UFOs are real bland: Shoddy Goods 094
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I’m Jason Toon and I love candy deeply… and I hurt just as deeply when it disappointments me. I’m using this Shoddy Goods, the newsletter from Meh about consumer culture, to try to come to terms with one of the most heartbreaking candies of all.
Get thee behind me, Satan
I’m just old enough to remember all those old-timey candies that seemed more like industrial waste byproducts. Bland flavors, off-putting colors, challenging textures… isn’t candy supposed to be fun? We’ve talked about peanut butter kisses before; Bit o’ Honey and Necco Wafers also had a distinct “extrusion leftovers” vibe. Most baffling of them all have to be the pastel pods of disillusionment known variously as flying saucers, satellite wafers, UFOs, or, in the Dutch of their native Flanders, zure ouwels (”sour wafers”).
The completely flavorless rice-paper shell has the mouthfeel of Styrofoam, at least for the first two seconds after making contact with your saliva, before it dissolves into a pasty goo. Inside is either a mouthful of candy powder (more common in Europe) or a bunch of rock-hard, also almost flavorless round sprinkles (the American style). Mmm, mushy and gritty! OK, the colors are nice. But otherwise it’s hard to understand how any part of this experience is meant to be pleasant.
Or maybe it’s just me. Flying saucers were named the 12th most favorite sweet in Britain in a 2009 survey, and they’re officially considered a Flemish heritage product in the Belgian region where they were invented. But while I grudgingly admit they may not be actual factory debris, satellite wafers did start out as a product made for a completely different reason. They were only repurposed as “sweets” for kids when nobody else wanted them.
Last communion
Like all the most fun candies, this one starts with the decline of Western European religious belief following World War II. It seems a venerable firm in Antwerp, Belgium called Belgica was having trouble selling the communion wafers they produced. So in 1951, they hit on the idea of putting two wafers together into a round capsule. Inside, they were filled with a sour candy powder, a then-popular candy genre which also showed up in the US as products like Lik-M-Aid Fun Dip (speaking of low-effort industrial sweets). Ziezo! Zure ouwels were born.
I guess wartime austerity had done a number on the European sweet tooth, because this ascetic treat was embraced by a grateful continent. In the UK and Ireland, these flying saucers were filled with sherbet powder, a fizzier concoction. The American version changed that filling to multicolored nonpareils, tiny round sprinkles that also feature as the “snow” on Sno-Caps. I don’t recommend them to anyone who would like to keep their real teeth.
You know a food is good when they have to specify “EDIBLE” on the box
In my dim memories of the turn of the 1970s into the 1980s, flying saucers still haunted the dusty shelves of old-school corner stores, along with other superannuated candy you never saw commercials for: Swedish fish, candy buttons, candy necklaces, wax “cola bottles”, wax lips. Somebody back then was really trying to get kids to eat wax for some reason.
Like its peers, flying saucers faded as big-budget candy brands crowded them out, and the candy stores and neighborhood markets that carried them disappeared. And then they made a bit of a comeback in the 2000s as a retro-sweets trend was driven by indie vintage candy shops, newfound availability on the Internet, and Boomer/Gen X nostalgia.
Now Amazon will deliver a drum of Fizzy UFOs to your door. But opinions about this bastard offspring of church and industry remain, let’s say, mixed.
“I have no idea why anyone buys these”
In a video titled “The Most Boring Candy Ever“, a singularly unenthused YouTube reviewer raves “It was about time that I try this candy I have zero interest in… it smells like packing peanuts… it’s literally flavorless sugary sprinkle beads in a flavorless non-sugary wafer… I would love to meet the person that says this is their favorite candy.”
A commenter adds, “When I worked at World Market, they were trying to get rid of these for at least a year and nobody would buy them even at 50% off.”
Elsewhere in retail: “A sweet in our store that I have no idea why anyone buys: flying saucers,” concurs someone from the Scottish candy store Joe’s Sweetie Barn on Instagram. “Sherbet on the inside, rice paper on the outside. Overall, just bland.” And this is from a store that sells them.
Flying saucers do have their fans - 49% of Britons can’t all be lying. “I genuinely don’t care what people say, these are so good,” says Redditor Crow-Time, turning a bug into a feature. “It’s like communion wafers with sprinkles inside, I love it.” But even there, the comments are overwhelmingly along the lines of “Think of chewing on a packing peanut minus the thickness with a little bit of ice cream hard ball sprinkles inside. There is zero sweetness and zero taste in the disc itself.”
If you swear by flying saucers, I’m baffled, but also a little jealous. I wish I had the ability to be happy with so little. I wish my tastebuds weren’t blown out by decades of fructose abuse. I wish I could strike the contrarian pose that flying saucers are “good, actually.” Part of me wants to connect on that visceral level with our forebears from a simpler time. But that part is definitely not my tongue.
Don’t worry, little guys, somebody out there loves you (presumably)
I think the powdery chalkiness of the candy hearts on Valentine’s Day are my most “pretty gross but I still fondly remember them” candies. What food do you have nostalgia for despite objectively having to admit it doesn’t actually taste good? Let’s hear about it in this week’s Shoddy Goods chat.
—Dave (and the rest of Meh)
We promise these previous Shoddy Goods stories aren’t that much like biting into a packing peanut:
- The mystery of peanut butter kisses
- The Beatles and the Nothing Box
- Are cough drops medicine or candy?
And if you like Shoddy Goods, don’t miss Jason’s new other newsletter, Gnomenclature. Every week he digs into the 178-year-history of Hammacher Schlemmer, America’s oddest retailer. It’s gonna get weird!
- 16 comments, 10 replies
- Comment
When I was a young child (in New Zealand), I practically lived on Marmite (similar to Vegemite). I was weaned off it when we moved to the US. Years later, my older sister (who stayed in NZ) sent me a jar of it. Yack
! - it was horrible stuff.
@macromeh I’ve heard it’s an alternative to axle grease.
@blaineg Marmite certainly looks like axle grease, but I’ve never tasted the latter to know for sure.
Hershey kisses
IYKYK
I’ve always like Smarties. They remind me of trick or treating in the '90s. I know they are basically shrunken Necco wafers, but I like them. I still grab a bag for the house candy bowl every now and again when they are on sale.
Also, fruit-flavored Mentos. The OG pink, orange, and yellow kind. Not the flashiest candy out there, but also holds some deep childhood memories for me.
@philsny Smarties are still a hit in our house.
Wondering if Lik M Aid fun dips (remember that hard not sugary dipping stick?), Pixi Stix and Smarties are all the same product. Smarties were just the non-powdered version.
@alettaloretta @philsny I remember choking on Pixi Stix dust quite a few times.
Nik-L-Nips. You bite the wax top off to get to some truly awful sugar liquid, and then… chew the tasteless wax. But boy did we love them. “It’s like a tiny soda! But waxier and doesn’t taste good! Wow!”
Novelty goes a long way when you’re a kid.
I will never get tired of stale conversation hearts. They would go on super sale after Valentines Day. Way better than when they’re soft and fresh.
@goose08 it’s stale Peeps for me. I have about 5 packages purchased after easter getting stale on top of the fridge.
@ironcheftoni This has not been brought to you by peeps.
Bit o Honey came in these candy bar sized rectangles, and with some careful chewing, the “nougat” was soft enough to used as wadding for our Estes rockets when we used overpowered engines. I remember the after taste as being almond like.
I also remember Mallo bars that were a pale version of the Moon Pies that we would chow with our RC colas and Cheerwine. Talking of industrial sugar….
Candy cigarettes and wax lips were among the best awful tasting candies. The truly worst are buttered popcorn flavored Jelly Belly jelly beans
@heartny back when everyone was in the office, we had a jar of Jelly Belly belly flops in the common area. Buttered popcorn was actually one of the popular flavors. However, one person thought the pear ones tasted awful. She described it as tasting like broccoli rolled in dirt. Personally, I loved the pear ones. But this person had a selective memory as well. She would almost every time grab one of the pear ones and complain about how awful it tasted. Finally, I printed out the Jelly Belly flavor list, took a red sharpie, circled the pear one, drew and arrow to it and wrote, “DIANA, Don’t eat this one!”
At last, I got all the pear ones to myself.
@ironcheftoni I used to keep a jar of Jelly Bellies on my desk at work. Whenever someone ate the buttered popcorn ones they would get a disgusted look on their face and spit it out in my trashcan. Gross. I liked the watermelon ones because if you bit in half you could see the inside was pink and the outer “rind” was green. Very cute.
@heartny kinda similar with the pear ones. Outside is green, center is white
It was self-inflicted, but a couple of cases of Cadbury Caramel Eggs from a local surplus store.
They’re one of my favorites, but that was a severe overdose. Even with giving a lot away.
@blaineg I love Cadbury caramel eggs. Can eat 7-8 at a sitting and just crave more. My willpower is NOT good. Wish I could find a decent deal like that.
When I first read the UFO topic, I thought you were referring to the much lamented Trader Joes UFOs. Wonderful dark chocolate mint disks. I used to mix up some brownies and lace them with those UFOs - delicious stuff.
While I remember all of the other candies you mention from my childhood (no idea how much paper I ingested with my Dots), I don’t remember those UFOs. Or maybe I’ve blocked it out.
Omg - thanks for confirming “flying saucers” were actually communion wafers! I immediately noticed the similarity after making my first Catholic communion and always wondered.
The candy “buttons” were always interesting. This is the little drops of candy that came on a piece of paper that you would rip off and eat. You usually got more paper than candy in your mouth but I liked them.
Black Jack gum it had a pirate on the package it was licorice flavored. My sisters and me would only like it when our Great Uncle Chuck would give it to us. He would rarely visit since he lived in Iowa and the trip to Chicago was long but he always brought us Black Jack gum. He favored my eldest sister and she got FanTan gum in the pretty pink wrapper with fans on in. Fan Tan tasted much better! I think
the gum set my taste buds on a different level as my mom and me were the only ones to eat And enjoy the black jelly beans!
This was years before the WONKA candy evolution! We only had candy on holidays Christmas, Easter,Halloween and maybe someone’s birthday. Otherwise treats were peanuts, popcorn and cookies sometimes.
I was a kid in the 70s who spent a lot of time in candy aisles and I have seen or heard of these UFO candies. Were they not available on the west coast?
Lemonheads. Never saw them in normal stores or even at the movies, only my neighborhood ice cream truck. They had a puckeringly-sour outside that was sort of a gummy-yet-gritty consistency, with a more plain hard candy lemon drop thing in the middle. So acidic it hurt my mouth. Yet, I kept coming back…
I’ve mentioned these before, and alluded to a little bit in the write up, but those peanut butter kiss things that come in the black and orange wrappers at Halloween are one of the love-hate candies that I have fond (?) memories of.