Tohato Ura-Caramel Corn Double Cheese

In England, I'm told that many people refer to any vacuum cleaner as a "Hoover" whether it is made by the Hoover company or not. And, in the U.S., very few people call a facial tissue anything but a "Kleenex" regardless of whether they're blowing their nose into that brand or not. In Japan, staplers are called "Hotchkiss" because that was a popular brand there. It's certainly not uncommon for a brand name of a product to become the name of the item.

Based on the naming of this product,  I'm wondering if "caramel corn" is something people see as representing any product which looks like a curly puff whether it is sweet and contains caramel or not. I have sampled this and there is no caramel in it, though there is corn.

This is a fairly standard cheese-flavored corn puff. The texture is a step above what we tend to see in the U.S. It's lighter, crispier, and lacks the "foam-like" texture you sometimes get in cheaper versions of corn puffs. The texture really couldn't be more appealing. The cheese flavoring is fine, but a bit on the subdued side. This is odd since the ingredients state the flavoring is 80% cheddar cheese and 18% Camembert. The Camembert hits as a finishing note and is distinct, though not potent. It will vanish entirely if you gobble too many down and your tastebuds acclimate to it.

Shockingly, one of the ingredients is "caramel powder," but I couldn't taste it at all nor was there much sweetness despite including Sucralose in the ingredients. If you do the math, the caramel powder is only 2% of the flavoring so it seems that it's there mainly as a token and to validate the naming.

There are some savory powders added in to improve flavor depth (e.g., katsuobushi or fish flavoring) but this still felt like it could use more of a punch. It's possible that my tastebuds after seven years back in the U.S. have lost their ability to detect subtle Japanese flavoring and that I'd have picked up on more of this had I not been "ruined" by life back home, but I tend not to eat too many salty snacks made here anyway.

This was a fine corn puff snack and I wasn't disappointed, though I felt it could have been more. I'll finish the bag for sure, but I won't be craving another.

Note: I received this product as part of my free ZenPop snack box.

Poteko Cherry Blossom Salt Potato Rings and Calbee Sea Salt Hard Chips

I'm continuing my brisk jaunt through the box of snacks ZenPop sent me with two of the salted potato snacks. Besides being made of potato and containing salt, they really don't have much in common, but it's not like I'm matchmaking them or engaging in little mock wedding ceremonies where in which I put a tiny veil on the rings and a bow tie on the chips - at least not yet. Constructing these things takes time.

The first time I tried Himalayan sea salt, I wondered why anyone would like the taste and smell of sulfur on their food. Sure, it's pink and looks pretty, but - at least to my taste buds - it added nothing to the experience and really took things away. I dismissed it as one of those things all the cool kids were into because other cool kids told them to be into it.

As weird as I found Himalayan sea salt to be, the sakura (cherry blossom) salt on Tohato's potato rings is like a mutant version of salt. Maybe it was formed when Godzilla was percolated decades ago. When I opened the bag, the smell was strongly cherry-blossom-like. It just did not fit the sense of what should come with a potato snack.

Smell isn't everything though. People who eat Durian know that. Taste is where it's at. Unfortunately, this didn't fare much better on the taste front. The first ring is especially odd as it hits you full force with the cherry-like flavor of the salt. After you eat a few, you get a little acclimated and it's more of a bad aftertaste that you tolerate.

I'm not sure what Tohato was thinking with this one. I guess that the fact that this is a holiday release connected to the "doll's festival" for girls (hinamatsuri) made them think the whole cherry blossom concept was a good one. They should have saved it for their sweet snacks rather than Poteko.

While the Poteko aren't inedible, they aren't nearly as much fun as they should be. I'm giving them a little credit there. I think the best use for these is to take them around to your unsuspecting friends and tell them it's a Japanese potato ring snack and ask them if they can guess what flavor it is. Have your camera ready because you'll want to catch the faces they make and post them on social media or future blackmail purposes.

The Calbee chips, by comparison, are a much tamer beast. The "hard" part comes from chips made with a thicker cut potato. Most Japanese potato chips are super thin, light and crispy. These are still crispy, but the bite is definitely less crumbly and more crunchy.

All Japanese potato chips have a particular fresh scent and taste which is unique and these have that going for them. I'm guessing this comes from the oil. However, the bag I had also had an unusual and not necessarily welcome. Honestly, it reminded me of sour milk. I don't know where that came from and I've never experienced that with Calbee's chips before. They're supposed to have Vitamin C added, which is also a bit strange. That might have something to do with it.

Poteko Cherry Blossom Salt:

Calbee Sea Salt Hard Chips:

Tohato Ame Oni Bloomin' Onion Snack (sour cream)

I read a lot of cooking blogs because I'm always interested in expanding my range of cooking skills. There was a time, for instance, when I was trying to master the art of making a really good steam cake. One of the Chinese recipes said something to the effect of, 'We Chinese traditionally ate fruit after meals for dessert, but, ha, ha, Western cuisine has corrupted us.' Every time I read something about how Western food culture has harmed the "healthy" Asian food culture, I get a little peeved.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. If Asians prefer to eat healthy food, no exposure to bad Western habits is going to force sugar, refined flour, etc. down their gullets. If they embrace unhealthy food, it's because it's what they want to eat, not because we made them consume it. They're no more superhuman than the rest of us when it comes to resisting highly palatable food. I also frankly have my doubts that a culture with dim sum couldn't figure out that adding sugary elements to its basic stuffed buns wouldn't be a good idea for a sweet finish without our bad influence. I credit them with having just that little creativity with their own homegrown cuisine. I think they likely figured that out on their own, but we always get blamed for everyone's bad habits... such is the burden we bear based on our generally pretty terrible eating habits as a country. We get blamed for all food crimes, not only the ones we actually committed.

All of that being said, I think we'll have to take the hit for Bloomin' Onions entering the junky and junk food time stream in Japan. They do have their own fried food culture (with tempura and all), but we're the ones who overdid it with breading and size. I honestly didn't know Outback Steakhouse even existed in Japan until several months ago when my brother-in-law (who still lives in Tokyo) posted pictures of a Bloomin' Onion he'd consumed as part of his birthday. And, yes, I know the old Outback is an American notion of "Aussie" cuisine. They're more about the meat pies and the vegemite than the over-sized steaks and bread served cruelly stabbed with a knife.

I'm guessing, possibly incorrectly, that the Outback may be getting a toehold in Japan since this type of snack would need a reference point for those who purchase it. Otherwise, the (misleading) picture of a fried onion flower on the bag would confuse rather than entice. I can say that it honestly enticed me.

I think they look less like Bloomin' Onions and more like low level sea life, but that's just my impression. 

When I opened the bag and gave it a whiff, I got a very strong sense of sour cream. The little snacks themselves are very light and crispy, but have a "soft" rather than a hard crunch. That means they are airier than a dense crunchy snack food despite also being quite thin. When I bit into it, the sour cream was on the front end followed by a whisper of onion and a finish of corn. The onion component becomes stronger as you eat more and it lingers on the tongue. I'm guessing this is how they justify calling them "Boomin' Onion" snacks because they otherwise don't have anything to do with the Outback Steakhouse calorie bombs they're named for (shape of the little cups not withstanding).

I liked these. I'm not sure how much I liked them. I was glad to have them and enjoyed eating them, but I don't know if I'd buy them again. My husband loved them and I think he would be inclined to buy more if we could easily get our hands on them. I liked the flavor complexity that came through in such a relatively pedestrian snack. I think he just liked the salted, sour cream flavor and light crunch. For both of us, this was a winner.

Source: ZenPop box service

Tohato Harvest Sand Biscuits Mont Blanc flavor

Every year, around Halloween, a bunch of sites will do lists of the best and worst Halloween snacks. The "best" usually are anything covered in or mainly comprised of chocolate and/or peanut butter. The "worst" tend to be anything chalky or in the genre of what the British call "boiled sweets" (hard candy). Basic Harvest Biscuits are the boiled sweet of the cookie world. They're what you're disappointed to see served as a tea time snack 95% of the time because they're just plain, flat, not so sweet discs of crispy cookie.

Mind you, being in a category which isn't blow-your-socks-off amazing isn't a bad thing if you are in the mood for something quite crunchy, but not rich or super sweet. The main sticking point with Harvest Biscuits is that all flavors, without fail, taste like coconut. I do wonder if, to that end, the Harvest people have expanded their line to include things like these sandwich cookies which have the architecture ("cookie architect" absolutely should be a career one can pursue in life) of an Oreo. The big question is whether or not the structure and composition of this cookie edifice is sound.

The texture of the "cookie" on these is super crisp and on the harder side. They either feel thicker and harder than the routine Harvest cookie because they're so tiny (about an inche or so in diameter) or they actually are. On the cookie to cracker spectrum, this leans closer to the "cracker" end than the cookie side. The filling is very firm, or at least it is in somewhat cooler temperatures as it is now in my part of the planet.

The main draw of these is the mont blanc filling. Mont blanc, for those who don't know, is a sweet made with a chestnut paste, whipped cream, and either a meringe or cake base. The filling tastes distinctly artificial, or it simply is so intense that it comes across that way. The combination of the strong, fake-tasting filling with the coconutty little crackery biscuit simply did not work for me. I was enormously disappointed in these because I love mont blanc. In fact, I did something I rarely do which is fail to finish the packet.

Source: ZenPop box service

Tohato Caramel Corn (with peanut)

Caramel Corn in Japan has been around for donkey's years. I actually don't know how long a donkey's year is, nor do I know who actually uses that phrase anymore. The last person who regularly used it that I knew was my late former manager in Japan (R.I.P, Darryl, I think of you every day). It turns out that donkeys actually live quite a long time. One of the older ones lived over 60 years. The original phrase either referred to the longevity of the beast, or was a migration of "donkey's ears" referring to how they have long ears. Either way, duration and donkeys have a bizarre relationship which has nothing to do with this product... well, beyond the tenuous connection in age. Tohato, which makes Caramel Corn, has been around for 65 years. So, yeah, that was a strained connection, but I pulled the two ends together.

I looked up Caramel Corn on Tohato's web site to see if this was a new variation since it has a picture of a peanut on the bag and talks about having added peanuts. It seems that the product's packaging has been revamped to reflect the includsion of peanuts. This makes sense because everything is better with peanuts (or corn) and we need to know when they are cohabitating together.

When I opened the bag, I gave it a sniff and smelled both coconut and peanut in addition to a familiar "sweet" smell. It didn't necessarily smell like caramel, but it surely looked like it. The first bite yielded a hint of salt, a very present peanut flavor, quite a bit of sweetness, and a little bit of coconut. The "caramel" part mainly comes from a sugary sweetness rather than from the sort of buttery concoctions that we're more accustomed to when we think of caramel.

I compared the caramel in this to that in Harry & David's classic "Moose Munch" because that allowed me to have an excuse to eat "Moose Munch." The Munch was definitely more buttery and sweeter. It also had a shiny, thicker coating of caramel flavor where's this seems more like a dusting of caramel. Frankly, I like the Japanese corn snack better as I felt the flavor had more complex and depth and that the peanutty notes cut through the sweetness.

Beyond the unique (and delightful) flavor combination, the texture of this is quite unique. It is very light and crispy and, while it doesn't quite melt in your mouth, it comes very close. There appear to be incredibly tiny fragments of peanut mixed in with the tender curls.

I got these in the Oyatsu Cafe's dagashi box, and you can order it from Oyatasu or you can get it from Amazon. Both sell it for the same price, though the size isn't specified on the Oyatsu Cafe's page and it's 3.45 oz. on Amazon.

Tohato has a set of cute wallpapers for Caramel Corn's bag-like mascot. They include seasonal ones that you can rotate based on the weather, though I'm guessing these days you will really only need summer and winter to reflect the reality outside your front door. You can download them here as well as watch some cute little videos if you've got time to kill at work before lunch.

Source: Oyatsucafe "Dagashi box" (part of a $15/month subscription box)

Tyrant Habanero Black Curry (product information)

History has seen its fair share of tyrants - Caligula, Stalin, Pol Pot, and, of course, everybody's low-hanging fruit in the game of "name that maniac", Hitler. A lesser-known tyrant is, of course, Tyrant Habanero. It doesn't commit genocide, but rather attempts to slaughter your taste buds with insanely hot, salty snack treats. Of course, what it does to your mouth is nothing to compared to what it's going to do to the end of your digestive tract on the other way out. Oh, the humanity!

Tohato continues to expand it's line of mouth-burning snack treats with a black curry version of it's salty pressed food-stuff. The chips are shaped as you see them on the illustration. They're supposed to resemble naan bread, but that wasn't the first thing that came to my mind. Black curry is usually dyed with squid ink or some other coloring to make it that color. Word is that Sri Lanka has an actual black curry with unique spices, but I'm betting more on the squid-assisted variety in this snack than the more exotic option. If I can locate this at a Japanese market, I'll certainly give it a try. If any of my readers have sampled it already, I'd be curious to hear your impressions.

Random Picture #218

It's becoming clear that cranberry is now a thing in Japan. I've been seeing more items containing cranberries including some chocolate-covered ones. I've done a bit of research and this sort of spread of cranberries isn't truly new to Japan, but it's definitely seeing a surge right now which I either didn't experience or notice during my 23 years in Japan. Since I love cranberries, and found them in short supply while I was in Tokyo, I hope I would have noticed if suddenly cookies and candies featuring them started popping up all over the place at the same time. However, I'm not so arrogant about my perceptual skills as to say it didn't fly right by me.

These "all cranberry" cookies are the latest in the long line of fruits that Tohato has dried out and sandwiched between two biscuits in their rip-off of Garibaldi biscuits. I've not been entirely impressed by the "all fruit" line in the past so I gave it a miss. I may be persuaded otherwise in the future, but I have more than enough snack review fodder lying around and don't need to toss another pack on the pile. 

Tohato Pai Cro Butter Sugar

I've been seeing Pai Cro at Japanese markets for some time, but I was unwilling to fork over the cash they were charging to give them a try. Much to my surprise, I found this bag at Daiso Japan for a mere $1.50. In fact, it seems that Daiso is upping its food game as of late. They've added in more name brand snacks and diversified their line of chocolates to include more varieties. Of course, I haven't been super impressed by their chocolate so far, but hope springs eternal and the price is right (almost all of the products at Daiso are $1.50).

I snapped up the Pai Cro as well as Country Ma'am cookies (another new item) last time that I was at Daiso. I also got a shoehorn, because they have these super long ones that allow lazy people to more easily put their shoes on without bending down much, but this isn't a review of cheap items blog. That being said, at one point, I considered starting a new blog dedicated to 100-yen-shop finds. When I left Japan, the idea died. It could be revived now that I'm living close to a Daiso. The main impediment is my limited need for plastic junk. It's hard to keep buying stuff you don't need just to be sure that you have something to write about. Also, I'm writing eight posts a week already. What do you people think I am, a machine? ;-)

When we made our way to the cashier, an extremely enthusiastic and gregarious young woman, she told us that everyone in the shop was super excited when the Pai Cro was re-stocked as everyone loves it. This increased my interest in what this was going to taste like. However, my tastes don't necessarily match those of peppy women in their early 20's. After all, they like their men muscular with all of their chest hair waxed off and I like my men on the hairy and meaty side. I can't necessarily conclude that our tastes in other areas will overlap when they don't in this crucial area.

There were two flavors of Pai Cro - butter sugar and apple something or other (custard? caramel?). Since I don't remember the apple one, you may guess correctly that I opted for "butter sugar". Also, the title of this post is a tip-off about which variety is getting reviewed. Attentive readers may have noted that already. Inattentive ones have just looked at the pictures in the post and skipped to the rating anyway and aren't even reading all of this blathering.

Getting to the Pai Cro, as soon as you open the bag, you smell margarine and bread crumbs. Though there is some butter in this, it's pretty far down on the ingredients list. There is a lot of oil though - three vegetable oils (palm, coconut, and rice), butter, and "butter oil". I'm pretty sure the crispness of these comes from their being fried like a potato chip. These are pretty caloric as the nutrition information for 2.47 oz./70 grams says one bag is 2.3 servings at 151 calories per serving.

These are super crispy and light. They have a real sense of being like a sweet buttered crouton, but they're finer than that in texture and much less tough to chew. They shatter apart rather appealingly, but there is definitely a strong flavor of "bread" to them. The bread flavor is not good quality bread, but rather like the crust on common white bread that has been toasted. It really does not bring a croissant to mind, at least not to my taste buds.

This is a very "junky" snack which has both qualities of being appealing (crispy, sweet, buttery), but also tastes "cheap" (tasting like cheap bread and margarine/oil). This is a blog about junk food, however, so it is to be expected that such things would come up from time to time. This is tasty junk, but I think those who are used to eating a lot of processed food (and I'm not, despite my blogging about Japanese snacks) will find this more appealing than I did. I will slowly finish the bag, and I'm interested enough to try another flavor, but I wouldn't buy this one again.

Tohato All Lemon Salty Biscuits/Cookies

If you look at the design of the "All" on the "All (fruit)" line of cookies, you'll see that the "A" is pretty darn happy. The two "l's" seem to be distant cousins of "Hello Kitty" as they are mouth-less. One has to wonder why the designer came up with this style. Was drawing too little mouths on the "l's" going to make the top set of letters seem like too happy a family next to the expressionless words beneath? Did the designer not have enough ink to draw just a little more? Was he or she suddenly struck down with sadness after drawing the little curve on the "A"?

Personally, I'm not sure why anyone feels it's necessary to anthropomorphize letters and assign them human feelings. It just encourages deviant behavior. If people think letters possess emotions, there might be some ridiculous movement toward giving them human rights and they can refuse to work for us. I'll have to start giving their unions money in order to use them in my posts. If that happens, it's all over, people.

Getting to the cookies, like all of the "All (fruit)" line, there is supposed to be 10 cm. of fruit crammed between two cookie layers. I guess that they are compressed into a quantum singularity of fruit filling for your convenience. There's no fear of getting lockjaw after having to open your mouth wide to bite down on 10 cm. of fruit. Woohoo?

One of the points about the "All (fruit)" line that I like is the texture mix of the somewhat dry biscuit cookie base mixed with moist, sweet dried fruit. The fruit really brings moisture into the equation in most cases, but not in this one. Lemon is not exactly a soft fruit when dried because it has a low sugar content. That doesn't make this bad, but it does make them a bit dry and lower the quality of the experience of eating them.

This is unfortunate because I like the mild lemon flavor mixed with a hint of salt. The salt is very well-balanced from my perspective because it lies in wait until you've chewed the carby, floury cookie base and chewy lemon. It comes in most prominently at the end, but not so potently as to make this unpleasantly salty.

These are fine, but they could be better. There could be more sweetness to boost the overall flavor profile. Though I am not a fan of huge amounts of sugar, I think that it can add to more potent flavors and this can use it. Also, I truly wish the cookie and the filling were moister. If the cookie had a cakier feel, I think these would definite be worth repeating. They aren't though, so I wouldn't have these again.

Tohato Tyrant Habanero Spicy Cheese Crackers

Have you ever kept a pepper in the refrigerator for far too long? They get all soft and shriveled up. In the end, you've got a flaccid item which is a shadow of its former self. If the red pepper graphic on this bag were truly representative of the flavor of the snack inside, it'd look like one of the aforementioned aged peppers. 

Of course, I was unaware of this when I decided to pick up this discounted bag of salted snacks at "My Basket". I figured it was part of the Tyrant Habanero line which generally does a good job of burning my mouth until I get an endorphin rush. For the discounted price of about 66 yen (85 cents), it was hard to not buy them, especially with the promise of "spicy cheese" with some heat. I should have guessed that there was a reason that they were discounted. On the bright side, there are only 215 calories for the whole bag.

These crackers have a modest cheese flavor which is heavy on the sour powdered milk flavor and weak on the delicious cheese pungency. That is chased rather meekly by a bit of a hot pepper bite. It's actually not so much a bite as a half-hearted nip at the air rather than draws any blood. The crackers are hollow, but not as crispy as their American cousin, the Goldfish cracker. There are also a smattering of peanuts mixed in, but not enough to give you some with every small mouthful. They also are so much heavier than the crackers that they fall to the bottom so you can't really eat them as a mix unless you empty the 45-gram (1.6 oz.) bag into a dish or burrow to the bottom of the narrow bag. 

These are not bad at all, but with the evil jack-o-lantern pepper on the front and the promise of "habanero", I expected something in the way of flavorful teeth. If you are the type of person who wants to fool yourself into thinking you can handle hot peppers, this is the ticket for you. If you want something that'll leave your mouth burning for a little while, give them a pass. Personally, I wouldn't have them again. 

Tohato All Azuki Cookies

I once said that I was on a quest to sample all of the "All (Fruit)" line of cookies and then I promptly forgot that this was one of my snack blog missions. In fact, I forgot that I had any missions of any sort, but perhaps all of the incessant commercials playing in Shinjuku station for the newest Mission Impossible movie sparked my memory. I must say that I wonder if it costs more to run ads in a station that about a million people walk through than it costs to run ads on television in Japan. That has nothing to do with these cookies unless Tom Cruise decides to appear in ads for them in the future. That's not outside of the realm of possibility, but I think that he's unlikely to smile and bite into cookies that smell a bit like mold or dirt, as these ones do.

That's right, these cookies smell pretty rank. Their unique bouquet reminded me very much of the dreaded oshiruko KitKat. Still, I'm nothing if not game to sample new foods, especially when I've already forked over my 100 yen ($1.24) to procure a bag of them and the only other option is to toss them and forfeit a review opportunity. I found these at Lawson 100, but you can find them pretty much anywhere that carries the All Fruit cookies. They are seasonal and will vanish after winter and reappear next autumn. So, if you want some cookies that smell like a zombie's armpit, act before it warms up.

All derogatory comments about the aroma of these cookies aside, they are actually quite enjoyable. The basic cookie used in the All Fruit line has a good flavor and texture. They are slightly flaky but soft. They're like a cross between a biscuit and a pie. Sandwiched between them are bits of moist sweetened azuki beans. There is also kinako  (toasted soybean powder) and black sugar syrup flavoring added, though the influence of these two ingredients are so subtle that you can barely detect them. They're like a voice in the next room that you can't make out, but they are nonetheless, present and contributing something to the overall taste. For all I know, they're also adding their own personal touch to the funk coming off of them as well. 

I'm not an enormous fan of red beans. The truth is that I like white bean sweets more than red, but I bought these believing that the moist nature of azuki would lend itself well to these cookies. That theory is supported by the taste, though there really should be more beans in them. It seems like Tohato continues to scale back the "fruit" portion of this line all of the time and you get more basic cookie and less of the filling then I recall in some of my previous reviews of these. Still, these are good and I recommend them. Just hold your nose when you open the bag and put the portion you want to eat on a plate so that the smell isn't so powerful.

Tohato All Apricot

I'm not sure what most people do when they buy a package of some food with the expectation that they're going to enjoy it and then discover that it's  not all that they'd hoped for. Do they feed it to the neighbor's dog? Do they eat it anyway because they don't want to waste food? Do they hurl it at pigeons as they grumpily make their way through the park to yet another soul-draining day at the office? Or, do they do what I do and eat one and then throw the rest in a plastic holding basket of snacks that need to be reviewed but are so boring that you don't want to do it yet?

The latter is where these apricot cookies have been languishing for several weeks now as I just couldn't work up the enthusiasm to review them. I've reviewed several of the "All (something)" line of cookies, and have been  pleased with what I've tried. Since apricot is one of my favorite flavors when it comes to jam, dried fruit, and cookies, I was really happy to see this in a local 100 yen ($1.20) shop/convenience store (Lawson's 100).

Everything about these cookies looked to be every bit as good as the usual compressed fruit between two biscuits of the "All (something)" line of snacks. Unfortunately, the fruit appears to have been skimped on in this particular variety. There was too much dry cookie and too little actual apricot. In fact, when I broke a cookie in half, instead of seeing the delights of dried apricot running like fruity sap through the cookies veins, I saw nothing but dry biscuit. The packaging claims these cookies compress 10 centimeters of fruit into a 1 cm. cookie, but it seems like they skimped a lot on the frequency of fruit.

Even at a  modest 29.5 calories per cookie, I couldn't see these as worth it on the "pleasure to fat cell size increase" scale that I apply to all snacks that I try. Sure, there's nothing at all wrong with these. The cookie is pleasant enough though it's a somewhat dry biscuit and there is at least a little apricot flavor there, but ultimately it's just not all that impressive. If I were seriously hungry or on a carb rage, and this was all I had in the apartment (not bloody likely, considering I'm a snack blog reviewer), I might tuck into these. Tohato made me wish I had a dog to feed these to, or at least some pigeons to walk by on the way to work.

Tohato All Banana Cookies

This is the latest in Tohato's "All (fruit name)" series of somewhat healthy cookies. Previously, I sampled their "All Osatsu" (sweet potato) and "All Cranberry VE" cookies and rated them both positively. I had somewhat lower expectations for these banana cookies since, if there's one thing sweets makers can manage, it's to screw up banana-flavored treats. That being said, I was game to give these a try to see how Tohato did with giving them the "All" treatment.

A bag of these contains 14 cookies that are about 5 x 4.5 cm square (2" x 1.7"). I bought these at Tomod's drug store, but I'd be surprised if you couldn't find them in most grocery stores in Tokyo. Each cookie is only 29 calories.


The process of making these cookies is offered with an illustration on the side of the bag. They show a layer of cookie, a 10-cm. (3.9 in.) layer of bananas and another layer of cookie. Apparently, they press a ton of banana between the two cookie layers to make the somewhat chewy, but still soft morsel pictured above.

I've sniffed a lot of snacks (recreationally, I'm not a hard dealer in snacks or anything) since starting this blog, and these smell better than any banana treat I've tried in my life. They smell like strong, real banana. In fact, the closest thing I can describe the scent to would be banana chips.

These have a nice natural banana flavor, like dried, moist real banana mixed with a generic cookie and cake hybrid flavor. It's very lightly sweet, and gets most of its punch from the banana filling. The ingredients list starts with flour and then goes to the banana followed by sugar, grape sugar, margarine, shortening, and eggs. Somewhere down the list is also cinnamon. That's an unusual inclusion in cookies in Japan.

If you like bananas, I strongly recommend trying these while they're still available. They taste great, have a good texture, and they keep very well. If you're looking to snack on something a little healthier when the old blood sugar drops, these would be a good choice to keep in your desk at work. Two or three of these with a cup of tea really hits the spot.

Tohato Tyrant Habanero Garlic Sticks

I studied psychology with a fairly strong emphasis on biology and behavior. One of the things I learned about was how and what stimulates the brain in a particular manner. In particular, the brain responds to pain by releasing counterbalancing pleasure chemicals. This is one of the reasons people like to eat foods that are hot and spicy despite the sometimes painful burn associated with them. It is a way of tricking your brain into juicing you up a bit.

Whatever the reason may be, I love hot and spicy things and the "Tyrant Habanero" product line always catches my eye. You can identify them in Japan by the evil jack-o-lantern red pepper mascot that graces every bag. There are only two things that keep me from having a constant supply of these snacks on hand, the calories and the fact that they taste great going in but are far less pleasant on the way out.


I came across these stick-style garlic habanero snacks at AM/PM convenience store. Those who want them have to get them at "conbini" as they are not sold in other types of shops. I'm afraid that I don't remember exactly what I paid for this 35 gram (1.2 oz.) bag, but I think it was around 130 yen ($1.44). The entire bag is 175.5 calories, and that's not bad for the quantity of salted snack sticks.

When I poured a few of these out to take the picture, I was reminded of some sort of spicy or barbecue snack stick that I had on rare occasions as a child and really loved. I have a strong sense that the brand name was "Popeye" (and a company named "Allens" makes Popeye potato sticks, but their web site is mum about snack foods), but I couldn't find anything on the web that resembled what I recall. Part of the problem is that Popeye's fried chicken is talked about so much that anything with "Popeye" and "spicy" brings up a chicken-related result. If anyone remembers what I'm talking about, I'd love to hear about it.

These sticks are not very long, about 4 inches or 10 cm each. They have a really perfect potato-based snack texture which is airy enough to be light and crispy but not so much as to feel like nothing. The spice at first carries a heavy garlic flavor, unsurprisingly, but the cumulative effect of the heat soon squashes that out of existence if you keep eating. And, oh, I kept eating. I ate the whole bag and my mouth was on blissful fire by the end. These have a great mix of garlic, onion, paprika, and various meaty flavors so the taste has depth until your tongue is too inflamed to detect them.

I adored these. I'd buy them again in a heartbeat, but I'd try harder not to eat the whole bag at once next time. I've heard that some people find the Tyrant Habanero series too meek for their hot food needs, but I found it just about right.

Harvest Sweet Potato Biscuits

Harvest "biscuits" (from Tohato) have been around for about 30 years and I think I've eaten them once or twice during my 20 years in Japan. It's not that there is necessarily anything wrong with them so much as they're just not all that impressive. Like many other less than exciting food stuffs in Japan, they seem like they should be healthy because they aren't covered in frosting or chocolate and don't have a fatty filling, but they're really fairly caloric for what they are. A packet of 5 crackers, each about 6 cm. (2.4 in.) in diameter is about 60 calories.


The main appeal for me of the plain ("butter") Harvest biscuits is that they have a noticeable coconut flavor and aren't too sweet. That being said, they also aren't all that flavorful. I'm not sure what the intended market is supposed to be, but I'm guessing these are supposed to be a light treat to have with tea. They may actually be good for dipping in your tea, but I didn't test that theory out.


I picked up these because I was in a sweet potato treats frenzy. There seemed to be new goodies everywhere and these got roped in in my enthusiasm. Unfortunately, I'd forgotten how boring these are. They're called "biscuits", as if they were a type of cookie, but they're really just sweet crackers with a sprinkling of sugar on top. They smell very much like the plain version of Harvest Biscuits. That is to say they smell like coconut with just a hint of sweet potato. The sweet potato flavor is a little more prominent than the scent conveys, but coconut still dominates. I love coconut, but I don't buy a sweet potato biscuit for that reason.

These are nice enough, and I will definitely finish the bag through time. However, they just aren't anything special. If you love lightly-sweetened crackers with a bit of coconut and sweet potato, these may even light your fire, but don't kid yourself about them being not as bad for you because they're so unassuming in composition. I just found them too boring and I wouldn't buy them again.

Note: If you'd like a desktop picture featuring the cracker with a smile on the cover of the packet, it can be downloaded at the bottom of the page here.

Tohato All Osatsu Cookies

If you're a kid and offered a choice of cupcakes, you will always take the chocolate one. The coconut one is probably your last choice, though raisin may trail behind even coconut. One thing about growing up is different sorts of food gets you worked up. It's not that chocolate isn't great, but you've spent your whole life gobbling chocolate and it's lost some of its luster.

I realize that the previous paragraph is likely heresy to some people, but if I were offered the choice of a chocolate chip cookie or a sweet potato cookie, I'd take the sweet potato one hands down. For the record, I'd also take a pumpkin or chestnut one over chocolate. I love chocolate, but it's pretty predictable and I'd like my calories to carry a bit more interest. I know that I risk dozens of chocolate lovers (possibly hundreds) wanting to beat me to death with Hershey bars, but there the truth is in its vegetable-preferring honesty.


In my quest to track down and sample all of the "All (insert flavor here)" brand of cookies, I was delighted to come across these sweet potato ones. Previously, I favorably reviewed the All Cranberry VEPlus ones. These cookies are similar in construction, though different in size. The cranberry ones were mini cookies and these are full-size at about 5 cm. square (about 2 in.). Each cookie is 28 calories and there are 14 in the bag. I bought these on sale for 98 yen (about $1) at a local supermarket.

The cookies taste pretty much like sweetened sweet potato mixed with a relatively bland biscuit-like cookie. The cookies are made like a flat bar cookie with a 2 layers of cookie dough sandwiching in some dried sweet potato. They're slightly chewy because of the sweet potato (which is like a mashed raisin after drying) and not too sweet. The texture of the cookie is between a cracker and bread. It sounds bad, but it's actually pretty nice. They look dry, but are tender.

I really liked these and think they'd make a great cookie to have with tea as an early evening snack. At 112 calories for 4 cookies, you could have quite a few without eating too much and I think they're likely better for you despite being a cookie. Besides being a sucker for sweet potato, I also love varying textures and these are unique in a pleasurable way. I'd definitely buy them again, but I think some people might feel they aren't decadent enough to be a real treat.

Tohato Mammoth Meat Cracker

Some things place me in a real approach-avoidance conflict. That's when you both want and don't want to do something. I'd seen this "mammoth meat" snack in shops for a couple of months before taking the plunge and finally buying one of the two available flavors. The picture of the snack on the front does not look appealing at all and the whole "mystery meat" angle wasn't grabbing me at all.

I'm guessing this is an effort on Tohato's part to build a new brand image by picking something unique and strange, much like their Tyrant Habanero brand with it's evil jack-o-pepper mascot. I don't know how this one is doing, but I can say that an awful lot of these have been on display at the local Family Mart convenience store for quite some time. The red bag, which contains a soy sauce and garlic flavored meaty cracker, in particular seems to be lingering. The yellow bag variety has a version with black pepper and "medium rare" meat. I don't know if the way in which the meat is "cooked" affects the taste much, but I think it factors into the color of the cracker.


Speaking of the cracker's color. These are absolutely an unappealing-looking snack. They look like dog treats or cinnamon rolls that have been run over by a steam roller. They smell like soy sauce and garlic beef jerky, which is no surprise because these are flavored with Japanese tare sauce. Tare is a multi-purpose word for various versions of thickened soy sauce with flavoring. I've most often had it with yakitori (grilled chicken skewers), sushi or other meat dishes.

The crackers are thin and crispy and not too different from any other form of cracker on the texture front. The flavor is a deep meaty taste with a heavy emphasis on pork, garlic and soy sauce. There's something about it that is just "off" though. I'm not sure what it is, but there's a strange taste which is like gamy meat. Yes, it seems right that mammoth meat would be gamy tasting, but it doesn't make for a good snack.

This is not unpalatable, but it's just not that good. The whole bag has about 10 crackers slightly bigger than a saltine (if it was round). Each cracker is about 21 calories and it's not a pleasurable enough experience when there are so many tastier things around for a similar caloric impact. If I could have this or, say a Hershey's Kiss at 25 calories per morsel, there would be no competition. The Kiss would win hand's down.

If the graphic on the bag appeals to you, you can download a desktop picture showing a pattern with it here.