Pinching a packet of Sonder’s Space Crystals between your fingers, you know you’re about to embark on a journey for the mind.
The packaging sings out from the ether, as sparkling neon technicolor lips open against a silvery chrome backdrop, beckoning, “Come on, try me.” You rip open the bag and peek inside, not unlike Alice peering into the rabbit hole. Here you find off-white, chunky crystals emitting sweet and fruity aromatics from the bottom of the reflective mylar pouch.
“What are you waiting for,” the crystals urge. “Eat me.”
You tilt your head and tip the pouch over the horizon of your lips, spilling the contents onto your tongue. All at once, your mouth bursts to life in an electric Kool-Aid acid trip of flavor and sound, complete with visceral crackling mini-explosions. You hold the crystals on your tongue, awash in a sensory deluge.
You’re time-warped back to your youth, when you stopped at the convenience store to stock up on sweets before the movies, stuffing your pockets and sneaking the contraband candy past the ticket-taker like a smuggler’s apprentice. This intense experiential burst of nostalgia is exactly what Sonder had in mind when they launched their line of Pop-Rocks-inspired Space Crystals in 2020. These aren’t an edible, they’re an experience – and the perfect confection to feature for California Leaf’s first-ever Psychedelia Issue.
Sonder is run by the wife-and-wife team of Faun Chapin and M Paradise, whose team developed the recipe using only natural ingredients, confecting the magical crystals with nothing but cane sugar, lactose, brown rice syrup and CO2. The combination creates thousands of tiny explosions that are so loud, they frightened my dog. The remaining ingredients are simple: coconut oil, natural fruit flavors, citric acid and CO2-extracted full-spectrum Cannabis oil.
Space Crystals act as a sublingual-edible hybrid, meaning lift-off comes on more swiftly than with a conventional edible, and the high is more like a combination of smoking and eating Cannabis, because much of the THC stays in its original form as it is absorbed into the tissues in your mouth.
Simply put, it’s pure pleasure. Sonder’s vision is to bring a sense of exploration, curiosity and delight to their products – and with the Space Crystals – they deliver that in spades, straight to your mouth.
This article was originally published in the March 2021 issue of California Leaf.
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