And so, we come to the end of my dalliances with political revolutionary Ryoma Sakamoto themed candies, because, frankly, I'm sick of them. His likeness has been slapped on everything these days and the snacks his face is applied to are nothing special. Though I liked the yuzu cookies, the other items haven't really lit my fire. This Crunky would be included in that sad group.
Frankly, Crunky has really let me down in most of its variations. While I like (not love) the regular bar, its malt puffs don't seem to work well with other flavor mixtures or textures. I think the puffs are too strongly flavored and compete with whatever they're with, and mainly milk chocolate works with them. Someone at the Crunky product design level needs to say that when they use the Crunky brand to crank out derivative products, they should use bland crispy rice, not their regular malty puffs.
I had some small expectations for this because "purple potato" is essentially the brother of another color of the yellow-fleshed sweet potato, and I love sweet potato. The candy even smells nicely sweet potato-ish and the very first sense on the tongue also conveys that lovely tuber's essence. Unfortunately, that hint rapidly turns into strong sweetness and malt puff flavor once you start crunching your funky crunchy little morsel. At the end, you're just in textured malt puff and buttery white chocolate land. If you adore white chocolate, that's not a bad place to live, but it wouldn't be my residence of choice.
You can pick these up nearly anywhere for about 100 yen ($1.20) for a box of 10 individually wrapped slabs. Each is only 22 calories and 3.9 grams (.14 oz.), so you're essentially getting a Hershey's kiss portion with about three times the wrapping with every bit. They aren't bad at all, merely not great. Though I think that they may be loved by malt puff and white chocolate fans, I wouldn't buy them again and I think it'll take me some time to finish the box. I'd rather spend my calories on other chocolates most days.
I wish more food came in that color of purple
ReplyDeleteThese days, purple potato stuff is so common in Japan that I see more of it. Back home, we mainly had purple if something was grape!
ReplyDeleteThanks, as always, for commenting!
By any chance do you know what that cake on the front of the box with the 3 swirlled custard is called??
ReplyDelete