Yahoo! Majimori Corn Snack Tonkotsu Rich Miso

This is the second of two Majimori corn snacks based on ramen flavors. The first variety was "brown oil, garlic, and pork bone" flavor and I was rather fond of it. As I mentioned in the previous review, this product is a collaboration between several companies - Maruchan, Yahoo Japan, Frito-Lay and Tokyo Web Week 1.

Tonkotsu is the Japanese word for pork bone so both of the Majimori flavors are made with pork flavor. Since ramen is often flavored with pork, this is no surprise. By the way, ramen in Japan is sometimes the same sort of dried out noodles with salty flavor packets that is so common in Western countries, but the really good stuff is sold at food stands or restaurants and it's rather far removed from the cheap stuff college students use to fortify them when they've spent too much on beer and are looking at providing themselves with sustenance on a few dollars they found crammed under their roommates dirty socks.


The bar that is set for matching good ramen is significantly higher than the bar with living up to really cheap, dehydrated ramen. Since the first variety that I tried lived up to the complexity of the flavor, I fully expected this one to as well and I wasn't disappointed. Once again, all of the elements of well made ramen were there.

If you open the bag and give it a good sniff, you can smell cabbage, corn and a bit of a spicy, oil smell which is reminiscent of sesame oil. The interesting thing about the corn aroma and taste is that it is not the processed corn snack variety. It's the actual taste and smell of corn kernels. The cabbage flavor is also very present as is the taste of oily pork. The finish on them is one of spicy heat.

Unlike the brown oil pork and garlic flavor, the first bite has complex and rich flavors. You don't need to keep eating for the flavor to build its way up. I liked this, but the thing about both of the Majimori flavors is that they so successfully carry the oily flavor of ramen broth and this makes it less appealing for me personally. I imagine this is great for lovers of oil infused with rich, dense flavors, but it's just not my thing. I'd certainly give these another try if I was in the mood. Given my particular tastes though, that mood is unlikely to come around very often.

Yahoo! Japan Majimori Corn Snack Brown Oil Pork & Garlic

Yahoo is regarded as second to Google when it comes to home pages and search engines among most folks in the West. In Japan, Yahoo is the bee's knees to Google's bee's, uh, little toes. This is why Yahoo gets its own brand of corn snack. Well, not exactly its own. This is a collaborative effort between Maruchan, maker of cup-a-ramen type products, Yahoo Japan, Frito-Lay, and Tokyo Web 1 Week (a magazine). They all came together to create some sort of promotion which would draw attention to all of them.


These were released on February 16 and I picked mine up at a convenience store for 99 yen ($1.06). The bag contains 55 grams (about 2 oz.) of corn snacks which will set you back 295 calories if you snarf it all down. The web site talks about how these are meant to resemble ramen flavored with "thick brown oil", pork bone, ginger, and garlic. There is another ramen flavored corn snack which has been released at the same time as this one, but it wasn't on sale locally. The other one is spicy miso and tonkatsu (fried pork cutlet).

When I opened the bag and gave it a sniff, I really couldn't identify the scent. It's such a melange of flavors that it defies easy identification. It doesn't smell particularly bad, nor particularly good. When I first started eating them, I had a strong sense of a lot of foreplay with no finish. There seemed to be an immense and complex hit of flavor with only a bit of an oily follow-up. As I ate more and more of them, the savory flavors separated out into pork, green onion, ginger, and garlic. Cumulatively, the garlic seems to become more and more present as the flavor builds up, but that pork bone flavor is strongly there as well.

When I first started eating these, I wasn't very impressed, by about the 10th puff, I was hooked. They are so savory and complex in flavor and get better and better as time goes by. From a flavor viewpoint, this is good. From the viewpoint of eating more of something which really isn't good for you, it's rather bad. Still, this is a limited edition product which I'm sure won't be around forever and worth a one time indulgence. I'd definitely recommend trying them.