Random Picture #172

Meiji's kinoko and takenoko no sato (mushroom and bamboo shoot) lines of cookie snacks is one of the most venerable in Japan. While I always thought that they were fine as a nice little morsel of cookie with some sort of chocolate, they were never the sort of thing I strongly gravitated toward. There were always bigger fish to fry than the generic combination of buttery biscuit and chocolate. For jaded sorts like me, Meiji has upped their game and released Bergamot Milk Tea and Honey Cafe Latte flavors of these snacks. If I were in Japan and could locate these for the usual price of around 150 yen ($1.50), I'd probably give them a try. Here in the U.S., as you can see, they're more than double that price. Since I don't expect a premium chocolate experience, I was unwilling to pay a premium price for them.

If any of my readers has a bigger wallet than me and popped for these, I'd be curious to hear what you thought of them and if they were worth the scratch.

Meiji Chococones (Takenoko no Sato)

One of the delights of being back home is finding products that I saw in Japan and then buying them in their American incarnation to see if they are the same thing. It's a process not unlike that which is done by the blog "Second Rate Snacks, except that, well, I'm comparing products made by the same company under a similar name for the domestic market and export. Come to think of it, that makes it very much not like Second Rate Snacks, which compares two versions of a similar product from different companies, at all.

At any rate, the version of this cookie and chocolate combination is sold in Japan under the name Takenoko no Sato, which means something like "bamboo shoot village". The American naming seems to be especially designed to keep enough of a Japanese feel (by using "choco" instead of "chocolate") without causing people to scratch their heads or fear that they might have accidentally purchased panda bear treats instead of people food. 

Though the name focuses on the basic cone-like shape, the cookies themselves are exactly the same shiny little domes of cookie-ness that are sold in Japan. I checked the box carefully to see if these were made in Japan or if they were one of those things which was produced in a country with cheaper label and then named as a "product of Japan". To anyone other than me, this little bit of information does not matter, but I do want to know if I'm essentially eating what the Japanese eat or if it is some version that has had the recipe altered to suit another set of taste buds. I don't know the answer because the box didn't say where it was made, only that it is a "product of Japan" distributed by an American biscuit maker.

I've had takenoko no sato before and reviewed a strawberry version previously. My memory is that these are pretty good, but nothing earth-shattering. My memory is actually pretty good in this regard. The chocolate on the outside is pleasantly sweet with slight bittersweet notes. If you eat too many at once, they can become just a bit cloying, but you're okay if you limit the serving size. The inner biscuit has a nice texture and resembles a coarse shortbread or thick butter cookie. The cookie is not particularly flavorful, but that really isn't an issue as the chocolate is doing the work here. Mainly, the biscuit portion is adding texture and crunch.

These are nice enough as a little sweet something to keep in your desk for a bite or two of cookie. Each cone, which is about the size of a thumbnail, is about 13 calories, but most people are going to eat a lot at once. A serving size is given as 12 pieces and there are about 3 servings in the box. I bought these at Cost Plus for about $2, but later found them at Daiso Japan for $1.50. In Japan, I believe these sold for about 100 yen (about $1.20), sometimes more depending on where you are buying them. You can buy the original version as an import from Amazonfor a staggeringly higher price ($4.80) and get the authentic packaging, but these really are the same thing as you'd get in Japan and there's no reason to pay more. 

I'm a bit torn on how to rate these. They are pretty tasty, but not exactly the sort of thing I'd go out of my way to buy or add into my regular rotation of snacks. It's not impossible that I'd buy them again out of nostalgia, but I'm unlikely to simply say that I "have to" have them again because of their deliciousness. I figure that is the very definition of "indifference" so there's my rating, but it doesn't mean they're not tasty. They are, just not special. I think they may be a more interesting treat for less jaded palates than mine as they are a solid reflection of Japanese consumer cookies and chocolate which are less sweet and have better flavor depth than some pedestrian snacks of a similar caliber in the U.S., but I can't really say I'm much above indifferent about them.

Takenoko no Sato Strawberry Tart Cookies

Recently, I heard a new word and that word is "wankle". I came by it via Cheap Eats, a blog that I have read for quite a long time. The term is of Brian's own invention, and I believe all of us reviewers should do our best to put it into the mainstream. The thumbnail explanation is that it is when you start a review talking about something unrelated to the product at hand. I would also say it relates to talking about things that have nothing to do with the product as you get deeper into the review as well.

Personally, I go out of my way to "wankle", especially on products which I have reviewed dozens of times before like KitKats. There are only so many ways that you can talk about taste, texture, and aroma before it all starts to get pretty boring. Of course, if I can find some trivia or history about the product, I don't need to wankle, but once you've talked about a company once or twice, you're out of material.

After reading Brian's post, I wondered how my readers feel about wankling. Do they prefer that writers just get down and talk about the food or do they want to hear insane ramblings in order to up the amusement quota of the post? Personally, my favorite reviewers are the ones who wankle the most like Brian at Cheap Eats and Marvo at The Impulsive Buy.


The thing is that I feel that I wankle the most on products which are really pretty boring because they aren't unique or interesting in any way to write about, but may be appealing to eat. These strawberry tree-shaped cookies, for instance, are just another food float in the parade of nature-shaped cookies that are part of this line of products. They're shaped like trees. They're individually wrapped. That's pretty much it.

My husband was the driving force behind the purchase of thse cookies. He paid about 150 yen ($1.67) for a 40 gram box (about 10 little cookies, I didn't count) and you'll pack in 220 calories if you each them all. They smell faintly of strawberry and the texture is very crispy with a softer top coating of white chocolate. The cookie is very bland and a little hard with a "generic" cookie flavor. The strawberry is nicely sweet strawberry with very little tartness.

As is often the case with this line of cookies, eating them is mainly a textural experience with a little strawberry chocolate sweetness to add interest. The ingredients include "butter oil" and "shortening". That's two likely damaged fats. Now I'm not health nut or I wouldn't be doing a snack blog, but I want something a little more for my efforts than a crunchy, sweet biscuit. These were certainly nice enough, but not worth a revisit. They were sweeter than I would have liked and the "custard" portion of the "tart" flavor didn't come through in the taste at all. The other point about this is that I'm really unhappy with the fact that these tiny little cookies each come in their own foil packet. It's just immensely wasteful for something which is not particularly fragile or in need of that sort of protection.