Tirol Minashigo Hutch Honey Chocolates

As I recently remarked to Ebidebby on her blog, I've been a bit off of the Tirol chocolates as of late. The variety packs in particular have been letting me down (as opposed to the premium candies which are a bit better). Nonetheless, I was intrigued by this 8-pack of honey based chocolates bearing the animated honeybee character, Minashigo Hutch.


I should note that prior to buying this candy, I'd never heard of this character and its big-eyed, cute presence had nothing to do with my buying the candy. The fact of the matter is that it was the inclusion of a honey yogurt flavor that sparked my mojo into money spending mode. It just sounded interesting. For the record, there are 8 candies in the bag at about 37 calories per candy. Half of them are "honey toast" and the other half "honey yogurt". I paid 99 yen for them at a local convenience store, but I've seen them in numerous places for a similar price.


Honey Yogurt: This smells a little lemony and just a bit like honey. Even though I kept these in the refrigerator, the honey part was a bit liquid-like. The yogurt portion is contained in a somewhat creamy, moist marshmallow. The soft exterior chocolate easily gives way and you bite into a nice little pillow with gooey honey. These are very sweet, but the somewhat sour yogurt flavor goes very well with the honey. I loved both the texture and flavor combinations of this.


Honey Toast: I expected this to be another of Tirol's "Bis" (biscuit) types where they stick a bland cookie in the chocolate and surround it with overly sweet candy. In other words, I expected one-note flavor and a big cookie crunch. It turned out to be more interesting. You can't see it when you look at the picture, but there is a little yellow cookie in this. It's become relatively saturated with the honey topping and isn't that crunchy anymore, though it does add some texture. This tasted a lot like a honeycomb. I don't mean the honeycomb candy bar, but rather a real honeycomb if you've ever bitten into one.

Both of these are quite sweet and have pretty authentic honey flavors. It's not the sort of thing you'd be inclined to gobble down a lot of in one sitting, but they are very good. I could easily go for a whole bag of the yogurt ones because of the marshmallow aspect, but the "toast" was good as well.