Korean Market Part 2: I don't understand this

Well I went out to dinner with some friends and we decided to have Korean food again. While waiting for them, I decided to walk around a Korean market again just to see what's going on. Nothing particularly jumped out at me as, "I have to get this!" so I decided to look for things that I knew nothing about. Near the Korean chips and such there was this little gem:



Yeah, I had no idea what it was, so I decided to call my friend to ask if I should buy it. Why is Popeye selling ramen and candy, I don't know. I would think he'd sell some sort of spinach product. I guess in Korean cartoons, Popeye eats ramen and candy instead of spinach. It was on sale at two for 99 cents, so I decided there would be no harm in buying it. Everyone loves ramen, right? And everyone loves candy. Of course it would be the most logical thing to combine the two in one packet. It's like making a chocolate covered grilled cheese sandwich, combining two good things to make one better thing.


I found the back of the package to be rather amusing. Look at how pissed off Popeye is. And right below him we see the smug little piece of candy smiling while looking down at the nutrition facts or something. I'm disappointed that they didn't give the piece of ramen a face.


Yep, what's inside the bag is pretty much what's on the packaging. You get dry ramen noodles with little odd shaped candies. The ramen noodles on their own taste like unflavored ramen noodles with a hint of cinnamon. Actually I guess they're a bit thicker and are more like the noodles you'd get with a Chinese Chicken Salad somewhere. The candy bits were just little spheres of sugar and not much else. They're pretty much just crystallized pieces of sugar. When combined, they tasted something like Cinnamon Toast Crunch, but a little less sweet. Once you bite into the candy it dissolves pretty quickly and you're left with more ramen. Not bad, but I'd rather buy a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

I don't know what to expect from Korean markets when it comes to candy. When I go in a Japanese market I see soda candies, pretty pictures, and candies featuring little spheres in them. When a student and I tried the Korean variant of Cola flavored candy we both spit it out because it wasn't worth our time. Maybe, just maybe, there's a Korean candy or snack out there that's really good, but until then I'm left walking the aisles of Korean markets hoping to get lucky with a random pick-up.