Glico Cafe Au Lait Collon

My brain works super fast. In fact, it makes lightning leaps over stepping stones that often see me starting in one place and ending up in a completely different one such that I can greatly confuse my husband with my leaps from one topic to another. This cafe au lait collon set off just such a sequence of thoughts. I will ask you to bear with me as I insanely hopscotch from point to point.

First, there is the obvious wordplay joke about "Collon" and "colon" that makes all of us foreign folks snicker like the juveniles that we are inside every time we see "Collon" for sale in a Japanese store. That made me think about coffee being used in colonics and how silly that seemed. Then it made me think about food stuffs being used for colonics which brought on a recollection of something that I read in the book Awakenings. That book, for those who don't know it, was made into a movie of the same name starring Robin Williams. 

In the book, there is mention of one of the comatose patients, a very overweight woman whose head had gone completely bald during her prolonged state of unconsciousness making certain demands upon her awakening. She wanted a quart of chocolate ice cream and an olive oil enema. I remember wondering why on earth anyone would want any sort of enema, let alone one with olive oil. 

At any rate, every time I think of the book or movie Awakenings, I remember one of my first experiences in Japan with movie titles that were different there than they were with America. I went to Japan in spring of 1989 and taught at Nova for two years. The movie was released in 1990 and I remember talking about the movie with student's in the conversation lounge ("Voice") that Nova offered. It was impossible for the students to understand the title as I said it, but I learned that the reason was not an issue with the vocabulary, but the fact that the Japanese title was "Leonard no Asa" or "Leonard's Morning".

So, you can see that this product brought about a lot of links in a chain which set me off on the idea of coffee enemas and ended in Japan. You can see where my husband's confusion is based after that sort of jumping about. Add the fact that this all happens in about three seconds (seriously), and you can see that I'm off like a shot and headed in a strange and unknown direction. I guess I'm lucky that he hasn't had me institutionalized yet (which brings me right back to Awakenings as that is set in an institution).

Getting to the matter at hand - which is neither institutions nor colonic irrigation - I found these at an Asian market for $1.19 for an itty bitty box. I'm pretty sure that they had broken up and were selling a pack that was not meant for individual sale, but I wasn't interested in six or eight of these so I wasn't going to turn them in to whatever retail authority is responsible for prosecuting such infractions.

For those who don't know Collon, it's a delicate crispy shell which is layered and flaky filled with a sweet, dense, cream-like filling that is reminiscent of that which is sandwiched between sugar wafers. The textural contrast is a delight, but they are often far too sweet. This one carries an extremely mild coffee flavor as well as little coffee particles in the cream (those are the black spots that you see in the picture). It's tasty and the filling is nice and fatty, but it's just a little too sweet. There is no calorie information on my box, but Collon generally packs a wallop for each small morsel. It's the sort of thing which you have to exercise restraint with, so getting one small box isn't a bad idea.

I like this quite a lot. I think the coffee added some depth to the flavor and off-set the sometimes one-note sense of the sweet filling. I don't think these are better than the basic Collon, but they certainly are just as good and just tad more interesting.

Glico Cream Collon

Back when I was in junior high school, we had a classmate whose first name was "Colin", but it wasn't pronounced the way it is in the U.K. ("call-un") but like the punctuation ("coal-in"). Even though we were responding to any mention of the word "come" with a titter due to raging hormones wrecking havoc on our young bodies, we didn't find his name funny. At that point in time, words that resembled anatomy which wasn't linked to sex didn't really make us laugh, though I guess these days "colon" may indeed be linked to sexual activity.

At any rate, "collon" is one of the darlings of the "Engrish" community and packages of it are pictured all over various web sites featuring Japanese objects which have funny names in English. Despite this, I haven't reviewed it because I've usually seen it only in big packages and wasn't willing to buy a relatively large amount for sampling. Dame fortune smiled upon me when I saw a tiny packet available at a 100 yen ($1.24) shop available in a bin of snacks that were 3 for 100 yen. So, this cost me a mere 33.33 yen (41 cents).

Sorry for the crappy picture. Getting light-colored food to take a decent picture is always a challenge for my crappy camera and poor photography skills.

I expected these to be like a sweet version of a Combo, those pretzels that are stuffed with flavored pastes of various types. That is, I thought they might be hard on the outside with a fairly solid filling. It turns out that they are actually quite delicate. The outer shell is flakey and like thin layers of wafer cone. The filling is very soft and fluffy and not in the least bit dense. They are quite sweet with a potent vanilla flavoring. I can see how these are much more likely to be designed for kids rather than adults given the sweetness level.

These are delicious with a very satisfying textural combination, but the sweetness is really intense. This is actually not a bad thing since a mere 7 little pieces of them (15.5 g./.5 oz. bag) have 89 calories. For a one bite treat, 12 calories per isn't insubstantial, especially when they practically melt in your mouth. The fact that they are so sweet makes it easier to eat a small amount and feel it's enough. Frankly, by the second one, I was thinking I was closing in on cloying, and was good to stop.

Collon are what my husband calls "very wrong" which is to say they are a bit too right. They are super sweet, fatty, and a serious indulgence. I'd definitely recommend giving them a try as long as super, super sweet things don't turn you off.

Just a gentle reminder that there is a contest running for two weeks to win a few snack and snack-related goodies. If you'd like to enter, the details are in this post.