Food and Drink

Gummy fun

Sweets are bad for teeth. But the advice does not work on gummy candy lovers. They buy big bags of their favourites in different colours, flavours and shapes from self-service gummy shops, which are hits in the city.

About 100 kinds of gummies imported from Germany, Thailand and Turkey can be found in rows and columns of glass containers placed in good order in those stores for customers to choose from.

Not only are the gummies popular, the mini tongs in cute size and colours
provided for customers to pick the sweets on their own are also targets of collectors.

In the youth shopping paradise of Mong Kok alone, there are at least eight
such stores attracting locals and visitors. "I come to Hong Kong and buy
gummies almost once a week," Vicky Lo Wai-ki from Guangzhou in mainland
China said after she got her kilogram of candies, costing about HK$40.

Lo Man-yee, a form one local student who bought self-service gummies for the first time, was excited about the new shopping experience. "It's very special and fun. I can choose different shapes and colours for my bag of gummies using a tong," she said.

The price of the gummies ranges between HK$3.8 and HK$4.0 per 100
grams. Customers simply pick whatever gummies they like in plastic bags and then pay for them.

Ricky Hui Yau-ki, a financial planner, said there was a wide variety of gummy
candies to choose from and he could have a bag of his most favourite mangoflavoured gummies in different shapes.

Almost any flavour that one can name is available in the market. Mango, peach, apple, pineapple, watermelon, honey peach, kiwi, lychee, banana, guava, kumquat, lemon, lime cherry, strawberry, vanilla, cola all can be found.

There are also too many shapes of gummies for the eye to take in, from
traditional hoops to the forms of banana, beans, bears, fried eggs, stars, worms, crocodiles, dolphins and penguins.

Just looking at the shapes and colours, one sometimes may not know the
flavours. Some customers even find it hard to distinguish the flavours of animalshaped gummies.

Lee Win-yan, a secondary school student, said she could not tell the exact
flavours of the gummies, though she found them tasty.

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