Chaca Chaca


Chaca Chaca: The Mexican Powerbar
The Mexican Powerbar.

This description, devised by our esteemed friend Jeff (you'll meet Jeff in a minute), so perfectly illustrates all that is bad about Chaca Chaca that I have to print it, despite the unimaginable load of hate-mail it will probably generate. Not that we are saying anything negative about the Hispanic population. What Jeff meant was that what we subjected ourselves to on that fateful night can best be described as the spicy Mexican version of Condensed Supplement Hell, or Powerbars gone terribly worse.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, meet Jeff. World, Jeff. Jeff, world. Jeff is a mutual friend of ours who happened to be unlucky enough to be hanging around on a night that Ben and I got a wild hair up our collective ass to eat some bad candy. Jeff is a strong, hardy boy, and proved on that night that he has the mettle, the will, and the courage to become an admiral in the Bad Candy Militia. We are proud of his contribution to our cause, and hope that you will welcome him into the ranks of our esteemed group.


Casa de Dulce? Or... CASA DE MUERTO!?!
So with the formalities out of the way, let's turn a squinty, bloodshot eye towards Chaca Chaca, and see what we can find.

Our particular brand of Chaca Chaca came in groups of three, and was distributed by Casa De Dulce (trans: House of Candy), the same people who brought us Fruit Salted Plum Suckers, soulless bastards that they are. The outer packaging is nothing remarkable; rather generic, in a bright orange and yellow, circus-of-the-damned sorta way. But the individual Chaca Chaca wrappers! Ah, these supply a wealth of clues which, if properly interpreted, serve to warn the hardcore candy connoisseur to steer clear of this Fruit Rollup blasphemy!


The #13, headed straight to hell. Satan will be by to collect your ticket momentarily.
The most obvious clue the wrapper provides is a small, crudely drawn train (go ahead, say it out loud; we know you want to: "chaca chaca, chaca chaca, chaca chaca, choooo choooo!"), hauling what looks to be a load of coal. Well, there you have it. Any candy that is going to go and associate itself in any way with coal is a candy that you do NOT want to eat. BUT! we can dig much deeper than that. Look closely, and you'll notice that this train is the #13, the universally recognized unlucky number. The #13 is running on the "N de M" Railroad, which can only stand for "Norte de Muerto" or "North of Dead." Put this all together, and what have you got? The makers of Chaca Chaca are clearly trying to warn you that Chaca Chaca is brought to them in lumpy loads on the RAILROAD FROM HELL! That's correct, folks; Satan himself has the eternal souls of the wicked and damned mining Chaca Chaca from the fiery brimstone walls of his nether domain, and he wants nothing more than to run the #13, with it's lumpy, fruity, crusty load straight down your gullet, where it will rot and fester and consume your soul. Here, again, we have proof that bad candy is the tool of the devil. That Satan fellow sure is crafty.

But of course we ate it anyway. What can I say, we're stupid.


Jeff: 'Dude, it can't be THAT bad.'
You can see here Jeff modeling the latest in Chaca Chaca attire. He thought this whole thing was funny, like it was some kind of joke. What a jerk. This was, of course, before he actually ate it. Foolish amateur. Soon he shall learn.

Unwrapping the Chaca Chaca for our first tasting, one thing became immediately apparent: Chaca Chaca is yet another in a long line of candies that is made out of TAMARIND, that most cursed of fruits. I can smell that crap a mile away. It's a hot and spicy odor, an acidic smell that'll make your eyes water. Curiously, Chaca Chaca didn't resemble most of the other candies made with Tamarind, in that it wasn't goopy or squishy, and it didn't have that familiar, sickly sheen. Rather, it looked and felt like a breaded Fruit Rollup. But the smell... I'll never forget that smell! It burns your nostrils like rancid vomit. I grew angry, like an irrational monkey, that we were going to eat yet another candy made out of Tamarind. I began to thrash around uncontrollably, foaming at the corners of my mouth. I mean, there is only so much abuse one is willing to take in the name of humor!

Fortunately, we had Jeff. Hehe.

His first bite of the droopy stick revealed that all-to-familiar look of "Hey, this isn't funny! This stuff is really bad, and it sorta hurts!" I could actually see his gag reflexes kick in, as the muscles in his neck flexed and contorted in an effort to spew forth the crusty remains of the candy into the sink. It was all in vain, however, as we knew from experience that you can't just spit tamarind out! No way! You have to get in there and scrap that crap out of your teeth! It takes work! Nothin' easy about it! "Quitters go home!" is what Ben likes to say! So Jeff scraped and pried and gargled, and when he finally came up for air, his first gasping words were, "It's the Mexican Powerbar!"

And indeed it was.


The drain-bound remnants of a Chaca Chaca
Chaca Chaca looks as though it has a breaded outer crust, but in reality it is highly condensed fruit pulp. The sickly sweet and spicy smell hurts your head and burns your tongue. And I mean, it BURNS. It generates an actual, quantifiable amount of pain on your tongue and gums, and nothing, absolutely NOTHING can wash that pain away. Not water, not more food, not even a swift kick in the shins. I would rather have Dom Deluise sit on my face naked and perform his comedy routine while rubbing my toes in his beard than be subjected to that kind of pain. I would rather have Martha Stewart don a revealing latex dominatrix outfit and teach me the in's and out's of subservience with nipple clamps than to again endure the prolonged agony that Chaca Chaca induced. But even after the physical pain has subsided, you are left to contend with mental anguish. "How could a piece of food do that to me?" you'll ask yourself, huddled in a dark corner of your closet, hugging your knees close to your chest, your cheeks streaked with tears. You will never trust another consumable again, and will be forced to absorb all of your nutrients through an intravenous needle.

All that, and it reminds you of everyone's favorite gooey, crunchy, sticky, thick, nasty supplement: the Powerbar. For that alone, you should not eat this candy.

Epilogue: Jeff is recovering nicely, and it doesn't look like any of the wounds on his face are going to scar up horribly. We visit him daily in the hospital, and the other day he actually said Ben's name, though it was hard to understand him with that large, metal apparatus holding his jaw in place. His family is being very supportive, and is actually reconsidering the lawsuit they've brought against us, which I think is nice. Unfortunately, Jeff is apparently suffering from amnesia, as he was dumb enough to agree to try out another candy: Fruit Salted Plum Suckers.

Whatta maroon.

UPDATE: On March 19, 2004, we began recieving reports from our readership that the FDA actually banned Chaca Chaca from food shelves across the country when they found that "the candy bar contained three to four times the lead level allowed by FDA guidelines." (APNews). The article went on to state that "the health warning is the first California has issued on a candy since 2001, when consumers were cautioned about a lollipop made of fig-like tamarind discovered in the Costa Mesa home of a child with lead poisoning."

I'd just like to point that we were warning you about this crap five years ago. It's like we can see into the future. Except for the fact that we can't.


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