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| Ding Dang & Tora: Cheap Chocolate with Mysterious Toy |
by Farah 'Fairy' Mahdzan 
(3-Jul-2003) | Readers Say |
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Chances are if you were a kid in the 1980s in Malaysia, you might have once or twice (or three million times) invested your pocket money in these colorful boxes of chocolate whose commercials appeared every three minutes while you were faithfully tuning in to the Transformers or (God forbid) My Little Ponies on RTM or TV3.
The chocolate brand names were simple enough to remember, even for the dyslexic: Ding Dang and Tora. As if the fact that the boxes contained chocolates wasn't enough, the manufacturers decided to play extra safe in sustaining its customer base by periodically including a new toy in each box. Who cared if the chocolates were indigestible pieces of balled up paper coated in thin chocolate, we were in it for the toys, man, from the corn-shaped pens that would run out of ink in just two days, faulty water pistols, to the little toy cars with slimy tires and colorful plastic gasing (tops) that whistled annoyingly every time you spun them. The TV commercials for these chocolates were, how shall I put it ever so delicately: horrendously cheap. As a kid, I couldn't watch one humiliating Ding Dang commercial without fighting the urge to throw a brick at the smirking kids who were playing with their cheap Ding Dang toys behind the TV screen. The accompanying soundtrack and the guy commentating (Mat Sentul I believe his name is) for the commercial were irritant enough to make your skin crawl and you couldn't help intelligently thinking, even at that young age, how extremely shoddy the production was. But strangely enough, Ding Dang and Tora had their own strengths, which resulted in many kids actually purchasing the chocolate, even guilty then 8-year-old me (and now 24-year-old me, but only because I wanted to write this review. Honest!). Although Ding Dang and Tora ads are less seen on TV these days, considering that the junk food market is now saturated by newer competitors out to win the hearts of the more sophisticated young consumers of the 21st century, I can't help feeling slightly nostalgic about Ding Dang and Tora. So in tribute to the junk food that stunted my growth, here's a little write-up on these cheap chocolates with the even cheaper toys, never mind the fact that my eyes popped out in disbelief when I discovered them still being sold today! (I'll bet you these are leftover stocks from 1985).
Just looking at the box is giving me goose pimples of excitement and getting me misty-eyed. So ok, the Ding Dang (who the heck comes up with these names?) chocolates were packaged in its trademark purple box with the rather ugly looking blue cat cartoon wearing nothing but a green bow tie (a feeble attempt at a Doraemon bootleg, really). Back when I was growing up, a box would cost 50 sen but through the inevitable tests of time and of our ever volatile economy, today's Ding Dang costs 60 sen.
These plastic fingers should be outright banned. Imagine the trauma children will face. Or maybe not. Today's kids will probably just laugh at the gory cheap thing, being so desensitized already with all the horror and violence that's shown on TV and in the movies. I actually closed my eyes when I took this picture. And please don't ask me if I tried looking at the plastic finger with the lights off; I was so afraid that it really did glow in the dark. I do want to try and sleep decently at night you know. Luckily by some fascinating work of basic chocolate-buying instinct, I had bought two Ding Dang boxes for this review, so here's the other toy that I got from the second box. And phew, it's not nearly as traumatizing as the disgustingly warty toy finger.
 Ok it doesn't make much sense looking at it in unassembled form, but here's what you do get after you painstakingly get all the flimsy parts locked in together.
 Awww, it's a cute ladybug 3D puzzle key chain and hey, no emotional scarring going on here! You are welcome to collect the other keychain models too if your heart is really pathetically set on it. But then again, since one can never can tell what one will get in the next box one buys, I won't risk it. I don't want to chance getting a plastic severed human private part.
Time to investigate our second favorite chocolate box from the 1980s, Tora! Now Tora was also a Kinos brand chocolate, the younger but larger brother of Ding Dang, if you will. This puppy costs twice as much as Ding Dang with a hefty price tag of RM1.20 (back in the good old days: RM1.00). So does this mean the chocolates and toy are better if they come packaged in a bigger and arguably better designed box? Well, it's debatable. I found it rather amusing that the people at Kinos couldn't standardize the Malay phrase they had for their product: Biskut Bola Bersalut "Choc." They obviously forgot that the Malay spelling for chocolate is coklat. Either that or they couldn't decide whether to use English or Malay, so why not use a combination of both! Heck, "choc" is not even a proper word.
Let's take a looksie at what toy pleasure Tora has to offer us, shall we:
 I must say that the economic reasoning in Tora's price does stand true: higher price, higher quality! This toy is actually pretty neat once you've tried it, and those circular plastic propellers do actually take flight into the air after you line them up according to size on its orange launcher and pull the string (see manual). The thing managed to keep me gleefully occupied for about, oh, two minutes. Ok I'm lying. Two hours. The little pocket calendar is a nifty give-away too, at least something that is actually worth having in the adult world. Though I don't think it's something I'd be willing to whip out of my wallet in the event that someone asks me what day Hari Raya falls on this year. There will be no end to the laughter and mockery.
And there you have it, two old school reviews on the chocolate boxes that time forgot and that some of us chose to forget, for legitimate reasons. I'm glad you stayed this far along to actually read this; that surely means you've probably bought these things before or were too anxious to pass up the chance to laugh at me and my weird observations of basi (stale)chocolates. At any rate, I saved you 60 Malaysian sen in trying out these chocolates again and checking out what mysterious toys were chucked away in the boxes. The chocolates are horrible, to say the least, and the toys, passable lah (the finger is still freaky on my scale and should be burned immediately upon discovery). I still can't believe I ate the chocolate balls as a kid. What am I saying, I can't believe I just ate these things 5 minutes ago!
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| WHAT READERS SAY ABOUT Ding Dang & Tora: Cheap Chocolate with Mysterious Toy: |
#55. hahah rotiman.. we used to call them BABU.. but i think "babu" have different meaning in Indonesia  Normally rotiman aka babu datang setiap peting waktu budak2 main petang.. they will aim to budak2 and padang permainan... miss those days  Posted by Ayda on 19-Apr-2011, 04:10 MYT
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DING DANG
In case nobody could read the Romanized Malay spelling of the brand name, the packaging also conveniently bears the Jawi (Arabic) Malay spelling too. I suppose it was handy for some of us back then who had old grandparents from the kampung who could only read Jawi Malay, like my late grandfather (may Allah bless his soul). At least when we asked the elders to buy Ding Dang (our parents never bought us junk like this; we instead solemnly bestowed this duty upon their parents), we didn't have to describe to them what the box looked like. And if you're good at reading Jawi, you'll notice that the Arabic letters don't really read out as "Ding Dang" but shamefully rather, "Dinkq Dankq!" Someone needs to go back to Jawi school.
No, those are not rotting burung puyoh (quail) eggs, they are what the Ding Dang chocolate balls look like today. Now I never said the chocolates were edible, so you might want to take my forewarning a bit more seriously if you want to survive well into your 30s. Hmm. The chocolates look different from the ones I had as a girl, apart from the fact that the balls look so damn unappetizing. These ones look like they're made out of 10-year old biscuits covered in chocolate. In the days of yesteryear, Ding Dang chocolate were rice balls covered in chocolate. But let's not argue what the base ingredients of these chocolate balls were, they are harmful and they're no good for you. Chuck them aside. They're not the primary reason why you buy Ding Dang. Keep your focus on the "free" toy.
I'm not so sure I want to go on writing anymore. But I'll muster the courage. Just for you loyal readers. Finding this in my Ding Dang box caused me to drop the box in alarm, I mean for heaven's sake, it's a wearable plastic severed finger, with bisul (warts) and a fingernail that looks like it has not been trimmed for months! They also tried making the thing sound sophisticated by calling it Jari Sinar (LumiNous MonsTer FINGER). If I were going to encounter a toy like this for every Ding Dang box I buy, I would rather live without getting any, thanks.
This Ding Dang review would be utterly meaningless if I were to not try the finger on and, oh dear me, that is one grotesque plastic finger. I'm sure many workers at the Ding Dang factory assembly line go faint at heart every time they had to stuff one of these fingers into the box. No wonder they opted for early retirement.
TORA
Now, instead of 4 measly pieces of inedible chocolate balls like you get with Ding Dang, you are awarded SIX god-awful stinkin' chocolate balls in Tora, which are probably just as radioactive as rabbit droppings. I'm not ever eating them. Maybe they'll do some good if I poured them over the flower bed in the garden outside the house...
they changed the "choc" internals to biskut? Anyway the first few times I had it the rice ball was crispy, then the standards dropped and the rice ball was always non-crispy anymore 
. Hmm I thought they don't sell them anymore in Malaysia (where I'm from). Toraaa! Dengan Bola berwarna-warni! Ding Dang dengan kereta pecut! 
