Haribo Tangfastics
Haribo Tangfastics
£1.49
All supermarkets
All supermarkets
Laying dormant in an eye shieldingly bright bag is a series of sugar coated shapes of tooth eroding, chemical explosions. Forget those normal Haribo sweets, these are for real men. Men who want to feel their teeth fizz for hours after consuming one, men who want to eat a nuclear explosion. Hell, the name itself is a warning – Tangfastics…Tang and fastics, together, as one. Watch out world, I’m gonna be doubled up and foaming at the mouth like a drug addict with rabies.
As the TV commercials have led me to believe, popping one of these in your mouth creates a blackhole that sucks your entire being in, starting with your face and ending with your soul. The kids in the commercials are shown to be beaten around in slo-mo by the invisible man while they’re having a comical seizure, and all from a single Tangfastic – It looks like a barrel of laughs!
The plastic packaging surrounding these explosive materials is nice and well made and coming from a German company, I wouldn’t expect less. So, I grab the bag, look for the nearest fire extinguisher, and guard my face within a space helmet in anticipation for a real kick in the balls from the tanginess that was to escape…
Those clever marketing bastards. Nothing happened as I opened the seal. No explosions, no radiation leaks, no ghosts from fallen warriors escaping to find their bodies…nothing.
Screw it, I thought as I slammed a cherry shaped C4 charge in my mouth. I gripped the armrests of my chair and waited for my eyes to burst and my skin to be sucked into my mouth, like a blanket being pulled through a hole in a wall. Again, nothing. I chewed on the Tangfastic (which was chemically tasty, I might add) and read the packaging again to make sure I hadn’t picked up a watered-down version. I hadn’t. One size fits all.
3
I went through 32% of the bag, sampled each and every individual unit and a few duplicates for my test. Sadly, none of them had the extreme, kick in the face style of bitter tanginess I was led to believe. I was sat there, stone-faced and not amused; also on top of being madly deceived, I was beginning to feel sick.