Every grocery store in Japan worth its weight in fermented rotting beans has a kids' section stuffed to the gills with licensed novelty candy, and my local one is no different. Fortunately for me, some of that licensing is Nintendo related! This led me to rabidly purchase a shiny package with Kirby on it last week without even looking at it. As it turns out, it's Hoshi no Kaabi MazeMaze Mikkusu Gamu! (Kirby's Dream Land MIX MIX MIX Gum). The flavor changes! And vanishes! It's true cause it says so on the package.


There are five flavors of gum inside, in the shape of tiny little orbs: apple, soda, cola, grapefruit, and "itazura," which is a "trick" gum. If you are tired of your current flavor, you can chew an itazura gum with it to cause the flavor to MAGICALLY DISAPPEAR. The package implores you to chew one of the other flavors with the itazura gum and after ten minutes the flavor will change into something new entirely. Personal tests proved this was a bunch of Dream Land make-believe bullshit.

You can make a variety of recipes by mixing together the different flavors, and there is even a handy guide on the back...



Apple + cola = cinnamon tea
Apple + grapefruit = orange juice
Cola + grapefruit = lemon cola
Soda + apple = champagne
Soda + cola = ginger ale
Soda + grapefruit = vitamin drink

Lemon cola is lemon and cola. Not very imaginative but pretty dead-on in the taste department. Cinnamon tea tasted remarkably like cinnamon tea, and the orange juice and champagne (!) mixes are actually surprisingly accurate, which kids would know because they drink champagne all the time to dull the pain. Much to my dismay, however, the ginger ale combination tasted nothing like ginger ale. Vitamin drink tasted like the garbage that comes in tiny brown glass bottles that all the salarymen think will make them strong and virile but actually just saps their will to live. I felt right at home with the vitamin drink flavor.

The pot is asking a mysterious question which literally translates to "Oh god what the hell will happen if you eat three at the same?! Feet intent captain scramble" but I didn't mix three together because I was afraid.

If you have about 149 yen to spare, you could buy this crap! But I already did, so don't worry about it.