The Guardman Nodo Ame

As long-time readers may already know, I'm a sucker for interesting packaging. In fact, I think that sales to foreigners who find packaging with weird English or bizarre graphics to be of paramount interest could quintuple if the marketers started playing to that particular angle. I would recommend things like "The Rice Farmers Daughter" sembei shaped like 8's (to resemble breasts). Those would do well.

Though this doesn't have a funny English name attached to it, the characters say "The Guardman" nodo ame or "throat candy". The combination of the name and the fierce-looking fellow on the front of the package as well as the price to sell (100 yen/$1.20) and the fact that these are sugar-free piqued my curiosity. It also reminded me a lot of a statue that I saw at Mt. Takao of a red guy who I christened "angry flower nipple man". Look at the picture above and you'll have to agree that the resemblance is uncanny. Perhaps that fellow escapes the blue picket fence he's trapped behind at night and slips off to his own factory to make throat drops for people with scratchy throats. Maybe the herbs are from the very same flowers that he attaches to his nipples for his day job in front of the shrine.

I don't know why this strapping figure of an angry man is on the cover of these throat drops, but I know that they are fiercely medicinal and definitely have the power to keep a sore throat at bay. Unlike a lot of the "nodo ame" that I've had in Japan before, these are not minor variations on a lollipop pretending to help you with a scratchy throat. They're packed full of intense herbal extracts including ginger and Eucalyptus and include catechins, which are supposed to act as antioxidants. The entire bag has 186 calories, which I calculated out to be about 9 calories per candy.

I found these at a local supermarket and haven't seen them anywhere else since then. If you are the type of person who likes strong herbal drops, these are the bee's knees. Even if I don't have a sore throat, I occasionally like to have something like this as an intense flavor experience. However, I'm guessing most people would only want them if they were actually sick, or liked really weird packaging.

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My husband was given a plastic packet with two samples of grape Halls cough drops while walking on the street to his work in downtown Tokyo. The strange thing wasn't the cough drops themselves, as they were just your typical Halls flavored cough drops which are the same as those back home. The weird point was the advertising illustration that came with it.

You don't need to read Japanese to get the gist of it. I must say that I never associated Halls with kissing, and this ad did nothing to strengthen any such connection in my mind, especially if I'm expected to hold the throat drop with my pinky raised like some tea-drinking socialite.

As an aside, the creepy bird with a man's face is to advertise the company's presence on Twitter.

Clearin' Sugarless Nodo Ame Fruit

I used to teach a lesson on giving advice where I would give students a sequence of problems and they had to make a statement advising me on how to deal with the problem. One of the problems that I'd mention was, "I have a sore throat". The students often would say, "you should eat some candy." No, the students weren't thinking I'd be happier if I ate a little candy, though honestly I've always found chocolate ice cream to be the bee's knees for sore throats. You get both the chocolate enjoyment and the cooling ice cream.



The recommendation to have candy is the result of a literal translation of "nodo ame" or "throat candy". It's obviously what we'd call throat lozenges or drops. That being said, my experiences in Japan with throat soothing drops has been less than impressive. There seem to be two kinds of drops for sale. Either they are so strongly herb-packed and medicinal that they taste utterly vile or they are so weak that they might as well be lollipops. If you want sugar-free drops to spare your tooth enamel, your options are even worse.

There is one variety that I rely on which is made by Kanro. Unfortunately, this variety is somewhat difficult to locate at times, so I occasionally sample something new. While I was perusing a variety of convenience stores, I came across this pack of Clearin' fruit-flavored drops by Teicalo at Family Mart for 198 yen ($2.14). I've had one variety of Teicalo's drops before and enjoy the texture and taste of them, but find their herbal aspect too weak to feel like they help an inflamed throat. I was hoping these might be a bit better.

The ingredients in these include: Reduced maltose syrup, fruit juice (apple, grapefruit, lemons, grapes), herbal extracts, isomaltose, vitamin C, flavorings, artificial sweeteners, artificial colors, and emulsifiers. It's pretty much in line with what you might expect from a sugar-free candy. Each candy is 9 calories and there are 22 of them in the bag.


The drops themselves are quite beautiful. They're partially clear with a gradient of bright color on the opposite side. The design is meant to release the herbal aspects more clearly and potently, but I don't know if it can really work like that. I do know that you taste the fruit more potently if you put the colored side down on your tongue.

grape: The grape flavor strongly reminds me of the cheap grape lollipops that I used to get as a kid. I'm talking about the kind on a white stick or a white loop of stiffened fiber that cheap people gave you for Halloween or the doctor gave you after poking you with a needle. There was the tiniest hint of some sort medicinal herbal flavor, but mainly, it was just a mundane piece of candy.

grapefruit: This one had a bit more bite and that telltale grapefruit bitterness. The herbal aspect shone through a bit more as well.

lemon: The lemon has a nice citrus bite and also is similar in herbal essence to the grapefruit. It was my favorite both in terms of flavor and the feeling that it had a medicinal impact.

green apple: Like the grape, this reminded me of a cheap lollipop with an herbal edge.

My feeling is that the herbal content of each is likely the same, but the impact on your sinuses is different based on the intensity of how you sense it. Those drops with a more intense herbal bite feel more helpful, even if they may not necessarily be more helpful. After sampling all four drops, my tongue felt pretty saturated with the herbal flavoring, but I don't think these helped my throat much more than simply chewing gum or sucking on any type of candy might have helped.

These weren't bad at all as fruit candy, though they weren't great as lozenges. If you're sensitive to strong herbal flavors and are hard-pressed to find a palatable throat drop, these might do in a pinch, but I wouldn't recommend them. Mainly, they're like sugar-free, slightly herbal lollipops.

Asahi C's Case Fruit Nodo Ame

The Japanese market is nothing if not flooded with well-meaning products that are meant to improve your health through candy and cookies. The two big nutritional supplements are foods with Calcium or Vitamin C. For quite some time, Asahi has offered a little plastic container with tiny lemon-flavored pellets called "C's Case". Since its original inception, the brand has branched out to many products including drinks and these throat drops.

I found these at Summit supermarket in an area adjacent to my neighborhood. If you don't think that is a sacrifice, keep in mind that I had to listen to their inane ditty singing "once a week at Summit" (sung in English, no less) about a million times during my short shopping journey. They cost 198 yen ($2.13) for a 79-gram (2.8 oz.) bag. There were about 20 drops in the bag. Each candy is 9.2 calories and sugarless. Summit carried an array of sugar-free hard candies that I had never seen in my local markets so I snapped up three bags of them. You'll see the other reviews in the future at some point. I insist on sugar-free for something that I'm going to be keeping in my mouth for a prolonged period of time. My teeth really don't need a long, luxurious sugar bath, even when my throat wants something to keep it from going dry.

There are three flavors - peach, grape, and orange. I don't ask much of this type of candy except that it be sugarless and preferably have some edge to the flavor. Fruit candy is best when it has a nice little citrus bite. Here is the breakdown of these candies.

Grape: This is like the grape lollipops that you got from the doctor when you were a child (and when you were lucky that he had grape and not some gross flavor like lime), only lamer. This reminds me of when I was a child and put my lollipops in water in order to see what the water would taste like when they dissolved into it. This tastes a bit like that water. It's not bad, but it's not much of anything.

Peach: Fortunately, peach was a more flavorful offering. It was intense and had a little mouth-puckering sourness in the background. It did taste of artificial sweetener, but that's a price you pay for sugar-free candy. It actually did taste like peach, fake peach, but at least it was what you might expect.

Orange: This was my favorite of the three. If I could get a bag of only orange, I'd be happier with the whole package. The orange flavor is your classic fake candy flavor. It also had just a bit of an herbal, almost medicinal edge. One of the ingredients is "herbal extract", and I'm guessing it is only used in the orange or is most potent in this drop. 

The interesting thing about the nutrition information on this is that they tell you the numbers for the entire bag rather than each candy, as if you're going to put away the whole thing. In the 20 candies, there are 3000 mg of vitamin C (in the entire bag), .82 mg. Vitamin B, 2.7 micrograms of B12, .29 mg. of B1, .65 mg of B2, and 4.3 mg. Vitamin E. To get all of those good things, you've got to deal with Sucralose, Aspartame, and Acesulfame K.

I liked these just fine, but I wasn't crazy over them. They're definitely the sort of thing I would turn to if I had a cold and wanted to suck on something for a sore throat and give myself some extra C along for the ride. I find it hard to assign a rating because I can't say I enjoyed these enough to revisit them without a cold motivating me to do so, but I would definitely get them again if I was infected. I'm wondering if Asahi should use that as part of their marketing campaign.