Orion Cola Cigarette Candy

Cola Cigarette is the younger sibling of Cocoa Cigarette — launched in September 1985, thirty-four years after the original, and built around the flavor that by the mid-1980s had become the defining taste of Japanese dagashi candy.

Cola had by then appeared in ramune tablets, gummy candy, and soft drinks across every price point, and the cigarette stick format was the natural next format for it to inhabit.

The packaging is different from the Cocoa version in a way that is immediately apparent: instead of the cigarette-box graphic that defines Cocoa Cigarette, Cola Cigarette uses Little Bob Dog — a character from Sunward’s Sunchara brand — whose cheerful illustration gives the box a more overtly playful identity than the grown-up cigarette aesthetic of the original.

The contrast is deliberate: Cocoa Cigarette is the one that looks like what adults do; Cola Cigarette is the one that looks like what children enjoy watching adults do, filtered through a cartoon dog.

The sticks themselves are white — reviewers consistently note this as mildly surprising, since cola candy is usually brown or dark — and the cola flavor arrives from the flavoring and acidulant combination rather than from caramel coloring.

The taste is clean and immediately recognizable: the spiced, slightly caramelized cola character with the acidic edge that the carbonation reference requires, without any visual signal of what’s coming.

Same hard, compressed candy texture as Cocoa Cigarette, same six sticks per box, same manufacturing facility in Toyama Prefecture.

The box that taught a generation of Japanese children what cola tastes like before they were old enough to buy the drink.

About this item
Item Name : Cola Cigarette
Brand : Orion
Item Form : Candy
Number of Items : 6 Counts (Pack of 1)