Mos Burger Lucky Bag for 2014 (product information)

If I had the time and the inclination, I could do a sequence of posts on all of the "lucky bags/boxes" that various Japanese fast food entities are going to sell. I think it would be very interesting to do, but would take a fair bit of time so I'll focus on just a few. Most of these are sold in limited quantities so you have to get out there early to find one. The exception to that tends to be Mister Donut. It's rare that they run out, but certainly not unheard of.

The "lucky bag" pictured above is for MOS Burger (which you can probably guess from the title of this post). It includes the gree and white lap blanket that the other items are resting upon, a vinyl pouch, a calendar, a MOS Burger card, and what they call "lottery tickets" worth 200 yen each. I believe these are really just coupons which you can use toward food purchases.

Like most of these types of fast food offerings, your pay the value of the coupons (in this case 2,000 yen/$19 US) and get the other items essentially free. As long as you regularly patronize a place that you buy the lucky bag from and use up the coupons through regular consumption, you've got nothing to lose. That being said, most of these lucky bag coupons have a deadline (usually March) so if you don't use them, you lose the value. 

MOS Rice Burgers (product information)

MOS Burger has been offering rice burgers in Japan for quite some time, but their web site talks about how hard it has been for them to substitute the burger bun for a slab of rice that doesn't fall apart when you eat it. From my limited experience, I can say that when we ordered such rice burgers, the rice did tend to crumble sooner, if not later.

Their current press claims that they have found a way to fix this problem and they're offering up some interesting burgers to boot (all images courtesy of MOS Burger):

mackeral miso burger:

colorful sauteed vegetable burger:

fried seafood burger:

curry rice burger (with pork patty and ketchup sauce):

egg burger with soy sauce:

The egg burger is part of their morning offering, and, yes, you can order the miso soup as well!

This is the sort of "esoteric" junk food in Japan that I'd like to see make its way over here, but I know it never well. 

Subway Japan Coarse Ground Sausage Sandwich and Mos Lettuce Burger (product information)

Subway has decided that the best way to manage the super hot summer is to offer up a big old wiener sandwich. Why go for some cool cold cuts on a bed of veggies when you can eat a hot sausage with cream cheese sauce that weighs in at 445 calories. I'm not suggesting that Subway is always the epitome of healthy eating, but that is the way they sell themselves. I'd think it'd be better to opt for something lighter for summer than a bit of sausage.

Mos Burger, on the other hand, is offering a "lettuce burger" to allow the Japanese market to embrace low carb living. You can substitute lettuce, iceberg, of course, for the bun on several different burgers (fish, beef, chicken, teriyaki chicken, pork cutlet). Though I recognize the nutritional value of a bun is pretty much zero and that this is a better choice from that viewpoint, to me, a burger is not a burger unless it comes between two starched planes. 

Mos Burger Choux Pot Shakes

Image from Mos Burger.

The "Choux Pot Shake" sounds like it would be a great name for a dance. Perhaps some wordplay could even be used such that one stuck a foot in a flower pot and attempted to shake it off a la "shoe pot shake". Okay, maybe not so much, but it'd be very entertaining for bystanders to watch a bunch of people on the disco floor pantomime trying to dislodge a stuck pot from their foot.

This type of choux is the French kind rather than the type that you shod your feet with and such desserts have been popular in Japan for a very long time. You can buy simple ones with either whipped cream, custard or a mixture of both in most convenience stores and markets. For something with such an upscale feel, it is decidedly common and available as a mass market item. I used to buy a tray with 9-12 tiny little one-bite ones at Lawson 100 (for 100 yen/$1.03, of course) on occasion so I could nosh on one without having to cram one of the giant ones into my cakehole.

Since they are so common, it's no surprise that a fast food place like Mos Burger would get in on the gig. For 380 yen ($3.90), you get a mug lined with choux pastry with custard and either a vanilla, coffee or strawberry shake.  It's on the expensive side, but you do get to keep the coffee cup (and don't we all need more coffee cups) as well as have the sense that you're a cut above the ignorant rabble with their plain old shakes in paper cups, sucking at their dessert through a straw like a plebeian.

If you'd like to set your computer up like a plebeian, Mos Burger has wallpapers for you here.