Meiji Hore Hore Choco and Marble Choco (from Candy Japan)

Today's review fodder comes your way via Candy Japan, a service which provides two surprise packages of candy each month for a subscription fee of $25 (postage and handling included). They also provide translations and descriptions of the items they send on their site and by e-mail so that those who can't read Japanese can understand the surprises they receive. My previous review of their service is here. Candy Japan sent these items to me gratis.

One of these two items, Meiji's "Marble Choco", is a revisit. I reviewed it as part of a "petit" assortment in the past and without having had recent experience with M&M's. Now that I've lived in the U.S. and had access to M&M's for awhile, I find the Marble Choco a much better experience by comparison. This time around, they seemed to have a much stronger chocolate flavor, seemed appropriately sweet, and all around seemed to have greater flavor depth. It's possible that the "petit" version is different than the full-size tube, but I'm guessing it is me that has changed and not it. Note that the current version comes with one of a current series of stickers stuck inside the tube (free bonus).

The Hore Hore Choco is something I have not only not experienced before, but have never seen. It's a kid's candy which has one of the niftier concepts for these things. Last time I had one of these types of things, it was a sticky mess which didn't taste good at all. This time, the taste experience is mixed and the concept is for the Indiana Jones in all of us.

That's a sour lemon gummy, so it's a fake. Also, they don't come out that clean. Like a good archaeologist, you have to, er, "clean" it to get it to look that glossy. You can't see it, but there are kanji (Chinese characters) imprinted on the gummy.

The concept behind this is a treasure hunt. You "dig" into the soft chocolate with a spoon and excavate "treasure" (lemon or orange gummies - to simulate gold, of course). There are five kinds of treasure (pictured on the back and explained on Candy Japan's site), but if you get a sour one, it's a fake. Also, I'm here to say that, if you get a sour one, you're lucky. The sour gummies are fantastic tasting, especially the lemon one.

The treasure listing on the back of the bag.

Though the gummies are pretty tasty, the chocolate itself is so-so. It's on the sweet side and lacking in depth. It's clearly designed more for the textural qualities to allow you to dig into it with a spoon rather than for its taste. It doesn't taste bad at all, mind you. It's a little like soft fudge which hasn't had quite enough cocoa powder put in it. Kids should love it as should adults who absolutely hate anything resembling dark chocolate, but those with more sophisticated chocolate needs will find it wanting.

As entertainment candy goes, I really got a kick out of the Hore Hore Chocolate. I'm 49 and I'm still a little tickled at the notion of pretending to dig for treasure. I'd suggest the next concept be something to do with pirates. I'm sure they can carve a big "X" into their chocolate to mark the spot. If you have a kid in your life, I can't imagine he or she wouldn't enjoy this. It also would be kind of cool to have these on hand for an Indy Jones movie marathon as party favors.

Both of these deserve a "happy" rating, though it's more provisional for the Hore Hore Choco as you've either got to love the gummies and tolerate the chocolate or you've got to be able to tap into your inner child to find it worthwhile.

Meiji Orange and Bitter Marble Choco (50th anniversary)

These candies were released on July 7 in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Meiji's "Marble Choco" brand. I am concluding logically that it is the product's anniversary, and not Meiji's since the company if much older than 50 years. Meiji's web site doesn't make it easy for me to research this type of special release. Doing a search on any of the key words leads me to nothing but dead ends. You'd thinking they'd want to shout a little louder about something which has survived shifting consumer tastes for as long as this has, but no, I get no results when typing in "orange & bitter" (in Japanese) and only get taken to the regular "marble choco" pages when typing the product name in in Japanese.

I'd like to take a moment here to say that one thing I have learned as a Japanese snack reviewer is that I hate the manufacturer's web sites for the most part. Most of them are full of flash animation and yield no or few results on searches (either via search engines or Google). Most of the text is embedded in graphics so key words aren't available. It's horrible design both in terms of load times, gummy animations, and searches and I wish the Japanese manufacturers would get with the program. Unfortunately, I know from experience working in Japan that most of the "higher ups" just pay some other agency to do these things and have no understanding of the value of text-based information over graphics-based information.  The web site and graphic-making agencies do what is easiest for them and what everyone else does. Consumer needs are tertiary, when they are considered at all. It's all about style over substance.

I picked these up at Okashi no Machioka for about 120 yen ($1.38). It's a small box at 30 grams (1.05 oz.), and rather caloric at 160 calories for 24 candies. Being a "marble chocolate" (aka M & M's), they don't smell like anything. Biting into one causes the entire candy to fracture so I couldn't get an interior shot which was worthwhile, but they do look like the illustration on the box. That is, orange-flavored chocolate on the inside with a thin inner coating of brown chocolate surrounded by a candy shell.

My first bite reminded me of the same flavor as the orange M & M's that I reviewed previously, but by the start of the third candy (I ate 6 at once for this review), the bitter notes and a deeper orange flavor came through. I think it takes awhile for the tongue to start to perceive these subtler notes as compared to the immediate sweet orange flavor.

I liked these, but I think they'd be more enjoyable if you're the sort of person who is inclined to eat the entire box at once and therefore really allow the flavors to develop on your taste buds. I'm not the type to gobble down too much at once, but I'd still probably buy these again if I was in the mood for orange chocolate or M & M-style candy. These are definitely going to be a limited edition, but they'll probably be around for at least 6 months. I haven't seen them at many shops though, so you may have to hunt a bit to locate them.

Meiji Petit Assortment

There are bins full of kid's treats that I keep meaning to get to, but I'm distracted by all of the adult-oriented shiny things and never get to them. Pushing myself to review this Meiji Petit Assortment forces me to deal with a lot of them at once. This assortment is very petit. If it were a woman, it'd be Nicole Richie in her less than zero size dress. Each box has about 10.5 grams (.37 oz.) of candy and about 6 cm x 2.5 cm x 1.5 cm in size (2.4" x .98" x .6 in.). I picked these up for 139 yen ($1.54) at Okashi no Machioka discount sweets shop. The entire pack is 277 calories, which averages out to about 55 calories per box.



Since these are designed for kids, Meiji sweetens the pot a little for them by making the back of the boxes super cute little cards (called "trump" in Japanese). They call these rock-paper-scissors cards and you'll see tiny little hands in circles in the corners of the cards. I'm not sure how one is supposed to use these both for kiddie poker nights and viscous rock-paper-scissor battles, but I'm sure young imaginations will certainly prevail.

Here are reviews of each of the components. Note that the pictured quantities are exactly what is inside of every tiny box so you know what you're getting:

Choco Baby:

Choco baby are tiny little pellets of candy. They're so small that it is difficult to pick them up with my fumbling adult fingers. Some of them have little stars on the end of them and a few have smiley faces, but most of them are plain. I'm not sure what the point is of this because they all taste the same. I guess it's just to tickle kids' fancies (possibly a felony in some states, but clearly legal in Japan). Note that the stars are not nearly as clear as those shown on the box, and that there were only 5 or so of the star-style ones in my box (and two smiley faces).



The candy itself is pretty much standard Meiji milk chocolate with more of a glossy exterior. It's solid chocolate pellets. If your hamster could crap chocolate (and wouldn't that be some hamster), it'd be Choco baby. This was fine, but really nothing special. Note that these can get to look pretty nasty if you don't get them fresh. Candy Yum Yum has a picture of them after they've seen some miles here.

Coffee Beat (milk coffee):

If you ever said to yourself, "self, I'd really like some coffee M & M's", then Meiji heard your wish. Coffee Beat are lovely, shiny little candy-coated chocolate bits that have a really good balance of coffee bitterness, sweetness, and milk chocolate. You also get a real sense of a nice candy shell coating.

These are not just a coffee M & Ms, but about the best version of one that I think you can imagine for a consumer-level product. By far, these were my favorite from this assortment.

Apollo Chocolate:

Apollo are tiny little ridged cones of chocolate and I'm guessing they are named for their resemblance to Apollo spacecraft. That's irresponsible, but harmless speculation. I have no idea why they are called what they are.

The entire contents of the little box are pictured above. These smell a bit like strawberry and have an even fainter scent of chocolate. The flavor at first is rather harsh strawberry mixed with bittersweet chocolate, but that gets muted quickly and you're left with a very flavorful chocolate morsel (about the size of an M & M). The strawberry flavor fades and seems to just add depth to the chocolate flavor. Even though I'm not a big fan of strawberry chocolates, I did like these.

Marble Chocolate:

I expected these to be just like M & M's, but they are actually a little different. They are definitely sweeter and the candy shell has more of a generic "candy" flavor than M & M's. In fact, the chocolate flavor is so subdued as to not register much at all. It's more of a faint aftertaste.

Among the items in this variety pack, this was probably the one I was least thrilled with. There weren't many of them, so I ate them all, but I wouldn't have finished off a larger portion and I wouldn't buy these as a separate item. It's not that they bad, but they just weren't that good, and I really wish there had been more chocolate in the "Marble Choco."

Marble Chocolate Strawberry:

There's not much to the strawberry version of the "Marble Choco". It's really just your standard, fairly sweet strawberry chocolate. It doesn't have any nice tangy or sour strawberry notes. It's dominated by the strawberry and the interior is pink, so it is white chocolate-based rather than milk.

These were by far the least appealing of the assortment, and even though the portion was very small, my throat burned from the sugar after eating them.

Everything that is in this assortment can be purchased in a larger portion in individual packages. I could definitely see buying the Coffee Beat again on its own. I wouldn't bother with the Choco Baby because it's just chocolate in a different form and there's not much in that for me. I'd be just as happy with chocolate in bar form and see no point in the pellets. Though I liked the Marble Choco and Apollo and I enjoyed eating them, they didn't wow me enough to want to buy them again. They weren't unique enough for a repeat buy (though I do like the tiny portions which facilitate calorie control), but I certainly have no qualms about recommending others give them a try.

I'm giving this a conditional happy rating. Though I don't expect to buy this particular assortment again, I did enjoy it all to varying degrees (the least would be the strawberry Marblo Choco), and I will buy Coffee Beat again. I have to give it a happy rating for that if nothing else.