After May pointed out my butter-related gaffe, a singular question was lodging in the back of my mind: if not a stick, what form does butter in Myanmar take? To get at this question, I decided to go straight to the head authorities of all butter-related matters: the May Myo Butter House. Named after a scenic former colonial hill station in Shan State (the eastern part of the country), the May Myo Butter House features all types, forms, and qualities of butter for every discerning palate. As I entered and encountered a quartet of massive vats of liquid butter, I knew I had come to the right place.

As for my original question – the most likely form you’ll see butter take is not a stick form, but rather a sort of gelatinous cream stored in a bag, or in a more syrupy form in a vat. The different colored bags represent different levels of purity of the butter. Butter is sold either by the bag, or you may have your preferred amount doled into your provided container of choice. I can now understand the candy designer’s choice of depicting butter as a stick – it might not have been as appealing to have a gigantic metal pot or a plastic bag filled with a yellow goo on the front of their butter-flavored candy.