Tirol Summer Assortment

I'm fully cognizant of the fact that it is no longer summer, and that this bag showing sun, seagulls, and palm trees is incongruous with the cool breezes, dying leaves, and chilly air of autumn. Actually, with climate change, I'm not sure that we actually experience fall in that fashion anymore, but for the sake of argument, I will admit that I'm reviewing this seasonal variety pack rather late in the game. To be fair, I bought it recently at Nijiya market in San Jose, CA (it could not be had at the Mountain View branch) and this selection only recently vanished from Tirol's web site. I can't recall what I paid for it, but I think it was somewhere in the $3 (234 yen) range.

This was the sort of thing that I would not buy when I was living in Japan because it includes a very common flavor (nuts crunch), a reissue (mango) with one flavor of interest to me (coconut). Under those circumstances, I would not pop for a bag on non-premium Tirol chocolates. For those who don't know or remember, the Tirol brand is offered in two different sizes. One is a smaller square sold in 9 packs and the other is a larger (about 1 inch/2.54 cm.) size which is sold individually. The premium candies larger size means they are generally more sophisticated in construction with multiple layers of fillings. The non-premium ones, such as these, tend to be simpler as it's hard to layer in much in such a tiny presentation. In general, the variety packs lack the flavor depth and potential of the premium candies. 

The strange thing is though that I thought I'd already sampled two out of three of these chocolates, but reviewing my backlog, I see that I had never tried any of them. I guess that's all for the better then. 

One has to wonder why peanuts wear bow ties around the world. Is this level of formality a genetic inclination?

Nuts Crunch:

I should note that I balk at writing "nuts" crunch instead of "nut crunch". The Japanese generally don't accept or follow the conventions in English in which you do not use a plural when a noun modifies another noun. That's why they say "peanuts butter" instead of "peanut butter". However, the words are written on the package in such a way that I can hardly deny them, so don't come around telling me that I've adapted crappy English as a result of my time in Japan. My English may be crappy, but it's all on my shoddy editing skills, not absorbing Japanese-English. 

Now that we've got that straight, let me say that this is a very tasty peanut and chocolate combination. It is crunchy, but I think the reason it tastes better than some others is that the peanuts were fried prior to having their fragments embedded in milk chocolate. There's a rich roasted quality to the nuts which makes the flavor profile better even with an extremely small portion in the candy. Incidentally, I intentionally photographed this chocolate upside-down so that the uneven distribution is easy to see. I loved this, and if I could buy a big bag of these alone, I certainly would.

Mango:

This smelled nicely fruity with a slightly perfume-like edge. The outer white chocolate is very, very sweet and quite soft. The jelly inside is also soft and has a zesty edge to it which helps cut through the sweet outer coating to some extent. The flavor is like a really rich mango puree mixed with a bit of powdered sugar. As a small bite, it's really enjoyable, but I think that one small candy would definitely be the limit. Any more than that at once and it's just going to overwhelm one with sweetness.

Coconut:

The coconut scent on this is quite intoxicating and I was encouraged by the fact that it had a dark chocolate coating. I can't think of any reason why dark chocolate should pair better, but it's possible that years of seeing "Mounds" bars made me believe this was the proper presentation. Unlike the aforementioned bar, the coconut filling in this is not too sweet and the bittersweet chocolate cuts through what sweetness there is for two complimentary flavors. That being said, I ate this in two bites and it seemed rather intensely bittersweet by the end of the second bite. I liked this, but I wouldn't go out of my way to eat a lot of them.

I like the Tirol concept of mixing flavors in small portions and the fact that the flavors are often pronounced with balanced sweetness. I don't like the fact that the chocolate is often quite soft and that was the case with these. I prefer chocolate with a greater snap to it. That being said, as small bites of chocolate to satisfy a craving, I don't think one can go wrong with these. The flavors are strong without being overbearing and you really do feel that one chocolate is "enough."

Country Ma'am 5 Flavor Cookie Assortment

Back when I first moved to Japan, there was a "Fujiya" cake shop close to the train station nearest my apartment. The shop sold elaborate freshly made cakes for a pretty hefty price as well as packaged sweets. The shop featured a "life size" (about the size of a 6 year-old child) statue of the company's lip-licking mascot, Peko-chan. Fans of Peko-chan can join a fan club on Fujiya's web site and get their hands on a variety of junk bearing her likeness.

The Fujiya cake shop closed up some time ago, but I still run across their mass-produced sweets on occasion. They make a ubiquitous milk fondant filled chocolate with Peko-chan on the cover and Country Ma'am cookies. As I mentioned in a previous review, Country Ma'am are a soft, chewy cookie with a crispy exterior which are even better when microwaved.


This box of assorted cookies includes the usual cocoa chocolate chip and vanilla as well as three new flavors: cream cheese, strawberry, and "delicious chocolate". There are two of each kind of cookie in the box, but I'm only going to review the three new flavors since I already reviewed the vanilla and cocoa in the aforementioned review. Ten small cookies are sold for about 200 yen ($2.18). Since the big bag of cocoa and vanilla cookies alone is about 400 yen ($4.36) and contains 24 cookies, you're paying a slight premium for the new flavors.

From left: strawberry, cream cheese, delicious chocolate
(Click this image for a more detailed, larger one.)

All of the cookies have the same basic texture. The outside is crispy and the inside is moist and chewy. The strawberry one seems a little strange though since it seems like pinkish dough was applied to the outside of a vanilla cookie. The interior is not pink.

• strawberry: This smells pleasantly of real strawberries. The taste is slightly tart, with a nice real strawberry flavor and it is mildly sweet. There was exactly one white chocolate chip on the edge of this.
• cream cheese: This one smelled very faintly of cream cheese and had a nice tangy cream cheese flavor. Like the strawberry, there was exactly one white chocolate chip stuck in the top.
• delicious chocolate: They smelled nicely chocolatey and the taste as compared to the regular "cocoa" flavor was of deeper chocolate. I'd say it was marginally better than the cocoa version. There also appeared to be a few tiny fragments of nuts in this, but you can't taste them because they're too small. The ingredients list for this cookie mentioned almond paste, but I couldn't detect any of it in the taste.

The packaging is rather misleading and I think that it has been digitally constructed to make you think that all of the cookies are full of chocolate chips. The cream cheese and strawberry seem like they were made by having a machine drop just one chip on the corner as that was all that was in each of them. I get the feeling that that chip is simply there to add the slightest bit of credibility to the "choco chip" claim written on the packages. That being said, I don't think the cookies suffer at all for their lack of chips. They probably would be too sweet with more of them.

These were all nice cookies with good flavor and excellent texture, but they carry the tiniest hint of an artificial flavor which I connect with the preservatives or the packaging. The texture is unique among the various cookies you can buy in Japan and is about as close to homemade that you can get from packaged cookies. That is not to say they are anywhere near as good as a home-baked chewy cookie, but they're nice in a pinch.

Tirol Strawberry Assortment

There's something about a multi-pack that makes the consumption of food more interesting. Perhaps it's the variety. Perhaps it's the fact that it's a lot cheaper than buying stuff individually. At any rate, this bag full of Tirol small chocolates (about 1 inch/2.54 cm square each) caught my eye at the local 100 yen shop, even though I'm not a great fan of strawberry candy.


There are 3 flavors in the bag. You get three each of strawberry jelly, condensed milk and strawberry, and strawberry biscuit. The information on the front of the package mentions that the condensed milk and strawberry one has "condensed milk sauce" in the center and "strawberry powder" mixed in with the chocolate coating. The "biscuit" one is similar to other biscuit varieties, flavored white chocolate over a bland little cracker-like cookie. The "jelly" one has, well, jelly, but it's not the kind of jelly you spread on toast. It's more like a jelly candy or gumdrop.


All of the candy has the same design and were made in the same style molds. As one might expect, they're going to be very similar in terms of the strawberry chocolate coating which they all have in common. The chocolate is very soft and cleaves easily when you bite into it. This is a common characteristic for most Tirol chocolates.


Strawberry Jelly:
This smells like milk chocolate and strawberry and has the strongest flavor. It tastes a bit like a Tootsie Roll and strawberry at first with a tart finish from the jelly. The center is a little chewy. The flavor is good and the texture quite satisfying.

Bis:
This smells like strawberry and white chocolate. At first, you mainly taste sweetness with a very faint strawberry, but if you roll it on your tongue, you get a quick hit of mildly tart strawberry. The first bite yields no cookie flavor at all, but the second (and final one given how small this is) reveals a small hint of a Twix style cookie.

Condensed Milk and Strawberry:
This also smells like strawberry and white chocolate. It tastes sweet with a hint of milky flavor, but both are mild. It grows to be quite sweet on the second bite. The texture of the creamy filling is pretty good. It's a little like butter cream frosting.

Of the three types, I liked the strawberry jam one the most. This was a bit of a surprise since I'm not generally keen on strawberry and chocolate. The flavor was the deepest and most complex. The other two are mainly nice for their textural elements and taste relatively similar to one another. If you really, really like strawberry chocolate, these might be nice to pick up, but they aren't to die for because the flavors are relatively weak. I had this bag around for a long time and it took about two months to finish 9 pieces off and I won't be buying another.

These have also been reviewed at Snack Love.