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One of Japanese confectionary maker Morinaga’s biggest hits is the Hi-Chew line. The soft, chewy candies come in a variety of fruit flavors, such as grape, strawberry, and green apple.

Morinaga also occasionally shakes things up with limited-edition flavors. Recently the special versions have been golden pineapple and pink grapefruit, but this month they’re joined by another unique offering, Super Mario Hi-Chews.

Each pack of Nintendo-inspired Hi-Chews comes with seven individually wrapped candies, in keeping with the linked Japanese snack food norms of having tons of packaging and making it easy to stop before eating the whole thing.

▼ Ordinary, non-Mario Hi-Chews

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All of this begs a question, though. What do the Mario Hi-Chews taste like?

▼ We guess if we had to choose between turtle and mushroom flavor candies, we’d go with turtle, but at that point, you may as well just give up and eat some vegetables.

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Actually, the flavor is listed as “soda,” which in Japanese junk food parlance means a mild citrus taste, like that of beloved popsicle Gari Gari-kun.

Also setting the Mario Hi-Chews apart are their packages, with wrappers featuring one of six special designs.

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Finally, each pack comes with one of eight Mario-themed stamps. Much like annoying video game reward systems, which one you’ll get is random, though, so until you open the pack, there’s no telling if you’ll end up with heroic Mario, second fiddle Luigi, all-consuming Yoshi, known-in-Japan-as-Kinopio Toad, traditional first enemy Goomba, dark reflection Wario, kidnapping enthusiast Koopa, or desirable inanimate object Coin.

▼ Disclaimer: Collecting 100 coin stamps will not bring bearer back from the dead.

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Source: Entabe
Top image: Entabe
Insert images: Exblog, Iinoda, FC2, Entabe