Tohato All Apricot

I'm not sure what most people do when they buy a package of some food with the expectation that they're going to enjoy it and then discover that it's  not all that they'd hoped for. Do they feed it to the neighbor's dog? Do they eat it anyway because they don't want to waste food? Do they hurl it at pigeons as they grumpily make their way through the park to yet another soul-draining day at the office? Or, do they do what I do and eat one and then throw the rest in a plastic holding basket of snacks that need to be reviewed but are so boring that you don't want to do it yet?

The latter is where these apricot cookies have been languishing for several weeks now as I just couldn't work up the enthusiasm to review them. I've reviewed several of the "All (something)" line of cookies, and have been  pleased with what I've tried. Since apricot is one of my favorite flavors when it comes to jam, dried fruit, and cookies, I was really happy to see this in a local 100 yen ($1.20) shop/convenience store (Lawson's 100).

Everything about these cookies looked to be every bit as good as the usual compressed fruit between two biscuits of the "All (something)" line of snacks. Unfortunately, the fruit appears to have been skimped on in this particular variety. There was too much dry cookie and too little actual apricot. In fact, when I broke a cookie in half, instead of seeing the delights of dried apricot running like fruity sap through the cookies veins, I saw nothing but dry biscuit. The packaging claims these cookies compress 10 centimeters of fruit into a 1 cm. cookie, but it seems like they skimped a lot on the frequency of fruit.

Even at a  modest 29.5 calories per cookie, I couldn't see these as worth it on the "pleasure to fat cell size increase" scale that I apply to all snacks that I try. Sure, there's nothing at all wrong with these. The cookie is pleasant enough though it's a somewhat dry biscuit and there is at least a little apricot flavor there, but ultimately it's just not all that impressive. If I were seriously hungry or on a carb rage, and this was all I had in the apartment (not bloody likely, considering I'm a snack blog reviewer), I might tuck into these. Tohato made me wish I had a dog to feed these to, or at least some pigeons to walk by on the way to work.