Morinaga Crackling Choco Balls and Potato Choco Balls (product information)

When I was a kid, I remember trying Pop Rocks. It was sort of cool feeling them crackle in my mouth a few times, but then I lost interest. Years went by and I grew up without feeling any desire to re-visit Pop Rocks. At some point, I started dropping in on designer chocolate shops in Tokyo. One of those was Leonidas and they gave me a sample. Lo and behold, it included Pop Rocks. It was one of the most expensive chocolatiers I'd ever experienced, and they were designing their candy with little carbonated bits of sugar.

If putting Pop-Rock-style candies is good enough for Leonidas, then it's good enough for Morinaga. If nothing else  convinces me that this is candy designed for kids, the existence of a "crackling" version does. This is adventure candy. If I run across some at a Japanese market, I'll probably give them a shop, but I would have very low expectations.

Morinaga's other somewhat unusual offering is "potato". It's being promoted a "light and crispy". This is another one that I'll pick up if I see it. I would anticipate that it has potato-chip-like bits in it and that it won't have a lot in the way of potato flavor to offer, but rather be textured white chocolate.

If any of my readers get to these before me, please feel free to share your impressions in comments. If they're not particularly interesting, you can save me a little money. :-)

Calbee Jaga Rico German Potato

Prior to coming to Japan, I never thought much about the private lives of cartoon mascots. Most of them really didn't require a back story. They just appeared on the front of the product package and looked deliriously happy at the prospect of consuming whatever was tucked inside. Of course, Cap'n Crunch is the exception. Back in his younger days, he was the surliest swab who ever scrubbed a poop deck. It was only after Prozac became a big part of his life that he became the jovial spokesperson that we know and love. That being said, the propensity of his cereal to cut up the roof of your mouth is no coincidence. No amount of Prozac can annihilate the need to inflict a little buccaneer mayhem.

Getting back to cartoon mascots and Japan, Jaga Rico's mascot is apparently quite the world traveler and has a wide and diverse family. Calbee's site includes information on job, family status, and geographic location. This is one cosmopolitan family of cartoon giraffes. Who wouldn't want to partake of their rich salted snack food heritage? Well, actually, in general, me. I've reviewed two types of Jaga Rico before and was less than impressed. It's not that I don't like these salted potato straws. They are crispy and have a good potato flavor. The issue for me has been the flavor depth, which has left me wishing for something more potent.

I came by these in an unusual way. My husband and I were out for a night-time walk and he felt like playing a UFO Catcher game and there was one which looked interesting and it had Jaga Rico as a prize. To be precise, there were plastic bags with three containers in it and one of the flavors was German potato. According to the family history pages of the cartoon giraffes, this flavor has returned by popular demand and should impart the flavor of onion and bacon as well as, of course, potato.

The first bite is, indeed, a bit on the hammy side. The "bacon" element is definitely the strongest flavor. The onion is quite subdued, though it tends to add to a savory backdrop along with various extracts and powders such as cheese, chicken, and garlic. The first two straws are pretty good, but the problem is that the flavor seems to vanish quickly. It's as if the tongue acclimates so rapidly to the subtle nature of the flavorings that they fade away. This is not necessarily a bad thing. They are crunchy and salty in a satisfying way, but the aspect which is German potato quickly becomes almost irrelevant.

My husband won 12 containers of Jaga Rico, and I will eat most of them, slowly. Fortunately, one of my students told me that this is her favorite snack so I'll give some of them to her and I'm sure she'll be appreciative. I think that most people would be happier with these than me. I'll admit that I like strongly flavored salted snacks and being a snack reviewer makes me extra fussy. My review is indifferent, but I think that these might have better appeal to people of different tastes.

Calbee Potato Farm Jaga Pokkuru

When I first came to Japan, I didn't have a phone or television. Telephones back them required a deposit on the order of $500, and my husband and I already had borrowed about $10,000 from his brother in order to set up shop here. That money, incidentally, was mainly sunk into the cost of our apartment (first and last month's rent, a month for real estate agency fees, and a month as a way of thanking the landlord for accepting about $1200 a month from us in exchange for living in a tiny apartment). We also used some of it as start-up scratch (furniture, food, living expenses until our first paycheck arrived). We wanted to pay that back before we indulged in luxuries like telecommunications or T.V.

When we finally got a T.V., it was a tiny one that only caught signals from local T.V. channels and had very little, if any bilingual programming at a time when we were novices to Japan and the Japanese language. We didn't watch much T.V. back then, but there was a bilingual travel program which talked about all sorts of resort areas in Japan like Hakodate. Since Hakodate is in Hokkaido, they kept playing this song which went something like, "oh, oh, Hokkaido, Hokkaido-oh, oh." I probably heard snippets of that song three or four times during that one viewing of that program and it has burned into my cortex and I cannot get it out. What is worse, now every time I see a product from Hokkaido, that hideous ditty pops back into my head. Needless to say, I've never been to Hokkaido, and probably never will go there for fear of going mad from the endless loop that would surely result.

Jaga Pokkuru cavorting in the blue waters before their lives are horribly ended in some drunk's mouth. 

So, now we come to the actual review portion of our program in which I tell you that this is a souvenir-only item from... oh, oh, Hokkaido. Supposedly, you can only buy them from kiosks or souvenir shops in Hokkaido-oh, oh, but Rakuten sells a box of ten 18-gram packets for 840 yen ($10.48). The box we were given has six 18-gram (.64 oz.) packets. The selling point of these over something like Jagabee (which is a similar product also made by Calbee) is that these are whole fried potatoes that are monitored by a human being rather than processed sticks which are created by a machine.

These look like petrified French fries. They also sort of smell like them. What they taste like, however, is potato chips in somewhat concentrated form. If you could make a chip that was as thick as a fry with all of the flavor and crispy texture of the chip intact, this is what it'd be. These have a nice potato flavor and are lightly salted. They are a fine enough salted snack but the thickness is, at least initially, a bit odd. I'm not used to eating something which looks and crunches like a thin chip but is so dense.

This is excellent to have around for a salty snack craving, especially with the individual packets discouraging you from eating more than108 calories at once. That being said, I would never buy these for myself simply because I can't see them as being superior to Calbee's already delicious line of regular chips. If I have a choice between this and a bag of any of their flavored or plain chips for a much lower price, I'd take the chips. That being said, this was a very welcome gift and a good souvenir. I'd definitely be happy if someone wanted to give me another box.

Just a gentle reminder that there is a contest running for two weeks to win a few snack and snack-related goodies. If you'd like to enter, the details are in this post.

Pokka Iroiro Soup

I pay a lot more attention to new products now than I have ever done since coming to Japan. In fact, it is interesting how doing this blog has altered my focus on a daily basis. It used to be that every time I went to a store, I was drawn to the imports to see if any old favorites had somehow made their way to these shores. Now, I'm drawn to the domestic new products for review fodder. This is one of the many ways in which this blog has helped me develop a renewed appreciation for living here. 

I noticed recently as the rainy season and summer heat has poured on that instant soup designed to be prepared and consumed cold is on many shelves. I chose this Pokka Iroiro (various) soup because the three flavors were all appealing to me - potato, corn, and pea. A lot of the other cold soups were in one flavor only, or contained mushroom or other flavors that were less appealing. I found this particular variety pack at Peacock supermarket for 298 yen ($3.37).

Pokka, incidentally, is a very well-known manufacturer of prepared foods and canned beverages in Japan.  They have their own drink vending machines and sell "Black" and "Demitasse" brand coffee among other drinks. They also sell lemon juice, several types of instant soup, and are the only domestic maker of croutons that I ever see on the market shelves. As someone who can't abide a salad without croutons, this is something that I notice. The company was established in 1957 and started their business selling artificial lemon products.

From left: potato, pea, corn.

One thing I didn't notice, though it says so right on the box, was that there are 8 packets, but 4 of them are potato and there are only 2 each of corn and pea. I never understand why they feel it necessary to be as disproportionate as possible and to always offer fewer of the more appealing flavors. I like potato just fine, but it's a relatively bland offering. I'd prefer more corn (of course, who wouldn't!).

To prepare this soup, you measure 130 ml. (about 2/3 of a cup) of milk into a cup and add in the powder. Wait 2 minutes then stir it up. I was very careful to add in the exact amount of milk because I didn't want to risk messing up the concentration of the flavor. Note that I used low-fat (.5%) milk.

Potato (42 calories for the powder):

This smelled and looked a lot like usual instant potato potage soup. Potage, incidentally, is a thick, creamy soup usually made with onion, garlic, butter, and potatoes. The texture was a bit funky though. It was rather lumpy, like soft bits of instant mashed potato flakes suspended in milk. In fact, the milk flavor really showed through this and Japanese milk is not one of my favorite things. On the plus side, I could taste some of the savory elements toward the end of a taste of the soup. The flavor hit me in three waves pretty much - potato, milk, chives and onion-garlic seasoning. This was decidedly so-so. I think it would have been better with tastier milk, but the texture was still pretty sub-par regardless of the dairy flavor.

Corn (39 calories for the powder):

The corn dissolved more smoothly than the potato, though I did have to smash some globby bits up with my spoon. It was also dominated by the milk's flavor, but did carry some of the classic flavor of sweet corn as you experience it in Japanese instant corn soup. My main problem with it was that it tasted quite sweet, almost to the level of feeling like a dessert. There's a smooth, rich sense to the hot version of this soup which was completely absent from this cold version. It tasted more like corn-flavored milk than actual corn soup. It wasn't bad at all, but definitely not worth the expense or even the handful of calories.

Pea (28 calories for the powder):

This one smelled the strongest, and was the least dominated by the milk flavor. Mostly, I could taste a bit of the pea flavor at the end of a sip. This is rather on the sweet side, and the most palatable of the flavors, but still not incredibly impressive. Like the corn soup, there is a rich sense of savoriness that is usually present in pea soup which was missing from this. Like the potato soup, the texture was rather lumpy as if the powder couldn't fully dissolve in the cold liquid.

The question about this soup for me initially wasn't really going to be mainly about the flavor, though obviously that is a part of it and this failed every time because the milk flavor dominated. I know what powdered instant soups tend to taste like and I actually like a lot of the hot ones in Japan (though, frankly, they are expensive for the amount you get, so I rarely have them). The question was more about the texture and whether or not potage-style soups were going to be appealing when cold. The answer for me was a big fat "meh". Given the choice, even in summer, I'd take a hot version of instant soup over one of these cold ones for the texture and a flavor profile undiluted by Japanese milk's weirdnesses.

As an experiment, I decided to alter this a bit to see if it could be better. For one thing, I made the potato version hot with 50% milk and 50% water. I wanted to see if the flavor of the soup asserted itself more prominently if there was less milk to dominate. The result was strange. It still didn't have much flavor, but at least the Japanese milk wasn't overbearing when I made the soup. The result of the heat was the most interesting thing. The potato soup got super, duper thick. I didn't want to water it down though because it was so weak anyway. I think the formulation must be different than usual instant soup to make it dissolve in cold liquids and putting it in hot liquid causing it to go a bit nuts. I also tried the pea flavor cold with 50% milk and 50% water. That was actually a better, but not exactly impressive result. I could taste the pea flavor better, and the weird milk flavor wasn't as strong, but it still wasn't great soup.

The bottom line is that these really aren't soups so much as milk flavoring powders. The overall taste experience is akin to making cold chocolate using Nestlé's Quik (Nesquik) or malted cold milk beverages using Milo. If you ever thought you'd enjoy a glass of milk more if it was corn, pea, or potato flavored, these are for you. Otherwise, I'd give them a miss.