Category: Bigfoot

Some More Food Candy

Todsy I made for four new food candy kits from Japan. As you’ll see, some worked better than others…

This is called Nerikyan World (I don’t know what that means either) and is a kit where you mold taffy-like candy into various shapes.

The 5 candy blocks were slightly hard at first, but softened with a bit of kneading. It was easy to mold, but very sticky.

There’s no specific instructions: you can just make what you like. I used the mold for the corn but the panda was my original creation. The candy all seemed to taste the same – very sweet – and wasn’t bad at all. I actually ate most of it without even molding it!

I got creative with a squirrel, for which I combined black and white to make grey, before using the mold. It was extremely difficult to remove, which is why the final creation looks a bit derpy πŸ™‚

I think kids would like this one.

Next was this Jelly Gemstone kit, which claims to make rainbow gummies. The packaging looked promising, but could I reproduce this level of detail?

This was the most complex kit, with steps including refrigeration and microwaving. It included 4 plastic trays, 5 bags of crystals and ‘rings’ made from cardboard in which to display the ‘gemstones’.

The method involved making a coloured suspension in water, then use a dropper to add it to a mold.

Various colours were made with different bags of crystal, but either the instructions were incorrect or (more likely) my translator made a mistake since only one type of colour required microwaving.

I did my best and thought they looked promising, and put them aside for ten minutes (as instructed) to solidify… which they didn’t! So I left them for another fifteen minutes after which most were still liquid.

I waited longer but only the above gemstone ended up solidifying. Or so I thought, since when I removed it from the mold it disintegrated quickly:

In other words, I completely failed in making the kit correctly! I tried eating it anyway, but it had an unpleasant chemical taste. Surely I mixed the ingredients incorrectly?

Maybe not one for kids, unless the parents want to supervise πŸ™‚

Time for an easy one: Chiikawa Toy Beer. We’ve made a few drink kits like this before, but this was first time time it was beer and came with a stein!

As with previous drinks this was trivial to make: just add water and pour the single packet of crystals in. Stirring wasn’t even required.

It worked extremely well. The crystals dissolved quickly, creating immediate bubbles and a frothy cap, which rose so much I thought it would overflow.

It kept bubbling long after the froth had risen, and was slightly carbonated when drunk. Unfortunately the taste was disgusting, and down the sink it went πŸ™‚

I think this one would be a hit with kids. Not only is making it fun, but it could teach them the ‘joy of beer’ at a young age, and they’d get a cute stein to keep forever.

Last was this one, which translates to Gummy Tangle. Humorously the packaging notes it’s ‘full of calcium’! I haven’t paid attention before but I wonder if all of these make nutritional claims?

This one was unusual. Looking at the packaging it seems you pull a gummy tape out of liquid?! As with many of these kits it comes with a tray, several bags of powder and a few disposable implements

One powder is dissolved to make a coloured liquid, and the other becomes a frothy foam. Then another powder is floated on top of the liquid while you use the straw to lift it out from below, which results in this:

It doesn’t exactly match the packaging, but it mostly works! This is a sour tasting product but I liked the foam a lot. It’s frankly a bit disgusting in texture but probably my favourite of the ones I made today.

I bet kids would love this one, because it’s weird and messy and a bit gross but ultimately tastes pretty good πŸ™‚

The Mystery Spot and Bigfoot Madness

We drove up to Lake George today. I hadn’t been out much since my surgery and it had been a few years so it was time again to go and check out our local tourist trap.

Postcards have more or less disappeared from our city, so I was happy the souvenir shop just as you drive into town came through with a nice selection. Maybe I sent you one with a surprise ‘attached’…

When I was planning this trip I found the ‘Lake George Mystery Spot’ listed on the map. It was described as a location where you can hear a mysterious echo if you stand in a very specific point. We had to try!

It works! If you stand in the very center of the blue lake painted on this concrete circle, face the lake, and speak you (and only you) hear a surprisingly loud echo of your voice. If you take a single step in any direction or turn away from the lake the echo disappears! It’s a true mystery (maybe…) and was worth the trip alone πŸ™‚

We then walked the main street to check out the souvenir shops. Many of them are infected with 3D printed trash, bootleg toys or AI art t-shirts but one curious feature is the preponderance of Bigfoot items. The very first shop we went into had this giant robotic Bigfoot fortune teller (a version of the old Zoltar machine) which gave a tepid (albeit spoken) fortune and sadly did not vend a fortune since the printer was broken.

Immediately behind it was a selection of Bigfoot t-shirts which surprised me even before I noticed they had an entire aisle of them. Back during Covid we saw a sprinkling of Bigfoot items appearing in these gift shops, but today it has ballooned to a near-unbelievable level. Almost every type of clothing was available in a Bigfoot version!

We saw Bigfoot water bottles, beer holders and pens. Towels, thongs, swimmers, hats and sunglasses. Shot glasses, ashtrays, bongs, stickers and knives. Toy cars, picture frames, bibs, shovels and cups.

Cards, dog toys and notebooks. Posters, jewelry, wall art, socks, books and postcards. Squishies, cellphone stands, keychains, magnets and lamps. Statues, flashlights, walking sticks, slippers and candy. I could go on and on: there seemed to be Bigfoot everything!

How about a massive inflatable Dallas Cowboys Bigfoot lawn ornament?

Or a metal sign (one of many) to hang outside your home? This store had multiple Bigfoot garden ornaments as well, in case you run out of places to display Bigfoot inside your home.

And if your love of Bigfoot transcends even completely redecorating your home, why not give ‘Snake’ a call and swap Bigfoot stories? (If you look into this guy online, you’ll be entering a deep and fascinating rabbit hole…)

If you’re wondering, Bigfoot sightings are basically nonexistent in the area, which apparently is more famous for being a ‘hotbed of ghosts’. Maybe next time we visit all the Bigfoot stuff will be replaced by ghost souvenirs πŸ™‚

The above pic is just to illustrate that the shops weren’t completely overrun with Bigfoot, and had space for some weird K-Pop Demon Hunters bootleg trash as well!

We had planned on visiting the Frankenstein horror museum but the town was so busy it would have been too crowded, so once we were done with Bigfoot shopping we shared a slice of pizza, a giant shaved ice, and headed home. We probably got a little sunburned, but it was a fun trip.