Ask Lemmy

Swede here.

Some American candy, mostly bad chocolate

I’m seeing a lot of black licorice mentions, but there’s a special hell for Läkerol’s menthol black licorice.

Related anecdote: When I worked an offshore rotation with people from all over the world, I made an effort to bring candy that I'd never seen outside of Scandinavia. It was always amusing to see people sampling candy I liked when they weren't used to the ammonium chloride branch of flavors.

And once I brought this:

Everybody who weren't Norwegian, Swedish, or Finnish (sadly we had no Danes on board) absolutely hated it. Especially the Americans and Brits.

Everyone except Mario, that is; a Croatian geophysicist. He loved them. His voice still lives rent free in my head over ten years later, saying "Sweet candy is for kids"

A few trips later I brought one of my favorites for basically the same result, but this time with Jim (from Illinois, iirc) complaining that it made his mouth physically hurt:

Mario loved that one even More.
The only thing everyone on board liked was the obscene amount of chocolate my navigator brought every trip.

But to answer the question: Twizzlers. I bought some when visiting the US a couple of years ago. It tasted like oily sweetener (as in, clearly not actual sugar). That's when I learned that American and European wine gum are flavored very differently.

Footnote: Durian and durian chocolate is quite alright once you get used to the slight farty smell from each packet you open.

American or South African chocolate products.

NOT an anti-American/-Saffer thing. They add butyric acid, which tastes like vomit to the rest of the world. (Accurate, as vomit contains it).

Presumably because the market there have been trained to expect that flavour for some reason. To the rest of us, a US or ZA origin is usually a sign to avoid.

The cheap no name "chocolates" that taste like eating oil solids disguised as chocolate

Black licorice.

I firmly believe candy should be sweet; not bitter.

NECO wafers. Like cardboard they taste

I tried Hershey's (American chocolate) before and it tasted absolutely disgusting. it will never ever come remotely close to Dairy Milk or Galaxy

I got a monthly food box for my wife a number of years ago. Each month they sent snacks from a different country.

I can't remember which country it was from, but one month we got some round, hard candies. It was one of the most unfortunate things I have ever intentionally put into my mouth.

I don't even remember the flavor (licorice, maybe?), because my brain attempted to bleach it out.

Everything else was usually tasty, though.

Hersheys "chocolate". I spit it out, and a bit embarrassed, asked "could it gone bad during the flight?"

Well, obviously this stuff does taste like vomit, and Americans seem to be OK with that. Explains a lot about American behavior. If chocolate here would taste like that, we probably would have more mass shootings, too.

Licorice, that funny retro looking shit with the black and bright colors. They are as revolting to me as sushi

Twizzlers.

I tried them in the US and it just felt like I was chewing on a piece of plastic.

On the other hand, unlike most of the people in the comments, I love licorice.

Can't stand corn fructose and palm sugar based snacks. Terrible everything - engironmental impact, texture, health impact, flavor. It's just the cheapest possible option that ruins everything it touches.

Well, licorice is definitely up there.

There's some pralines that with some alcohol based filling that's also really gross.

But I still remember I was a kid and my parents bought these cheese crackers. They were awful, the it was a bit crumbly but they had this really bad taste of something I can only describe as for fungus & cream cheese. I literally had to take a break and concentrate on not barfing even though we just wanted to play tabletop games. I know it's not sweet but that stuff lives rent-free in my head to this day.

any American chocolate tastes like vomit

At my place of work, one project we worked on involved a lot of contractors from a place based in China. (The project was an absolute cluster-fuck all the way from soup to nuts, but that's a story for another day.) When the project concluded, they sent our office a thank-you gift box of various Chinese snacks.

One of the snacks was a... dried... meat... "candy"... I guess? The taste wasn't "sweet" so much. It tasted like it had been dipped in perfume. And the texture of the meat was hard to describe. Not chewy like jerky, and it didn't have that highly-processed Slim Jim sort of texture to it. Maybe it was sortof freeze-dried or something? I also couldn't identify what animal the meat might have come from. (And I couldn't read the text on the packaging.)

I'm not sure whether it was just an acquired taste or rather a practical joke by the folks at the Chinese company. Lol.

I tried some matcha mochi once. It didn't really taste good, but the worst thing about it was that it was just boring.

Black licorice. Or anything containing black licorice. It’s just fucking disgusting.

Lucas Limon - I never understood how kids could eat. Even before they found lead in it.

Peeps. I've never like marshmallow anything, really, and definitely not those abominations. Most cinnamon-flavored things. Edit: forgot one: chocolate-covered cherries. I don't know why. I have a cherry tree and will eat the cherries off it and don't even mind most artificially-cheery-flavored things. I also eat other fruits covered in chocolate (even durian).

Durian candy and sour milk candy share the top spot.

The Harry Potter bean things which has awful flavors mixed in, like puke etc.

I haven't actually tried this but my friend did.