Toy Story Kaputchyo Chocolate Caramel Corn Snack

Cereal isn't very popular in Japan as a breakfast food or snack. My husband and I once had a Japanese guest in America who we offered a plethora of cereal options to for breakfast, and he turned up his nose at all of them. He said that it wasn't enough food for him and that he needed eggs, soup, and rice for breakfast. Of course, this was a young, adult male, and he wasn't prepared to actually cook any of that for himself. He expected that it'd just magically appear in front of him, much as it did when he was at home and his mother just served up a fortifying meal for him.

However, cereal is popular in Japan as part of snacks, however. Mugi-choco, which resembles chocolate-covered puffed wheat cereal is available in a variety of sizes, price ranges, and quality variations. There is also the rice puff and corn puff snacks with a sugary coating that are especially popular during the doll's festival. Though they wouldn't recognize this fact, Japanese people would be very comfortable eating dry, sweet cereal out of the box like some Americans do if they realized that it is little different than what they're already doing.

This Toy Story chocolate-covered, caramel corn snack is little more than a corn puff cereal. In fact, with it's relatively light sweetness and somewhat strong caramel flavor, it'd probably be right at home in a bowl in front of a hyperactive child enjoying Saturday morning cartoons. That's not to say I'm encouraging anyone to buy it and douse it in milk. I'm guessing it hasn't been engineered not to go soggy in milk like real cereal is. The whole cup has 163 calories.

I got this as part of my New Year's fukubukuro, but this is part of Lotte's line of "kaputchyo" line which uses popular cartoon characters to market these types of sweets to children. They're all sold in 30-some gram (about 1 oz.) plastic cups with colorful designs and a "toy prize" (a sticker) inside. That brings the kid's cereal analogy closer to full circle. There are also chocolate and strawberry versions with Doraemon and Rilakkuma on their labels respectively.

If you're the type of person who likes to eat sugar cereal dry out of the box, this might float your boat, but I wasn't exactly doing cartwheels. I'm not a fan of cereal in particular anymore. This tasted decent enough, but it is a kid's snack and therefore lacking in depth of taste. It's sweet, rather strongly caramel with a hint of cheap chocolate, but that makes it inoffensive, not good.