Random Picture #197

When I was still in Japan, I rarely picked up the Tirol variety packs because they sold the same old flavors with one new one in order to encourage people to buy a lot of mundane flavors with one interesting one. Times have not changed. Tirol still follows this marketing scheme and I still won't buy them. Of course, in Japan, these things cost about 1/3 what they do here.

The above variety pack was at Nijiya market for a little under $6 for 27 tiny pieces of chocolate. The old flavors are strawberry jelly, coffee nougat, biscuit, almond, "milk" (like condensed milk), and cookies and cream. The new flavor is "raisin sandwich". Those kinds of cookies are very popular in Japan and actually quite tasty. They're delicate little biscuits that are on the flaky side with a cream and raisin filling. I'd be shocked if the candy in any way resembled the cookie that I so enjoyed in Japan.

Glico 80-calorie Rum Raisin Ice Milk

While researching rum raisin flavors, I came across the word A'bunadh; that is a word for a Scottish whiskey with a "rum raisin finish" (according to Wikipedia). I don't think that this whiskey had anything to do with the ice cream flavor, and I never did find out the origins of rum raisin ice cream. The only thing I did discover was that my notion that only toothless old grannies and grampies enjoyed it was dead wrong. Plenty of young folks seem to enjoy it, too, but perhaps that's because they think they're going to get loaded if they put away enough of it.

Though I'm not really a big fan of rum raisin ice cream, I decided to try this low calorie version because my only options in the Glico "calorie control" line are vanilla, chocolate with chocolate chips, green tea, and this. Though I haven't reviewed them, I have eaten the vanilla and chocolate before. The chocolate is very sub-standard. The flavor is very weak. The vanilla is also lacking in any real flavor, but does have a blandly pleasant generic dairy taste.


I went for the rum raisin because I thought it would be more flavorful than the other offerings, and boy howdy, I was right. This smells of rum and the first bite is super strong rum flavoring. As your taste buds get saturated, the heavy rum flavoring seems to mellow a bit, but it's still quite present throughout. The raisins are simply small shredded bits of raisin, so you can barely detect them either as a taste or texture. This is much more of a "rum flavored" ice cream than rum raisin.

When I ate this, I let it sit and get just so slightly melted around the edges. This makes gives you a greater sense of a creamy texture even though this is ice milk. Like the 80-calorie monaka that I reviewed before, this is made with polydextrose. It also contains Sucralose and Maltitol. For the privilege of eating 110 ml. (about a half cup) of ice milk, I paid about 150 yen ($1.68) at AM/PM convenience store. "Calorie control" certainly doesn't come cheap.

I liked this about as much as I'm going to like rum raisin as a flavor. I was pleased that this was so flavorful, but I wished that there had been actual raisins rather than the tattered remains of what looked like 2 raisins. I also wished that the rum flavor hadn't been so strong, but even a booze sissy like me didn't find it to be oppressive. I'd certainly buy this again if I found myself in the mood for this particular flavor.