Most of us have seen gel snacks. Usually in neons or bright pastels, bags of the miniature fruity cups line the snack aisles of Asian specialty stores everywhere. They tempt us with their cuteness and the promise of refreshing, unusual fruity flavors.
I’ve fallen victim to their superbly kawaii charms a few times in the past, mostly in my early teenage years - a halcyon era before I actually had to worry about the price of such indulgences. Though she might have given the price tags a questioning once-over, my mom never seemed to take too much issue with shelling out $2.99 a bag for snacks like these. After all, they were fruit-flavored, which automatically made them healthier than, say, giant cookies.
Although paying for my own groceries is a necessary evil of adulthood and all that jazz, I really miss being able to toss any snack I desired into the shopping cart with nary a care or concern. Now that I’m paying for my edible vices, I’ve become quite a cheapskate in some respects. Suddenly, I find myself having difficulty parting with three or more dollars for one snack, unless it’s an absolute favorite of mine. That means gel snacks, no matter how cutely packaged, are usually out of the question.
However, there’s always something new to discover in L.A.’s ethnic markets, and frequently those “somethings” I come across are cheap. On my most recent trip to the neighborhood Vietnamese emporium, one of my finds was a bag of Mah Tong Huat Jolly Jolly Snacks - a scarcely-believable steal, at 39 cents. Sure, the usual cutesy anime-style doodles were absent from the bag, replaced by too-realistic depictions of oranges and grapes oozing juice - but what do you expect for just under four cents a gel snack?
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