Lotte Pepero Nude

I didn't know this when I bought this snack, but apparently November 11 is "Pepero day" in Korea. According to Wikipedia, the original purpose of this day -an opportunisty holiday created by Lotte in order to sell more of their snacks - was for people to become taller and thinner. The irony of exchanging sweets to become thinner was apparently lost on the marketing folks at Lotte. The date was supposed to relate to this tall and thin image as well as the product's appearance ("1111" for November 11 - I bet that loved 11/11/11 when it rolled around).

These days, the holiday is supposed to be similar to Valentine's Day, or at least the Japanese version of it. That is, it's about showing affection for friends and family. There's an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal blog about this holiday and how Glico created a "Pocky day" to counter this rival's invented holiday. Again, there is irony to this as Pepero is a rip-off of Pocky and then Pocky ripped off the Pepero holiday. They're just a couple of happy thieves stealing each others ideas.

Pepero nude is called such because the normal version has the chocolate on the outside like a Pocky. Since I hadn't really seen Pepero much before I picked this box up for 89 cents (about 90 yen) at Ranch 99 Asian Market, I had to learn about the fact that this is not their usual version from my research rather than experience - such is the studious life of a snack blogger.

These remind me in terms of their concept of Koala's March or Pucca. They're essentially an inverted Pocky stick. The good point of this is that you can use a softer filling because the chocolate coating isn't on the outside where it can rub off. The bad part is that that chocolate flavor is not going to reveal itself quite so fully.

The latter is part of the problem with these snack sticks. There's a very nice pretzel shell on the outside which has a pleasing earthy flavor from whole grain flour. The chocolate flavor is very muted even when you get to the center. Part of the reason for this is the overall construction. The other is that it's neither sweet nor salty enough to enhance the cocoa flavor. If there was a little more sweetness on the inside and some grains of salt on the outside, this could be a powerhouse. As it is, there's a touch of bittersweet chocolate flavor, a tiny bit of fatty richness from the soft filling, and a whole lot of pretzel.

Anyone who has read my blog regularly knows that I am not a fan of sugar bombs and this doesn't have to be insanely sweet to satisfy me. I know that tastes vary from country to country so I'm guessing that Koreans like their sweets low on the sweetness - even lower than the Japanese. Since this claims to be "Korea's No. 1 Brand", I'm guessing it is well-suited to their palates. It's just not finely tuned to mine. At 15 calories per stick, it's a pleasing option for the hips, but it's not doing nearly as much for the taste buds as I'd like. I'll slowly finish this package (17 sticks were in mine), but I wouldn't buy the "nude" version again.

Glico Tropical Pocky

Recently, I was looking through a copy of "Elle" magazine. No, I'm not a fashion aficionado. It was free and I was on a sociological "expedition" within the confines of my home. I was looking at it not for the articles, which was fortunate since there are probably fewer than I can count on one hand, but for the ads. For those who have never taken a look at this particular periodical, it is pretty much all advertising for fashion-related items, especially clothes.

The point of scrutinizing the ads was to note certain aspects of them. What was the ethnic balance of models, where did certain products tend to be advertised (the front of back of the magazine), what products were advertised, etc. Though not scientific, I do believe that I learned a few things about how advertisers try to reach their markets and who they are focusing on. For instance, I noted that anti-aging products - so-called "serums" - did not include a model at all, but simply showed a big bottle of the product. Food was rarely advertised, but when it was, it was clearly marketed for the calorie conscious and toward the back of the magazine.

What is my point in all of this? My point is that we are marketed to in specific ways. There are a lot more conclusions I reached, which I won't bore you with here, but I am very aware that I believe I'm making choices when I am not. There may be 25 different types of Oreos in the store, but I'm still not in control of the choices I make. Whatever those 25 types are, I didn't choose them. Some marketing person decided on what would appeal to the broadest customer base and packaged them to make that base want them more. Products are positioned, choices are narrower than we believe, and we are not in control even when advertisers offer the illusion that we are.

If you think about this for a second, you'll see what I mean more clearly. If you wanted to eat a pumpkin-flavored Oreo with a yellow cookie, and I would want to eat such a cookie, could you? That's the choice I'd like to have, but it's not there on the shelf. It sounds like a fine holiday option, but it is not available. I'm given what I'm given, and can only choose from those options.

This leads me to the Tropical Pocky, of which mango is an integral component (pineapple is the other part). Mango started to explode in popularity a few years before I left Japan. Suddenly, I started seeing packets of dried mango everywhere then that was followed by various snacks being offered in mango flavor (including sembei/rice crackers). I'm pretty sure this all started with news that mango was going to cure you of cancer, wrinkles, or male pattern baldness. Once that news got out (if such news existed, which it probably did in some form or another), people started eating the fruit and once they developed a taste for it, everyone started to flavor food with it.

Japanese people didn't choose mango. Someone on a news program, a T.V. show, or another media outlet chose to highlight it and then everyone decided this was a bandwagon to jump on. So, I experience a plethora of mango-flavored snacks from a fad that started at some point in the not so distant past and continues to slog onward into the future. Mango could be the "tiramisu" of the future - a fad that started the integration of a flavor into the collective tastes of the country and never got old. Or it could just fade away over time.

This is not "mango", though it is listed as one of the ingredients and I have to imagine that there is a reason that it is listed as a copilot with pineapple and that it is listed first. It's the same reason that "Brad Pitt" is listed before "Matt Damon". Sure, we recognize both of them, but which is going to have a greater likelihood of drawing viewers?

At any rate, despite the billing of mango and pineapple, this is dominated by the pineapple and is far too sweet for my tastes. It reminds me of an overly sweet fruit punch, but the type that is made with real flavors rather than artificial ones. It has some verisimilitude to the real deal, but is too concentrated. If this were a drink instead of a Pocky stick, I'd be adding ice or water to it to water the flavor down. If you've ever felt that 100% fruit juice was just too much for you then you'll see what I mean.

This isn't an awful Pocky, but it's far from the greatest in my opinion. I won't throw the rest away, but it'll be a slow road to finishing the box - a stick here, a stick there, and eventually it'll be gone. I wouldn't buy it again, however, and I'm inclined to avoid other fruit-flavored Pocky after this experience.

Glico Apple Custard Pretz

Pretz are to pretzels as Japanese KitKats are to candy bars. They're the bold adventurers of the pretzel flavor world and come up with more provocative flavors than their more popular cousin and rival, Pocky. Pocky is hamstrung to a certain extent by the fact that it's distinguishing feature is a coating of chocolate or chocolate-like substances. That means that it is hard to develop savory flavors for it. Pretz, which is unfettered in this regard, can prance about nakedly in any environment it chooses - sweet, savory, bold, weak, vegetable, fruit, etc.

The naked Pretz in this case comes with sweet flavorings. These options, though possible in the pretzel world, tend to be relatively rare without the inclusion of coatings. Besides this apple custard variety, there is also a strawberry one and the remainder of the family is showing its stuff in meaty, fishy, savory options like takoyaki, okonomiyaki, wasabi, and mentaiko. Those are perhaps their best turns. The more "mundane" options are buttered potato, pizza, tomato, and "salad".

Looking back, I was surprised to see that I had reviewed 10 varieties of Pretz before, and I liked every single one of them. It caught me off guard because I don't really seek it out or consider it all that interesting. Further inspection revealed that most of the flavors I tried were somehow "weird" and no longer available. I should be more impressed with the brand, but like a woman with a great boyfriend that she somehow manages to take for granted, I simply did not notice. I'm sorry Pretz. I will try to do better by you.

I can say that particularly now because this flavor keeps the batting record for the brand intact. I really liked these. Though the smell was slightly funky and off-putting, the taste was surprisingly good. There is a first hit of very faint custard followed by a salty apple flavor. As you crunch your crispy, fresh pretzel stick, the apple gets stronger and it takes on a more astringent apple cider flavor. It fades away just a bit as you finish off a stick.

It's not out of the question that one would find the apple portion of this overbearing or the mix of salt and sweet unappealing. Personally, I sometimes salt apples when I eat them anyway so this is a natural pairing for me. The custard element is relatively subdued and tends to lend a richness and balancing flavor rather than a strong element, so don't expect too much on that front. For me though, this really "worked" and I'd buy it again.

Glico Baton D'or

"Baton d'or" means "golden stick" in French. Naming any product in French instantly improves its cache. Instead of being a repackaged Pocky stick, with it's snappy name and Japanese pop cultural tones, it's a sophisticated pastry. The package designs make me think about diet foods with their attempts to emulate a slender, curvy feminine figure, but that is not what is on the minds of the folks at Glico. The thing that makes this stick "golden" is butter, lots and lots of butter. With that fact, it seems unlikely that this will do much to trim the waistline.

This brand has actually been around since around the middle of last year, but is being beefed up with new flavors and stripped of its chocolate coating. The pedestrian flavors (milk, white, strawberry, green tea, coffee) above are being supplanted at a grand release at Hankyu department store with butter sugar, cinnamon sugar, maple sugar, strawberry sugar, and green tea sugar. Though it may seem that sugar is the big deal with these high class pretzel sticks, the real selling point is that they are dipped in clarified butter after they're baked (and then dipped in sugar). If I were still in Japan, I would totally want to buy one of these, especially the cinnamon one since cinnamon snacks are relatively rare there, but Hankyu department store is in Osaka and that's a long way to go for a designer pretzel. It would take a magic stick made of real gold to get me to fork over the price of a Shinkansen ticket (over $100).

These will be available from June 12, 2013. I'm guessing that distribution will expand beyond Osaka eventually, but that information isn't clearly provided at this time.

Meiji Pucca Strawberry

I was going to start this post off by saying, "as my readers may know, I love Pucca", but the truth is that I doubt anyone remembers what my snack preferences are no matter how long they've been following this blog. For those who don't know (i.e., everyone) I believe it is a miscarriage of snack justice that that other pretzel thing with chocolate, you know, the flavorless anorexic carb stick that people are nuts about, is the one that gets all of the attention. I think that these fish-shaped delights are the superior delivery system for sweet or chocolatey goodness.

The main reason that Pucca is better, besides the fact that the very thin shell has a superior crunch and actual flavor rather than acting like an anemic and flavorless bread stick is that Pucca filling can be softer. It's the genetically superior offspring from the happy union of frosting and chocolate. Such a filling works fine trapped inside the bloated belly of a pretzel fish. It'd be too soft for a packet of sticks jostling together in a plastic pouch.

I figured that this would be the ultimate test of how good Pucca can be. Strawberry is one of those things that so often goes wrong in treats, especially in my eyes. It is usually too sweet, too strong, or simply too fake. If a strawberry Pucca is good, then my faith in their crispy pretzel goodness no matter what flavor they are stuffed with will be pretty close to unshakable.

The shell on these is exactly the same as all others. It's a crispy pretzel exterior with a very light whole grain flour flavor. You have to be making an active to pick up on this with most flavors, but you pretty much lose the thread of it through time with this strawberry version. While the first bite is actually quite well balanced, the sweetness of the filling does start to accumulate as you go from 1st to 5th bite. This isn't a bad thing though. It's just a matter of fact.

The strawberry filling is decadently creamy and quite sweet, but not cloyingly so. It has just a bit of bite at the end and, yes, it does taste artificial, but not in a bad way. It's hard to explain, but there is no chemical flavor involved, but you know that it's not what real strawberries taste like. If you've ever enjoyed a "grape" lollipop or Kool-aid and enjoyed it while being thoroughly aware that it's all fake flavors, you'll know what I'm talking about.

I really enjoyed these, much to my surprise, but they were sweeter than the chocolate version. I would buy these again, but I'll be honest and say that they'd be at the bottom of my Pucca flavor list. That being said, it's a list which has no duds on it, and that's saying something.

Image from the Pucca web site.

Incidentally, there are apparently different shapes of Pucca. Since I never paid attention, I never noticed this. The Pucca site tells you about each one, including little four panel stories to tell you what they like. It's actually kind of creepy to think I need to know about the interests of something I'm going to eat thoughtlessly. ;-)

Chestnut Pucca

Despite my initial reservations about the show, I found that I learned to love the T.V. series "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer". In Japan, incidentally, Fox used to promote it as "Buffy, the cross lover." Fortunately, they gave that promotional slogan as it made sound like she was doing something impure with a crucifix rather than running around stabbing vampires with bits of sharpened wood. 

A lot of fans of that T.V. series felt that the secondary character of "Willow", played by Alyson Hannigan, was more attractive, more interesting, and generally a more appealing part of the show. She wasn't the name character and more people were familiar with Buffy, but she had a quality that those who were paying attention appreciated. I personally had no favoritism, but this situation, in which a more widely-known character is actually of lesser quality than a secondary character, reminded me of the standing of Pucca in the Japanese snack world.

The "Buffy" of Japanese pretzel snacks is "Pocky", but Pucca is a much better presentation of a similar concept. Pocky dips the stick in flavored coatings, Pucca has a crispy pretzel shell full of flavored cream. In my opinion, Pucca carries a much better, earthy rye flour pretzel flavoring and the concentration of the filling inside provides for a stronger burst of flavor. The shell is very crispy and delicate and provides a better contrast (and crunch) than a Pocky stick. 

The only question about this presentation of Pucca for me was whether it was going to do right by me in terms of the chestnut filling. Mainly, was it going to convey the essence of chestnut and be properly, but not overbearingly, sweet. I'm pleased to say that it hits the nail right on the head in terms of conveying a creamy chestnut flavored enhanced with vanilla. The filling is a lot like the cream in an Oreo, though it's a bit more solid. 

You can find Pucca all over the place, and this version will probably be around until the weather turns warm again. It's usually 100 or so yen per box ($1.21) and each box is 46 grams (1.6 oz.). The entire box has 241 calories. While this isn't my absolute favorite Pucca (that honor stays with the original chocolate version), it is a very tasty variation. If it were just a little salty or a little less sweet, it'd be getting a "very happy" rating. As it is, it's still good, but just avoids being great. 

Sudachi Pretz

One thing which I have come to understand as a food reviewer is that depth of flavor is very important when you're sampling a bunch of crap and want to find some way of distinguishing the run-of-the-mill snack food dreck from the beyond-the-mill snack food dreck. The thing that tends to separate the big boys like Glico from the small fries like Riska is that they layer flavors into their products instead of just heap tons of one particular flavor onto them. That being said, I'm pretty sure that most of the people who cram these things into their snack holes aren't paying nearly as much attention to the subtle flavors as the likes of me. Glico's efforts are wasted on most, but I have nothing but love for their devotion of offering a multiplicity of flavors in a lowly pretzel snack.

Because I'm not a food expert and just spend my time with junk food, I had never heard of sudachi before buying this for a mere 100 yen ($1.30) at Okashi no Marche super discount snack shop. Of course, I saw the words on the front, and the citrus fruit and bits of green onion, but I didn't know if that was the name of a particular dish that these were aping or a primary flavor. I assumed those green things on the front were limes, but they are actually a Japanese citrus fruit which is supposed to be "zestier" than lemons or limes according to Wikipedia.

Despite what Wikipedia says, these definitely taste very similar to limes though I will admit that they are very "zippy" in flavor. Though they smell rather funky, they taste very good and have a good savory mix of salt, citrus, and an almost warming finish of onion. I wasn't kidding when I talked about flavor depth and layering. These have it and you'll notice it if you aren't too busy snarfing them down to pay attention to what's dancing across your taste buds.

Each box has two packets of 27.5 grams (about an ounce) which provide you with 136 calories of carbohydrate and sodium fun. I strongly recommend picking these up if you're a pretzel fan and can find them. This is part of Glico's regional Pretz campaign (which appears to come about once a year) and this particular flavor is one that is available nationwide. This is in contrast to the "spicy chicken wing" variety that I reviewed previously that was an East Japan release. These would make a tasty accompaniment to your favorite beverage (provided it's not coffee or tea) or good movie snacking food in a portion controlled package.

Spicy Chicken Wings Pretz

Once a year, usually around the summer in my experience, Glico issues regional flavors of Pretz. For East Japan, the flavors are these spicy chicken wing pretzels and gyoza (pot sticker). West Japan gets yuzu koshoo (boy, do I envy that!) and a peppered fish flavor (which I envy a good deal less). This King Solomon approach, split the country in half and divide the Pretz between them, is ameliorated to some extent by the inclusion of two nation-wide varieties, one of which I will review at a later date.

You can buy these nearly anywhere right now, but I got them for a mere 50 yen (64 cents) at a discount snack shop in Koenji called Okashi no Marche. I've mentioned this place before. They are absolutely the cheapest game in town when it comes to snacks, though they also carry some pretty expensive imports (especially from the U.K. and Russia). They had four varieties of Pretz available. I'm not sure why they were so cheap, but I wasn't going to turn down the chance to sample them for that price. One box has two packages of about 1 oz. (28 grams) each and provides 137 calories. It's a good portion size for serious salty snacking.

These have a nice savory flavor which hits the hardest on the first few sticks. There's a peppery flavor and savory chicken and garlic in the mix. The saltiness level is just about right, but a little more might not have hurt. My main "issue" with these is that the flavor seems to be something one acclimates to rather rapidly. After about 6 sticks, you mainly just taste pretzel. It could be my tongue, or it could be there's something about these spices. Regardless, these are good pretzels and, if nothing else, the flavor acclimation issue may encourage lighter consumption. I'd definitely buy them again.

Glico Wasabi Pretz

Today, the "s" key on my keyboard stopped functioning. As I looked at my puny buffer of posts on this blog, I pondered how things have changed since I started it. When I first started this reviews blog, I often had a buffer of nearly 2 months. In fact, it was so large that I was worried that, by the time the posts appeared, some of the food would be off the market. Now, I'm lucky to have the next week covered. That means that having a keyboard that is out of commission actually might mean an interruption in posting.

To combat this dire turn of events, I fished around in the closet for an old PC keyboard that might work on my Mac Mini. Lo and behold, I found a Japanese USB keyboard which was insufferably awful but worked on a Mac. When I say it's "awful", I mean because the keys are oriented differently and there are extra keys. Also, it's like typing on an old typewriter in terms of the feedback and touch. So, if I make more mistakes in my blog posts than usual (quite a feat in and of itself), blame the fact that I'm working with a keyboard handicap.

It's my intense dedication to bringing you, my wonderful readers, a post every weekday that has me slaving away at substandard equipment. Fortunately, I have the kick of wasabi to fuel my fingers as they are forced to hammer extra hard at the chunky keys I am working with. That makes me think that there should be a product out there with a mascot called "super wasabi monkey" that eats horseradish snacks and becomes charged up. I guess that sounds too much like Popeye with his spinach, but, hey, monkey! He should wield a wasabi root, and wear an eyepatch.

Getting to the pretzels I'm here to review, I picked these up at Okashi no Marche super discount snack shop for a mere 50 yen (62 cents), marked down to about half of their usual price. This gets you two foil packets of about one ounce (27.5 grams) of green pretzels. If you snarf down a whole packet, you're putting away 137 calories.

The pretzels smell a bit funky, but they taste very good. They have just enough of a grassy, chlorophyll taste to add a savory depth, but not enough to make you feel like your chewing on a leaf stem. They burn the lips a bit, and build up a little  heat on the back of the tongue and nasal passages, but it's a little flare of heat that dissipates rather than builds up. That being said, the "kick" grows with every bite, but it never does the searing burn that chili peppers or jalepenos manage with prolonged consumption.

These are nice, flavorful pretzels with much more complexity than most. The thing which is rather neat about it is that they get that depth without resorting to piling on a ton of flavor powder. The pretzels themselves are crispy, but just a delivery mechanism for the flavor. They're lightly salted, but that works well with the wasabi. If you're a fan of wasabi otherwise, I think these will be a delight. I think they'd make a great movie viewing snack, but would recommend a beverage along with them to slow down the heat build-up.

Lotte Toppo Marron Cake Sticks

 Toppo is Lotte's answer to Glico's Pocky. To avoid looking like a complete copycat, they turned them inside out and created a pretzel straw filled with a sweet cream of one flavor or another instead of dipping the pretzel in chocolate. I've been meaning to review something from the Toppo line for awhile, but hadn't gotten around to it. This chestnut cream cake variety which was placed in my fukubukuro from Okashi no Machioka and pushed up the time-line on my getting to these inverted Pocky sticks.

The Toppo boxes are pretty heavy (42 grams/1.5 oz.) and full of substantial sticks so they usually cost between 150-180 yen each ($1.83-$2.19) depending on where you're getting them. This variety has two foil packs with 7 sticks in each. Each stick is 33 calories so eating one pack will set you back 231 calories. If you don't pay attention to the nutrition information (or can't understand it) and eat the whole thing, you can consume a whopping 462 calories.

The heft comes mainly from the not insubstantial amount of flavored cream in the center of the pretzel tube. I think it'd be interesting to try and drink a hot drink through these, but I imagine that the pretzel exterior would degrade before the filling would warm and melt enough to suck it out. If I were a more adventurous sort, I might try microwaving them to make the filling molten then give my mouth third degree burns by sucking it out. I'm not quite that stupid, but I probably will be after a few more years of snack reviewing.

The sticks smell a bit like malt and caramel. Since one of the ingredients is malt powder, this is not surprise. I have considerable experience with various chestnut cream sweets including the real deal (Mont Blanc) and these are nothing like them. They mainly taste a bit like coffee and caramel. I think that the coffee aspect is an attempt to emulate the roasting of chestnuts as a means of copying the flavor. The caramel is probably some sort of alchemy between whey, cream powder, and chocolate. There's also added caramel flavoring.

It's not really important to me that these actually taste like chestnut cream cake, despite the fact that there are pictures of that type of cake on the front and back of the box. The important point is that it taste good. This is a more complicated question. I like the mix of pretzel with sweet fillings, as I've mentioned before when reviewing the awesome Pucca. These I didn't go for so much. Part of the problem is that the pretzel shell doesn't seem to have as much flavor as Pucca because it's not made with more flavorful rye flour (as Pucca is). Also, the flavor profile of the creamy filling is very shallow. It's sweet, but the coffe/caramel/chestnut notes are conveyed mostly through scent and not actual taste.

These are absolutely not bad at all, and I will finish the box. I just like to get more flavor and not simply have texture and sweetness. If I hadn't gotten this with my "lucky bag", I may well have purchased it for sampling anyway, but I would have been disappointed. I'm not through with Toppo as I want to try the original version (which has been favorably reviewed at Pocky Watch), but I wouldn't buy these again.

Ogura (red bean) Pretz

Awhile back, I reviewed the gyoza (potsticker) Pretz and said I would also be reviewing this red bean variety. Shortly after that review, I put the second box of Pretz into a basket on top of my refrigerator (in which snacks wait for sampling) and forgot about it. Fortunately, these are still on sale so this review hasn't lapsed into irrelevance.

You can find these in most snack shops and convenience stores, but I got this at a discount snack shop in Koenji called  Okashi no Marche. They cost 99 yen ($1.14). Each box has two 27.5 gram (about 1 oz.) foil packets of pretzels and there are 135 calories. This is pretty average for this portion of pretzels. The ingredients list is as expected (flour, margarine, etc.), excepted that it includes adzuki powder.

Yes, this is the same picture from my other review. The pretzels look exactly the same. Only the powder flavoring is different.

It's rather a shame that I waited so long because these are really good. I've never had a sweet pretzel that really wowed me that wasn't coated in some form of chocolate, but this came about as close as a pretzel can to doing so. The red bean flavor isn't as "beany" as these things can be. It's more of an essential essence with the beaniness removed. They're lightly sweetened, but not so faintly that you can't detect the sweetness.

I would recommend these for red bean sweet novices. They introduce you to the flavor without any of the elements which tend to put people off of them. I really liked them, but those who really, really love adzuki and its textural elements may find it too limited an emulation of the red bean experience. I'll definitely buy them again though.

Potsticker (Gyoza) Pretz

Glico is currently doing a campaign in which it is offering limited edition flavors of its Pretz pretzel sticks in either east or west Japan. I am in the eastern area so I can buy this potsticker flavor along with "scallop butter" and "ogura" (sweetened red beans). I bought the bean and potsticker (gyoza in Japanese) versions and passed on the scallop version. Western Japan is getting grilled onion, yuzu koshoo, and eel. I don't much care about any of those except yuzu koshoo, which I love as a sembei flavor.

I found these at Okashi no Marche, a new discount snack shop in a neighborhood opposite mine, for 99 yen ($1.14). Each box has two 27.5 gram (about 1 oz.) foil packets of pretzels.The ingredients list really didn't reveal much about the flavoring except that pork extract and Sucralose (the artificial sweetener) are included along with typical pretzel ingredients and additives.

When I opened the foil packet, I was hit by the familiar scent of the type of dipping sauce you get with gyoza in Japan. It's a combination of soy sauce and hot sesame oil. The first bite of the sticks revealed a pretty decently authentic representation of gyoza, without the familiar wrapper's taste. They are savory and nicely salted without being overbearing. The hot sesame oil flavor has a heat build-up, but it's not really the kind that lingers on the tongue. It tends to warm your entire mouth more evenly and is quite pleasant.

These are really good. If you're a gyoza fan, and particularly if you enjoy the dipping sauce and spicy sesame oil, I strongly recommend giving them a try. I really enjoyed them, though they are, after all, only pretzels, so I can't get too excited about them.

Glico Spicy Nori Pretz

I'm a sucker for salted snack treats in Japan that put a little red chili pepper on the label design. In fact, I'm unlikely to look much further once I see it's shiny redness and that's why I bought these giant seaweed (nori) pretzels (のりー味かぶりつきプリッツ) despite not being a great fan of nori. I found these at a 7-11 outside of my immediate home area for 103 yen ($1.15).

These are part of what translates as the "ringside" series of Glico snacks. Previously, I reviewed a Giant Pocky which was offered under the same label and I still don't know why it is called that or if I'm translating the words properly. All I know is that these are 30 cm. (11.8 in.) long and a little over 1 cm. (.4 in.) wide. The package contains two pretzel sticks stacked on top of one another in a long plastic tray. One of my pretzels was already cracked apart, but the other was in perfect shape.

The ingredients for these include soy sauce seasoning, seaweed flakes, and a host of pretzel-like things like yeast, flour, and shortening. They look and smell like whole wheat flour was used. The package says that they include wheat protein so that may account for the more robust wheat flavor. There are 3.1 grams of protein in them and 140 calories if you eat both sticks (and you would if you bought them).


Since they have little green flecks of seaweed on them, they also carry the faint smell of nori. They're a very hearty-looking pretzel with lots of visible spices and salt. The truth is that they really are not proper pretzels but more like the bastard child of a pretzel and a cracker. The texture is softer and more cookie-like than a conventional pretzel, but it's still crispy. This was very flavorful with a mix of spices that came together well. The heat ends to hit you at the end and accumulate as you eat more, but it's not like jalepeno heat that starts to seriously burn more and more. My mouth didn't feel overly hot by the end of the second pretzel.

I liked these quite a lot because they were flavorful and the texture was really satisfying. If you're looking for a hard pretzel experience, these might not fit the bill. I should also note that the seaweed flavor is present, but not as strong as eating a cracker wrapped in nori so this isn't for fans of intense seaweed flavors so much as nori wusses like me.

Glico Bacon Pretz

One of the lessons I teach my students is about the environment and food. It explains that many forest are cut down to create pastures for cattle so that we can have cheap burgers at places like MacDonald's. At the end of that lesson, there's a list of foods and students are asked if they are willing to sacrifice eating those foods in order to reduce the damage done to the environment. Bacon or ham is listed, and my students say they would never give it up. That being said, they say they don't eat a lot of it, but they do like to add small amounts of bacon to various dishes to enhance flavor.


Bacon is such an intensely flavorful food that it lends itself well to being a seasoning rather than a main dish, and it can be a truly wonderful flavoring in salted snack foods when used properly. I've had some good and not so good experiences with bacon-flavored salted snacks in Japan, and I'm pleased to say that these Pretz pretzels sticks fall into the "good" category.

I picked up this 48 gram (1.7 oz.) bag at a local market for 98 yen ($1.09) where it was on sale with another "new" flavor which didn't really light my fire, tomato. It's not that I don't like tomato, but rather that I'd rather get my tomato flavor from, well, tomatoes. I also think there's a chance tomato will be "ketchup" when it comes to salted snack seasoning. There are a plethora of delicate 10 cm. (about 4 in.) long sticks in the bag and it conveniently has a Ziploc-style top to allow you to reseal it.

When you open the bag, it smells rather "hammy" inside. The sticks are so thin and delicate that it's easy to break them. They have a very "fresh" yeast-like flavor and are just salty enough. The bacon flavor is very present, but not overbearing and the finish is of black pepper. They're not hot at all though and there's no cumulative heat effect. The ingredients include pork extract, soy sauce seasoning, onion powder, and bacon extract.

These were really good pretzels. They're not sublime or "to die for", but if I were in the market for a salted snack, I'd definitely add these to my basket again. The seasoning is really well-balanced and there are a lot of sticks for the 229 calories in the entire bag.

Kiri and Stick Cream Cheese Snack

I usually don't check the origin of the snacks that I buy as long as the writing on the package is in Japanese. I figure that it being marketed in Japan qualifies it for review status in this blog. That being said, I probably should have realized that this is an import from France because of the French flag on the box. I guess the fact that I picked it up impulsively from the refrigerator case at the local 100 yen shop kept me from paying too much attention.


Kiri cream cheese is marketed in Japan by a company named Bel, which obviously must be French in origin. They market some of the best cheese products that we can find in Japan including Boursin, Babybel (which I never see locally), and Laughing Cow cheeses. I rarely buy any of these products because they're on the expensive side and I'm not big on softer, less flavorful cheeses. If I have a choice, I'll choose something with a harsher edge like cheddar. That being said, we'd buy Boursin all of the time if it didn't cost a fortune for a small quantity.


I decided to pick up this little snack pack because it seemed like a good opportunity to have something more nutritious and filling in a handy package. For only 100 yen ($1.10) and at only 108 calories, it seemed like good value. There are 8 bread sticks (6 cm./2.4 in.) and 25 grams (.88 oz.) of soft cream cheese. The portion of cream cheese to bread stick is perfect. You can scoop up a generous amount of the cream cheese on each stick and not run out.

The bread sticks are very crisp and fresh, but quite bland. They're definitely well-made, European-style bread sticks. The packaging does a great job of making sure they don't draw in moisture from the cream cheese side. The cream cheese is soft even when very cold and has the right amount of savory cheese flavor for cream cheese. I give it points for not being flavorless and bland as some cream cheese in Japan can be.

I really liked this and would definitely buy it again as a higher nutrition alternative to junkier snacks. There are 3.2 grams of protein in this and 3.5 grams of Calcium. I'd give this a "very happy" rating if it were a little more exciting. I'd love to see a similar thing with Boursin or flavored cream cheese.

Kiri is currently doing a Pokemon download promotion. You can download desktop pictures here by clicking on the orange buttons with "A" and "B" on them ("B" is cuter than "A", in my opinion). The other downloads are various .pdf files.

Mexican Salsa and Chicken Cratz

My earliest exposure to "Mexican" style snack food in Japan was a bag of "ethnican" flavor chips. I never worked out what nationality the mighty ethnicans came from, but the chips did have a slightly hot, tomato flavor which was reminiscent of salsa. Mexican food isn't big in Japan so you don't find much in the way of food in the salsa-flavored range. I'm guessing this is because the Japanese favor mild flavors rather than complex, heavily spiced foods.


Glico seems to have retired the Alpen Salt and Chicken version of their Cratz pretzel snacks in favor of something new and more ethnican. The light blue bag has been replaced by a deep pink one emblazoned with a simple cactus. Like all of the Cratz line, these cost between 100 and 140 yen (about $1 to $1.40) for 44 grams (1.5 oz.) depending on where you buy them. Because of the roasted almonds, there are more calories in these than an equivalent amount of something like potato chips. The whole bag is 223 calories.

When you open the bag, it smells like salsa and ketchup with a melange of savory spices mixed in. The pretzels are dense, super crunchy and a little hard. The flavor is very intense, as is the case with the other types of Cratz. They're clearly made to be eaten with a beverage so that your palate is cleansed between bites. There's a little heat in these that hits at the back of the tongue and throat. They're quite spicy with tomato, onion, garlic, and chicken flavors. The ingredients include salsa seasoning, chicken extract powder, tomato paste, and bacon extract.

I liked these quite a bit, but less so than the other flavors of Cratz. I think they reproduced a salsa-ish flavor pretty well, but it's a bit too intense even with a Diet Coke to wash them down between bites. I also noticed that there seemed to be far fewer almonds in this than the previous bags. It could simply be that I was unlucky though. I'd buy these again if I were in the right mood, but I'd be more likely to buy the bacon pepper or cheddar varieties.

Tiramisu Dessert Pocky

Well over a decade ago, there was a big tiramisu fad in Japan. It was popular enough to become a regular flavor in various limited edition sweets. You can also pick up a cheap knock-off version of "real" tiramisu in most markets and convenience stores. It's sold in little plastic containers for far too high a price and the quality is very dubious, but it does tend to be some sort of cake saturated with coffee, topped with something resembling mascarpone cheese, and topped with chocolate.

Being a fan of textures, I love tiramisu, but more so because the saturated cake, creamy cheese, and chocolate make a very nice feeling in your mouth when you eat tiramisu. I should have remembered that when I decided to try out this variety of Pocky. It can have the taste, but it can't have the texture.

Like all Dessert Pocky, this box contains four packs with three sticks in each for about 160 yen (about $1.55). Each pack has 97 calories which is really not too bad for the satisfaction of three of these thickly coated sticks.


This Pocky smells like liquor, which is an immediate turn-off for me as I don't like alcohol added into processed foods. I don't mind it cooked into real food, but it always seems overdone in snacks, as if they have to saturate it to make sure the flavor stands out. The strange thing is that I didn't notice any alcohol in the ingredients so I'm guessing this is something which is buried in "flavoring".

The first bite of this carries a lot of coffee flavor with alcohol. Subsequent bites reveal a hint of mascarpone and a bit of chocolate and then there's that liquor flavor. The liquor part tastes and smells increasingly artificial as you eat more. On the bright side, the sweetness balance is spot on and there is no lingering bitter aftertaste from the coffee or chocolate.

One thing I'll note is that I usually don't have Pocky around for very long, but I kept this box around for about a month. I guess that is an indication of a lack of enthusiasm for it, but it did teach me something about the way Pocky keeps in a non-temperature controlled environment. While it hasn't been higher than 76 degrees F. (24 degrees C.) in Tokyo in the past month, the last packet of Pocky in this box seemed to have lost its freshness. The pretzel portion wasn't as crispy or fresh as I'm accustomed to and seemed to have absorbed a bit of the moisture from the coating. This is in spite of the fact that the expiration date on the box is November of this year.

I think these are pretty well done and someone who doesn't mind that fake alcohol flavor would really enjoy them. However, I just don't care for this particular Dessert Pocky and I wouldn't buy them again, though I eventually finished off the box.

This was also reviewed at Snack Love.