IN REVIEW: These doseable little mints taste like an orange creamsicle, which means if you’re anything like us you’ll be popping them on the regular in no time. Kikoko’s Little Helpers Focus Mints are a wonderful addition to their already stellar line of beverages, edibles and tinctures. Each delicious piece has 2.5mg of THC and effects that’ll help you focus on whatever’s on your agenda for the day. Be it a long to-do list around the house or making your next masterpiece, these mints will help you stay in the zone without any racy or distracting effects.

Recreational cannabis has opened the door to a fantastical world of edibles as fun and colorful as something you’d expect from Willy Wonka. Dispensary shelves are stocked with ridiculously powerful chocolates, sweet, rainbow-colored gummies and bubbly sodas that can truly make you fly. It’s become such a phantasmagorical candy adventure that we can easily lose sight of the many medicinal uses of cannabis that originally made it so popular, and so legal. We don’t always need something to take us into outer space, sometimes we need something to help us better navigate life right here on planet earth.

“The light dose of THC was enough to get my body to loosen up and focus, and my mind wasn’t far behind.”

On just such a day, I had an online audition that required me to engage in a conversation with a stranger, and I needed a little help to get my mind in the right space for it. To be at my best, I needed something that could aid my focus without making me anxious, tired or distracted. I couldn’t risk accidentally getting too high, since I had to improvise and be fast on my feet (or rather, in my seat), but I certainly needed something to help distract me from the very-unfunny state of the world (and the piles of laundry sitting just behind my laptop). With a low dose of only 2.5mg of THC each, these Little Helpers Focus Mints seemed like just enough jolt to get me into the right headspace without pushing me over the edge.

I woke up feeling like I’d somehow lost a wrestling match with my pillow on the day of the audition, so I was also hoping they might help ease some of the extreme neck pain I was dealing with. It’s crazy how easy it is to injure yourself in your thirties, just by sleeping. The light dose of THC was enough to get my body to loosen up and focus, and my mind wasn’t far behind.

Performing online in any capacity, whether professional or social, requires way more focus from me than it does in the regular world. When I’m at an in-person job interview, or just having a normal conversation, my attention is automatically drawn to the moving, speaking person in front of me. But when that person is suddenly two-dimensional and on a screen, it's extremely hard to keep my mind from wandering and tuning them out like I would some tv show in the background. With that in mind, one of my hopes was to remain more “in the moment” with a little help from these Little Helpers.

I have a fairly high tolerance, so I took two mints, but many people (especially those new to cannabis and edibles) will thrive with this super light dose. It’s more like candy with a healthy, relaxing kick to it rather than a knock-your-socks-off spacey stoner treat. If you want a truly delicious goodie that doesn’t taste like cannabis and will ever so slightly help ease your anxiety, these Kikoko Little Helpers Focus Mints are perfect for you.

Even though they have a low dose, they still carry the slightest danger of overdoing it, simply because they taste so damn good you’ll want to eat a fistful. They have a perfectly sweet (but not overly so) orange flavor that melts in your mouth and tastes just like an orange creamsicle. Luckily, at only 2.5mg each, you’ll still be reasonably functional if you end up eating two, or three, or even four (depending on your normal tolerance level). I was also shocked to find they tasted just as good immediately after brushing my teeth!

“They turned off some of the worry, and stopped my thoughts from firing a million times per minute.”

These mints provide a light and heady sense of calm that’s closer to the potency of an over-the-counter herbal supplement than a powerful edible, and all without an added smell or taste to give away that the herb in question is actually cannabis.

They didn’t make me focus in an energetic, edgy way like caffeine or ''study aid” pills. They also didn’t feel like the typical uplifting and tunnel-vision types of sativas I’ve seen marketed for focus. Instead, these mints merely sanded down some of the edges of my anxiety and calmed a few of my mind’s many multitasking streams. The feeling of focus came from simply lowering the volume of my brain’s white noise of constant thoughts.

These Little mints were the ideal helpers for my brain. They turned off some of the worry, and stopped my thoughts from firing a million times per minute. I don’t know if they made me any funnier or anything, as there wasn’t any giggly euphoria like some cannabis strains can produce, but sometimes it's more important to be clear and lucid than it is to be goofy. And I also ended up booking the job, so the balance worked out just right.

If you’re looking for a yummy, candy-like treat that has subtle, low-dose medicinal effects like a light herbal supplement, Kikoko’s Little Helpers Mints are a wonderful balance of both worlds. They’re sweet and understated, and are more of a sophisticated adult treat with a subtle kick than a crazy candy-bar-style edible that gets you blasted. They’re a softer, more mature and responsible kind of little orange helper, and a whole lot less terrifying than an Oompa Loompa.