A Disappointing Gift Set from Perekrestok: Where Did It Go Wrong?

Hello everyone!

I decided to grab some year-end gifts from Perekrestok while they're on sale. I picked up two of the last rucksacks with Chinese sweets - each costing 199 rubles.

Here's what the filling looked like in each:

There's a description of all the sweets in Russian:

At first, I thought I'd leave the kids the caramels, but then I flipped the packages and decided not to give them any of the contents - just the rucksacks. Let me take a closer look at these 'wonderful' candy pieces.

The long pink marzipan candies looked and smelled okay, but tasted awful, according to my husband (he's a marzipan fan). We didn't try the candies in the elongated tube because of the sour smell - maybe they're supposed to smell like that, but we didn't dare take the risk.

Then there's this caramel on a spring. Inside, there are three pieces in individual packaging. They're tasteless and don't even look appetizing.

I tried not to touch these reeds, but my husband said they're just ordinary ones. I wasn't a fan of how they were all different - in color and size - even though they all had the same taste.

And the cherry on top was these jelly candies with mold.

A few of the candies were actually pretty good:

But the rest were just like this:

In the end, we threw away all the sweets, except for the reeds. I thought the rucksacks would be a nice consolation prize, but that was a mistake. They didn't have any plastic 'weight' on them, so the backpacks open even under their own weight.

Closing the zippers on these rucksacks is a real challenge. You need to tie them shut, which is just not something a kid in the right age range for this backpack can handle. Honestly, I'm throwing away the 400 rubles I spent on this thing.

I wouldn't recommend it!

Thanks for listening!