Oyatsu Chicken Ramen (mini packs)

Being a consumer is a complicated experience. People are constantly attempting to manipulate you into buying things you probably don't want or need, or possibly even enjoy. The really skillful ones will convince you that you want something. The gifted ones will get you to buy something even when you are fully aware that you are being completely manipulated and really don't want something.

I don't really like ramen (or any kind of noodles), and I don't care for cutesy junk which litters my apartment, so how is it that I ended up buying this package of mini bags of ramen with a cute little mascot-related toy? Well, they suckered me in for two reasons. First of all, the packaging is just too cool given that it is chicken ramen and the design resembles Japanese egg cartons. It is excellent design. The second is that I run this blog, and this looked like a nifty little thing to talk about because it has more depth to it than your average chocolate bar. So, here I am, with a 100-yen pack of ramen and a toy that I will be sending off to my sister so that she can give it to some child as a prize when her library holds a reading contest. Speaking of contests, toys, and prizes, stay tuned for tomorrow's post...

To make the toy work, you remove the chick from the egg (it's held in with a magnet), run it backwards across a flat surface, (carefully) put the chick back in and it'll go rushing forward (if it doesn't fall over backward because you were careless when you put the chick back in). The chick has a magnet which releases a lever when you replace it.

I actually have eaten ramen a few times in the past, but not this brand or type. When I first came to Japan, I would occasionally buy it for lunch at work because it was cheap, fast, and easy to prepare. I realize that it is nutritionally a zero, and that it is pretty much just salt and bad carbohydrates. That's probably why it's the food of choice for many college kids, but I'm 46 years old. I'm not sure this is what my body is meant to tolerate. Fortunately, the packages are very small so I didn't have to eat too much at once.

The instructions tell you to use 150 ml. of hot water, which is about 3/4 of a cup. My plan from the start was to sample this a bit by itself, then to add some cooked chicken breast and onions to the soup to add protein. I also had a raw tomato and salad on the side. I'm not sure if that helps with the fact that this has 560 mg. of sodium, but it makes me feel a bit less guilty about having it at all.

As far as taste goes, this is actually relatively mild on the saltiness. It tastes weakly of fried chicken and is a little oily. The noodles are your standard cheap ramen fare. They're limp and tasteless, and don't seem to absorb much of the flavor. The strange thing is that I sampled a broken piece of the noodles before adding the water, and they are very flavorful in their dry form.

This wasn't bad at all, but it wasn't exciting either. I'm very happy with the portion size, and if you're a fan of ramen and don't want to knock back a huge bowl of it, this would fit the bill. It's supposed to be the "cup-a-soup" size of ramen. You can't expect much, as this is instant ramen. I wouldn't buy it again, but I'll eat the second packet.

Baby Star Crispy Ramen Mini (pizza)

I'm not a ramen fan. In fact, I'm pretty much not into noodles of any kind, though I will eat pasta on occasion. I guess part of the reason for this is the fact that I lived at home during college and never had to subsist on cases of Top Ramen to make ends meet and therefore was denied the dubious salty, carby pleasures of dehydrated noodles. Nonetheless, there is no insignificant sacrifice I won't make on the altar of snack food reviewing so I decided to buy something I never would have purchased before starting this blog.

Bei is the fellow on the left. His twin Bi is on the right. They are dressed in Chinese garb because they endorse ramen. It's important to have ethnically correct cartoon mascots, after all.

Though it boggles the mind that the Japanese need to sell seasoned ramen noodles in little snack packages when they have so many opportunities to eat proper ramen, they do indeed sell it in tiny packets for snacking purposes. I found this 21 gram (.7 oz.) packet in the 4 for 99 yen (99 cents) bin at the local 99 yen shop along with several other flavors.

Since I don't eat ramen, I wasn't familiar with the company that makes these, Oyasu Company (おやすカンパニ). Their slogan, by the way, is "plentiful and happy." They make a variety of ramen under the name "baby star" which has twin mascots named "bei-chan" and "bi-chan". Put their names together and it's "baby" ("ei" in Japanese is pronounced similar to "a" in English). The mascots are garbed differently depending on the flavor of the product. The pizza ramen has the "gondolier Bei" on it because pizza is Italian. If you explore their web site, you'll see that Bei is quite the international dresser. There's cowboy, boat captain, astronaut, farmer, and maharajah Bei among others. Because Japan is a paternalistic culture, poor old Bi only gets one extra outfit.


As one might expect, the bag is full of crispy ramen noodle fragments. They smell like typical pizza seasoning (tomato and cheesy whey, mostly) with a hint of some sort of meaty smell. The ingredients reveal that beef extract is included as well as paprika and cheese, tomato and pizza powders. They are very crunchy, but in such small pieces that it's a bit hard to eat them. You have to grab a whole bunch between your fingers, drop a few down your shirt, and aim the remainder into your mouth. They're actually pretty good, but the pizza flavor saturates your taste buds pretty fast and you get more of a meat flavor mixed with a salty ramen taste.

These are pretty nice and I think they'd satisfy if you wanted a super salty junk food fix in a very tiny portion. The whole bag is 105 calories. It's total trash, but it's enjoyable. I guess that's why so many young people live on ramen throughout their college years.