Random Picture #187

Nestle Japan is mainly recognized for its KitKats, but it has been introducing the Crunch bar to the Japanese market. They didn't sell them as individual bars when I was there, but they sold them as mini bars in large bags. For this reason, I never bought a Nestle crunch bar in Japan as I didn't want to buy an enormous bag of them.

One of the reasons the Crunch brand isn't as well known as KitKats is that Nestle Japan didn't go crazy offering a lot of varieties, though they did offer a green tea variety (which I can still buy here but according to the Nestle Japan web site, it's now "obsolete") and are currently offering a vanilla caramel version.

I used to love Nestle's Crunch bar when I was a kid and it was my second favorite candy bar to see in my trick-or-treat bag (the first was Snickers). Since coming home, I've found that the quality has changed or my tastes have. It's not the thrill it once was.

Angel Pie (Mini)

Angel pies are something that I've seen around Japan for a long time. In fact, I think I may have purchased a box of them a very long time ago. The full size pies are about 6.5 cm or 2.5 inches in diameter. The mini ones are about 3.5 cm or 1.4 inches. The big ones are usually sold in boxes of 6 in supermarkets. I picked up this tiny one at an AM/PM convenience store for 30 yen. It was a premium price for such a small morsel, but I wouldn't be reviewing it now if I had had to buy a whole box of the big ones as my lack of a strong impression upon initial purchase years ago probably indicated I was less than overwhelmed. Also, at 40 calories, it's an indulgence that I can make without much guilt.


The Angel Pie is one of Morinaga's "biscuit line" of products. It was introduced in 1961 and is one of their better known cookie-style products. If you'd like to see a history of the pies and their packaging, you can have a peak at Morninaga's site's history of the product. You can also pick yourself up a desktop picture of a bare-assed angel munching one of the pies if you're into quasi-kiddie porn illustrations. I think this was named "Angel Pie" because of Morinaga's logo (which is an angel) as well as the notions of cloud-like marshmallow filling.


The angel pie is a fake chocolate coating over a super soft graham-cracker-style cake and a soft marshmallow filling. The softness of the pie when chewing is emphasized as a positive attribute in Morinaga's blurb on these. It doesn't smell like much at all. There's a faint whiff of cheap chocolate. The first sense you have when you bite into it is of the graham cracker-style cake. It's a weak flavor, but it's the most prominent of all of the weak flavors. You are hit, for mere seconds, by a mild chocolate flavor and finally with an odd aftertaste which I believe is supposed to be the taste of the marshmallow filling.

This was a very "blah" experience. It wasn't bad at all, but it just wasn't very good. The funky marshmallow flavoring is off-putting, but the truth is that all Japanese-made marshmallows have a strange aftertaste, so it's par for the course. The main problem is that the textures don't have enough variation and the flavors are all too weak. It's inoffensive, but I wouldn't buy it again or even eat one if I was offered one for free unless I was very, very hungry because I wouldn't feel it was worth the cost in calories.

Kuchidoke Cacao KitKat (mini)

"Kuchi" in Japanese means "mouth" and "doke" means melt, so this is a "melt in your mouth chocolate" KitKat. I'm not sure if that is meant to conjure up the idea that you'll have a mouth full of the rich chocolate sauce on the box or if this is part of what seems to be a winter fad in Japan right now for fondue. I noticed when I was shopping around Christmas time that fondue sets (and marshmallows) seemed to be on offer everywhere. In fact, there was a woman melting Ghana bars at the entrance of one of the tonier supermarkets about a week before Christmas and offering up samples.


This variety has been on offer for quite awhile, and I've been avoiding it because it is a little expensive for a relatively small amount. A box of 5 mini bars costs 189 yen ($2.06) at Seiyu. The total amount of candy is about 1.25 KitKats (about 5 regular fingers) in my rough estimation. Since a regular KitKat costs about 100 yen ($1.09), this makes this 50% more expensive than a regular bar. Of course, it is a special variety, so one has to expect a little increase in price, but I'm a cheapskate. The truth is that my husband picked this up not knowing that I was waiting for it to end up in the bargain bin, and he plunked it on my desk.

The description on the back says that the exterior coating is "melt in your mouth chocolate" and between the wafers is croquant. I hadn't heard of croquant before, but it is a French confection made up of carmelized sugar that does not include butter or cream. It is usually just water and sugar and one of its uses is to make a type of nut brittle (particularly with almonds).


Each mini bar is individually wrapped, has 70 calories, and smells nicely of chocolate. The cocoa scent is definitely stronger than the chocolate on a normal KitKat. The flavor is also richer and deeper. It's a little like a really strong hot chocolate, but with no bitter notes. Despite being called a "melt in your mouth cocoa" bar, it isn't softer than a normal KitKat and doesn't actually melt in your mouth. That's okay though. It's still one tasty version of a KitKat and I wish that regular bars were flavored like this one. I didn't detect the croquant portion, but my husband said that he detected something a bit malt-like when he sampled it. It could be that the flavor is very subtle and I just missed it.

Though this isn't a strongly divergent variation on the regular KitKat, it is a superior quality one in terms of the deep chocolate flavor. I would definitely recommend giving it a try and I wouldn't hesitate to buy it again.

This was also (very favorably) reviewed at Jen's KitKat blog.