Candied Fruit Slugs-LOL Encyclopedia

 Candied Fruit Slugs. A faux product mentioned in the Life of Lewa series, specifically in chapter 10, "Lewa's First Date".

The box art above was especially fun to make, and shows the product all leaf wrapped and secured with a whimsical sticker label of the fruit slug and its foods, described in Matoran font. Whether or not a Junti product would be written in Matoran is unknown, but I figure Matoran is easier to understand and was kept as the base writing language. (Not to mention Glatorian font was never made known in all of the Bionicle series).

 I love giving details and visual images on what goes through my head, this is why I've decided to start work on what will eventually become an entire Life of Lewa encyclopedia of faux LOL products, character details, concepts, and more.

It's basically a side project which I hope to continue, but there's no saying how many pages I'll actually make. My hope is to make PDF file sections when I have enough, so the pages can be looked at for extra details during story reading.

I assembled the image page above just to display all the pictures from the encyclopedia pages on fruit slugs. Plus I added translation for what the candy label says.

Below are the assembled encyclopedia pages, all details about this product are listed, but for faster reading sake, I've included the details from these pages at the bottom of this post.

 

Candied Fruit Slugs

Candied Fruit Slugs, a traditional Junti candy which at one time was considered a bit taboo beyond the jungle regions.

                      These candied fruit slugs are specially bread in the jungle regions at fruit slug farms where the special fruit eating slug is fed different kinds of fruit for different flavors of meat.

They're fed two kinds of main fruit, a type of raspberry, and a type of orange. Some are fed a single fruit, others are fed both raspberry and orange for a double fruit flavor.

The slugs tend to be the colors of the fruits they eat, they're main tone pink with orange and purple speckles. Slugs vary in size and are split up accordingly.

The smaller to medium sized slugs are commonly used for the candies; larger ones which reach a foot in length, are more commonly sold as dessert slugs for Junti dishes served with sweet breads and or cakes, sometimes fruit salads.

The slugs are collected and painlessly killed with an herb, then put into a large dehydrator where they're dried for the next 48 hours. They're so moist it takes two days for them to shrivel, yet they retain their moist centers even after being dried, resulting in a crunchy outer shell, with a soft gooey middle the texture of fresh caramel.

The slugs are so sugary from their diet that they weep a sweet, sweaty substance as they dry. This substance saturates their outer skin and evenly coats the slug, resulting in a sweet, tangy outer shell that tastes like fruit, and is semi crunchy after it's fully dry, resulting in a natural candied coating.

Once the slugs are dried, they're processed, some of them kept plain, and others dipped in chocolate. Most prefer the chocolate coated slugs as candies

When all is done the slugs are boxed in different containers lined with yellow paper or satin. The classic candied slug label is then added over a traditional leaf wrapping which keeps moisture in, and is held on with either a twine wrap or sticker label.

The flavor of these odd sweets is the combination of zesty fruit, marshmallows, and chocolate in every bite.

The centers are still rather gooey even after they've been boxed, and the slugs retain their natural slime to some degree. It's an either love or hate kind of sweet.

Some final notes on this faux product. I may make another page for the actual candy version of these sweet slugs. Since most don't like the texture of true candied slugs, they make an actual candy version which consists of a marshmallow center, caramel layer, gummy fruit candy layer, then a coating of chocolate. Further details are for the future.