anywhereisbetter

A friend recently sent me a package containing several candy items from the exotic land of the United Kingdom. On this small island nation, Cadbury is king, and everything vegetarian is so marked by a little green check mark. It’s a magical land, and I expected nothing less from their candy. So if ever you find yourself in this strange and disorienting place, I offer you this guide to the various confections you may encounter.

Flake

This candy boasted that it was the “crumbliest, flakiest” milk chocolate. Maybe that’s something that the English look for in a chocolate bar, but for me it was just a pain in the ass. The slightest bit of pressure placed on it–even just the pressure required to hold it in one’s hand–and the bar would begin to disintegrate. Specks of chocolate escaped my lips with every bite, leaving a scattering of delicious bits all over the table for me to lap up with my tongue. The chocolate was delicious, though–maybe even worth the effort. Besides, I secretly liked having to lick the table.

Twirl

A big imposter. Here’s a bar that looks like a Twix, tastes like Flake, but fails to be either. Cleverly packaged like a Twix, Twirl bars (or “fingers,” as the wrapper calls them) are probably just leftover Flake bars that have begun to crumble before getting packaged. Except this time they cover the bar with more chocolate to keep it together. Clever, huh? Well, I’m not buying it. Hey Twirl, what good are you? Fuck this bar. Or these bars. Whatever.

Maynard’s Wine Gums

I don’t know the story behind these things, but I’d guess that this candy is probably the product of centuries of animosity between the English and French. What better way to subtly insult a culture than to bastardize something it holds dear? Gummi Cabernet, perhaps? The gauntlet has been thrown; are we to believe the French are too dignified to return fire by producing mini packages of chocolate covered blood sausage? Let’s hope so.

Bounty

Experiencing Bounty was relatively uneventful, since it resembled a Mounds bar in both taste and appearance. So why not just call it Mounds? It’s not like a primitive nation like the “United Kingdom” could possibly have copyright laws to prevent such a thing. Or is this is a quaint attempt to assert some kind of cultural sovereignty by refusing to bow to American conventions? Cute, guys. Now let’s be serious. Really. You’re just confusing everyone.

Turkish Delight

Reflecting an anachronistic Orientalist mindset (or maybe it’s just supposed to be colonial nostalgia), the Turkish Delight’s wrapper boasts that this candy is “full of Eastern promise.” If the promise of the East is a rose flavored gel covered in milk chocolate and manufactured in Birmingham (maybe they meant East Birmingham), then I guess this candy delivers. The Eastern promise could also be a stomach ache: although I enjoyed the experience of Turkish Delight’s subtle flavor, I paid the price for my gluttony. It seems my excursion into the world of imperialist confections has left me reeling from the harsh realities of digestive postcolonialism.

Boost

While not full of racist Eastern promise like Turkish Delight, Boost’s wrapper excitedly proclaims this candy bar is “packed with glucose!” I was never all that good at the natural sciences, but isn’t that just plain old sugar? Does Cadbury really think that the English-speaking world (even a backward country like England) doesn’t know that? I’m used to being mislead by advertisements, but this is just insulting. Surely they could have looked at the list of ingredients and come up with something a bit more creative. Why not “Energized with lecithin!”, “Chock full of methyl cellulose!”, or “Sodium bicarbonated for your pleasure.” At least I don’t know what those things are. Instead, I find the experience of eating glucose-packed Boost marred by a constant concern for the ensuing sugar rush and inevitable crash. Oh, my aching head. Might I suggest another candy bar “Stuffed with ibuprofen”?

Aero

The moment I opened up Aero’s wrapper, I was greeted with the familiar smell of Thin Mints, the addictive little mint and chocolate wafers sold annually by those diabolical little girls who must exist for the sole purpose of giving me a stomach ache. While this was indeed an exciting revelation, I was simultaneously disappointed to find that the bar itself had not survived the trip overseas in one piece. It looks like, in addition to their incredible lack of respect for other (namely Eastern) cultures, the British have absolutely no respect for the fragility of personal goods. I imagine that one of their exotic mail sorting helper monkeys (indigenous to the island, you know) smelled candy when passing the package from cart to cart, but violently threw the box aside after several failed attempts to gnaw through the packing tape. I have come to expect this kind of behavior from helper monkeys in Mediterranean nations (and Australia), but this comes as a surprise. A disgrace.

All said, I’d say my foray into the exciting world of British sweets was successful. I managed to eat everything without a single hospital visit, none of the aforementioned candy products contained mayonnaise, and in spite one uncomfortably inappropriate slogan, some of it was actually quite delicious. So if you find yourself in England, lost and chocolate starved, I hope you’ll heed my advice: don’t use the postal service. They’ll just break your stuff.

Special thanks to Michelle for the candy. Eating it all was much tastier than I make it sound.