Universal Yums is a snack subscription box that sends out sacks and candies from a different country each month. Choose from the Yum Box for $14 a month, the Yum Yum Box for $25 a month, or the Super Yum Box for $39 a month. This month’s box takes us to Brazil!
This review is of the Yum Yum box, which is $25 a month.
This box was sent to us at no cost for review. (Check out the review process post to learn more about how we review boxes.)
About Universal Yums
The Subscription Box: Universal Yums
The Cost: $25 a month + free US shipping
The Products: The contents of the boxes change each month as they to highlight the best snacks from each featured country. However, you can always expect a mix of flavors: salty, sweet, spicy, fruity, and more. Only authentic snacks from the featured country.
Ships to: U.S., Canada, U.K., and Israel
Universal Yums "Brazil" June 2018 Review
This is my first box from Universal Yums, and whenever I opened up the box, I was thrilled to see that it was from a country whose foods I really knew nothing about. I’ve been to Brazilian Steakhouses, but I am sure that has little to do with any snacks that await me!
When you flip the flag over, there is a fun little grid that features all of the products and gives you the ability to gamify your tasting a bit – awarding the snacks in different categories. There’s a social media challenge asking you to upload your ballot on social media tagging @universalyums for a chance to win a box full of goodies!
The box contains a booklet which gives a fun introduction to the foods you’ll be sampling, including a brief background of the snack, flavor notes and an ingredients list for each item. The booklet also includes some trivia on Brazil, and if you go to universalyums.com/tunes, you’ll find a playlist full of regional music you can munch along to!
I have my Brazilian Tunes on, and I’m ready to snack!
Cory Pão Dimel, 90g - Retail Value $1.29 USD
These little chocolate covered breads are definitely giving me Kandy Kakes vibes, but only after you’ve left them out on the counter for a few days. The booklet claims that these breads were created when bakers in Eastern Europe discovered that covering a cake in melted chocolate preserves the cake longer; I am not surprised that this is how pão de mel came to be! They have a very nice, subtly sweet honey flavor, and the chocolate helps to make the dry cake a little more appetizing. I like that these cakes were not too sweet, but I prefer a moist, soft cake to a spongy, dry one any day!
Amori 1000, 20g
A creamy coconut center in between layers of crunchy chocolate wafer enveloped in a luscious chocolate coating? This combination is heavenly! This is the only rich, chocolatey treat in the box, and I am obsessed with it. Anything with flaky layers of wafer and creamy fillings will always win my heart, and I was delighted to have received two of these bars.
Docile Docigoma Gurt, .7oz
If Go-Gurt made gummy candies (do they!?) then this is exactly what they would taste like. The little gum-drop shaped gummies are coated in a very thin layer of sugar, and they have a milky, fruity taste to them. The four flavors included are peach, coconut, strawberry, and banana, but I could only distinguish the banana and strawberry flavors.
Squil Churrasco, 25g
Wow! These barbecue corn puffs taste so much like hulless popcorn, and I love them! They have a nice crunch to them, and I love how they are shaped like cute little bowls. They are described to have “flavors of true Brazilian churrascarias (barbeque joints in Brazil),” but their smokey flavor is mostly an aftertaste. When I was eating these, I mostly just picked up on the corn puff, melt in your mouth, savory flavor, but a few minutes after eating, the delicious bbq flavor kicked in, and now I want more!
Frutabella Goiabikas, 1.05oz
I wasn’t expecting much from a guava bar, especially since it only has two ingredients (guava and sugar), but I was wrong. This guava bar is packed with mouth-watering fruit flavor! The texture is jelly meets a dried fruit roll, and apparently, it pairs well with cheese, which I did not have enough to experiment with. This was a great find, and it made me want to taste other dried fruit bars out there.
Amori Mousse De Limão, 4.23oz
Another wafer treat and I’m on board! These are pretty opposite from the Amori 1000. They are extremely thin and flakey, and the filling was a honeyed lime - YUM! The zing of lime was so unexpected and pairs so well with the mousse filling; I wasn’t really paying attention to what I was shoveling into my mouth (think cookie monster just received a glorious subscription box of cookies), but once I bit into one of these wafers and actually said “Wow!” aloud.
Gelatines Festa 2.82oz
I can always appreciate colorful sprinkles whatever they adorn; however, this artificially-flavored banana gummy was no party in my mouth. My tutti frutti gummies were all melted into one gummy by the time I opened this box (you can see the struggle in the photo above), but the banana flavor was so overpowering it didn’t have a fighting chance to win me over, melted or formed into cute, tiny rainbow balls.
Pipoca Vicozinha, 18g - Buy a 2.1oz bag for $1.20
In a blindfolded taste test, I would have sworn these were stale, mutated Kellogg’s Smacks; they taste so much like them! The words “popoca ispor” translate to styrofoam popcorn, and the shape and texture ring true to its name. When eating a piece of this “styrofoam popcorn”, the exterior stays intact, but once you bite into it, it totally dissolves in your mouth leaving a slightly sweet and satisfying taste in your mouth. I really love the subtly sweet and initial crunch to this snack, and there I go - I just added Smacks to my grocery list.
Delicitos Pimenta, 50g
Unlike the jalapeño chips or crackers I’ve tried in the states, these really capture the fresh taste of the pepper! I was relieved when I first tried these because I thought that they would send me to the kitchen for a glass of milk, but the burn to these crackers was very mild and overall very satisfying. I love that this cracker is hollow and seemingly healthier than your standard chip. The green packaging drew me to this cracker, and now I don’t want to say goodbye!
SNACKS! Pimenta Calabresa, 100g
These tiny breadsticks are packed with bold Calabrian pepper flavor! They don’t have any heat to them, which is a little bit disappointing, but the bold seasoning really tries to make up for that. They are described to have a “warm smokiness and fruity spice” to them, and that really is the perfect description. The two pepper crackers that came in this box were in a tie for my true love, but the Delicitos Pimenta won out due to of the understated heat factor.
“The Yum Bag” contains a variety of unique bites from Brazil. The three sampled here are:
Frutabella Amendoiks, 15g (chewy peanut bar)
Bananada com Chocolate, 17g (chocolate covered banana bar)
Frutabella Cokitos, 15g (shredded coconut bar)
All three of these chewy bars have the same great texture, but the coconut one had shredded coconut in it, making it my favorite. The chocolate covered banana chew was good, but I am a little over banana flavors by now. I enjoyed the nut bar, and I am happy to report it tasted like nuts and not a sweet peanut butter taste. I enjoyed half of a bar in one sitting because something about this texture just wasn’t jiving with me.
The Verdict: For my first box, I’d say that I am very smitten with the Universal Yums, and I honestly can’t wait to see what region they feature next month! I love that they included a fair distribution of sweet, spicy, and fruity flavors, and for $25 I got to sample snacks that are not readily available in the US. Trying new foods is my favorite part of traveling, and I am so happy to have found a subscription that brings a little bit of that experience home.
If I were to fill out the scorecard from above I would say that in my opinion:
- Best Yum: Amori 1000 (Chocolate Covered Wafers with Coconut and Chocolate Filling)
- Runner-Up: Delicitos Pimenta (Pepper Crackers)
- Worst Yum: Gelatines Festa (Gummies with Rainbow Sprinkles)
- Most Unusual: Frutabella Goiabikas (Guava Bar)
To Wrap Up:
Can I still get this box if I sign up today? No, you will receive the August box, which ships 8/15.
Value Breakdown: This box is $25.00 a month (including shipping). I received 21 individual snacks, which averages out to $1.19 per item.
Check out all of our Universal Yums reviews and find similar boxes in the Snack Subscription Box Directory!
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