In the days before the pandemic, there was a friendly semi-retired fellow who would come by my office with a cart full of candies and snacks, winding his way through the cubicle forest while singing a tune that everyone recognized within a handful of notes.
“Salllllty and sweeeeet …” he would croon, waiting for bureaucrats to pop up from their desks, gopher-style, and hand him money in exchange for treats.
Despite this easy money, he would come and go as he pleased, and we could go months without seeing him. Depending on where my floor was in his snack run, some of my favourites may have sold out by the time he reached my cubicle, leading me to try new things instead of letting him pass without me buying something. Plus, there were times when I just wanted to try something new, you know?
It was on one of these visits that I first bought a bag of chocolate-covered jujubes.
Too much of a good thing?
There’s a school of thought – let’s call it Americus Maximus – that leans into bigger always being better, with more always preferable to less. Why have potato chips or chocolate bars when you can have potato chips AND chocolate bars fused together into a single snack? At the all-inclusive resort’s omelette station, why stop at onion and cheese when you can have onion, cheese, ham, peppers, mushrooms, tomatoes, another two kinds of cheese, and maybe some bacon, all cooked into an omelette with barely enough egg to hold the whole thing together? And then why not just flavour-blast the whole thing with a quarter cup of sriracha mayo?
Why choose one thing when you can have everything?
Jujubes are a legacy candy, the kind an older generation grew up on that hasn’t quite translated to the young folks. Since gummy candies landed, with a chewy texture that fights back when you bite into it, jujubes are a texture and flavour relic. They’re soft and sticky, with stock fruit flavours that haven’t changed in half a century. There’s nothing novel about them – which is a problem in the modern era of candy, when there’s a steady stream of new products that leave older products fighting to stay relevant.
So how do you reinvent the jujube? How do you make it interesting again? By coating it in chocolate, I guess.
What do they taste like?
Since the pandemic put an end to at-desk candy cart delivery, I hadn’t thought about chocolate-covered jujubes until I saw them at a downtown Edmonton Shoppers Drug Mart, in resealable bags from their Carnaby Sweet house brand.
Out of the bag, the candies look a bit worse for wear, having been scuffed up in their utilitarian packaging. The chocolate coating isn’t evenly spread across each jujube, and sometimes you’ll see hints of a flavour based on a colour or shape peeking through the chocolate. But unless you pay close attention and memorize the shapes, you don’t know what you’re getting into until you take a bite.
On the surface, that sounds fine. The chocolate is basic and sweet, and the jujubes inside have their characteristic texture. The red berry one, the pineapple one, the orange one and the lime one are all fine, though decidedly basic. In all, nothing stellar, but nothing offensive.
But here’s the wildcard: in amongst the routine fruit flavours they’ve tossed in some licorice jujubes.
What. The. Hell.
I dislike licorice, and I’ve never understood why some long-dead candymaker put licorice in the same set of flavours as orange, berry and lime. And because you can’t easily see the colour of the jujube you’re about to eat while distractedly while staring at a screen, you pop it in your mouth, bite into it, and bam, licorice grossness.
So I’d say it’s a mixed bag. Yes, the mix of textures (soft but sticky jujubes with a sweet, melty chocolate coating) works, and the old-timey fruit flavours are OK. But every time I hit a licorice one, I question my decision to eat these at all.
The Details
Price: $4 (on sale) for a 250-gram bag at Shoppers Drug Mart in Edmonton.
Value for Money: Not bad. They come on sale regularly.
Availability: Carnaby Sweet is a Shoppers Drug Mart house brand, so that’s where you’ll find them. And even then, these aren’t super common. In addition to the usual candy section, you have to look around the end-cap displays or other bins/shelves for these.
Nutrition: 160 calories per 7 pieces (42 grams).
Verdict: I don’t know. There’s the novelty factor of taking an old candy and doing something new with it, but the licorice flavour ruins the experience for me. If I buy a bag of Skittles, I’ll like every flavour, and I’ll know which flavour I’m about to enjoy because I can see the colour. But with these? Unless you’re cool with licorice, maybe give them a pass.
