from the UK, as well as strange candy people eat around the world.

What makes sweets unique?

This can be a tricky question to answer since it's such a subjective problem.

On the one hand, it could be said that there's no such thing as a unique sweet - they all share a number of key features, even options with a flavour or two that deviate from the norm.

These features could be the bright coloration of most sweets or, given the name, the obvious appeal of a range of candy with an intensely sugary taste. To say that this is the norm, though, would be short-sighted.

Rare Sweets

While sweet and creamy candies are common ones in the UK and most of the western world, different countries do have different flavors that they prefer.

For example, in the Eastern world, it's common for people to give kids candies that are intensely sour. To those cultures, cold bottles might look a little odd.

To get to it

What we're trying to say, therefore, is that the only things that could make a sweet unique are things that are literally unique about them. For example, there's a wasabi-infused candy bar in our list below - that's rare by virtue of the fact that wasabi is quite rare, let alone the combination of wasabi and a candy bar.

Rare Sweets

Some of our favorite rare sweets from the UK

The UK has its own fair share of unique and rare types of candy that are hard to nail down in a real way. We've got two examples of rare candy here that we'll talk about quickly - have you tried them both?

Chocolate Pebbles

These are a little rarer nowadays than they were in the past, but a good sweet shop will likely keep a stock of them on site. Essentially, these are small lumps of chocolate shaped to be about correct for the shape of a pebble.

Rare Sweets

The outermost layer of chocolate is then painted to look like a pebble - typically a grey or sand color, with some spots and swirls to make the illusion a little more convincing.

Reportedly, these sweets were involved with assorted tricks in the past, being in a mix or collection of pebbles and chocolate. To play a prank, someone would eat a delicious chocolate pebble, pretending that it was an actual rock.

Rare Sweets

Flying Saucers

Flying saucers are made up of two main ingredients - rice paper and sherbet. These treats are wonderful when eaten in the right place at the right time, with the ingredients not being too rare but the combination being unusual.

Appearance

Flying Saucers

They are shaped like flying saucers, as in UFOs - disc-like, with a rim at the center. These sweets are typically sucked so that the rice paper melts, and the sherbet fizzes as it comes into contact with the tongue.

These are another sweet that's a little rarer nowadays, with them more commonly being seen at the checkout of a supermarket than in the aisles of a sweet shop.

Lightning Bugs Gummy Candy - China

What is a lightning bug?

This was our first question upon hearing about this candy since we didn't grow up in a place that had these little creatures. Well, a lightning bug is another name for a firefly. These are small beetles about the size of a fingernail, and they are so named because they're slightly bioluminescent - a regent on their thorax lights up occasionally during twilight.

What is this candy?

These candies are something quite simple yet quite unusual all on their own. Essentially, they take the shape of small worms around the same size as a lightning bug. When picked up, they light up a little, much the same way a lightning bug would.

Rare Sweets

Variety

They come in various different flavors and are typically packaged with a small set of tongs that are used to pick up and eat the sweets. It could be said that the tongs are similar to the kind of thing that a scientist might use to examine a specimen in a lab, which enhanced the allure of the sweets.

Rare Sweets

What makes this unusual?

The thing that makes these sweets unusual is fairly obvious, we'd have thought: they light up when you pick them up! This is unusual for obvious reasons, though there's no cause for concern - the secret is in the tongs.

The tongs contain a small circuit that lights up when they get to be fairly closed, meaning that you could light them up when there's no worm in them. It's reassuring that there are no harmful chemicals or circuitry in the sweets!

Rare Sweets

Gummy X-Ray Fish - USA

What is this candy?

Gummy fish are something that you've likely heard of, if not seen, in sweet shops around the world. The delicious brand of candies has long been well established, with sweet, chewy, and delicious options scattered throughout the world.

Anatomy

Well, these are a sub-option that's a little different from the regular kind. To create the mental image, picture of a regular fish that's run through an x-ray machine - you can see bones, organs, etc. That's precisely what the delicious gummy options look like - a regular gummy fish that has been run through an x-ray machine!

What makes this unusual?

The thing that makes these sweets a little unusual is the odd but tasty mix of flavor and anatomy. It's rare that food tries to be at all educational, even in a tongue-in-cheek way like this. In a sweet shop, we might expect to see a slightly odd, parodied type of anatomy, such as a gummy heart, not quite something almost anatomically correct.

Branding

This brand is the same as the one that produces all the normal gummy fish and a number of similar candies. This makes you wonder whether all of the regular gummy candies in any shop have their own anatomy - you just can't see it!

Rare Sweets

Wasabi Kit Kats - Japan

What is this candy?

This candy is something that you'd expect to see from what it said on the packaging. Not sweet at all, really, this option is something a little more interesting.

A kit kat, if you don't know, is a sweet treat that's essentially a core of wafer with chocolate surrounding it in a small prism shape. There are typically two of these to a pack, with the two wafers being connected by molded chocolate.

Rare

This candy differs in that the outside layer of chocolate appears wrong at first. Created in Japan, these spicy wasabi options have a layer of spiced wasabi on the outside, mixed with other ingredients to create a taste-sensation with the same texture as a chocolate sweet bar.

What makes this unusual?

From a brand like kit kat, we always expect more or less the same thing - something sweet. It may be a little more bitter or sweet depending upon if dark or white chocolate is used, but this mix of heat and chocolate is unheard of in the world of sweets.

Packaging

The packaging for this product is very forward with the odd mix of two flavors here - hot and sweet. Despite that, it's still a surprise that this was created, agreed upon, and shipped worldwide!

Rare Sweets

What is wasabi, really?

Wasabi is a treat about as far from the sweets on this list as you could get - it is a paste, in this sense, made from the root of the wasabi plant. It's got a very spicy and pungent flavor, which is what makes the mix with kit kat so surprising!~

 

Our favourite rare fruity flavours

Mix up the flavour of your sweets with a list of our top 5 below:

Avocado

Chocolate Limes

Sour Pink Grapefruit

Flaming Hot Cinnamon

Blackcurrant & Liquorice

You may find some of these flavours in our range of 'build your own sweet hampers' online.