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.

Tirol Holiday Assortments (product information)

Images from Tirol.

I think Tirol has to be one of the most representative companies in terms of displaying the Japanese tendency to value appearance over substance. One of their brand selling points if the collectible wrappers on its candies. They even maintain a gallery on their web site of all of the wrappers dating back to 1979 so people can see what they've offered. I admire their artistry, but I'm not so great a fan of the way in which they put the same old candies inside the wrappers on a regular basis.

For Christmas, they're offering up two collections and neither has anything going for it aside from the wrapping. The first (at the top of this post) is a "whole cake" collection which uses the theme of an entire Christmas cake to repackage strawberry shortcake, hotcake, and cranberry cheesecake flavors. Of those three, only the last one hasn't been on offer before (at least it's one I've never encountered).

The second collection is a cup with milk, coffee nougat, and biscuit ("Bis") varieties. All of these are flavors that have been around for ages. The wrapping is pretty, but the flavors aren't much to get excited about. If I see either of these, there's zero chance I'll buy them because there's just not enough novelty in the packages for me to trouble myself. I am curious about the cranberry cheesecake flavor, but not enough to pop for a whole variety pack.

If you'd like a November calendar for your desktop picture/wallpaper, Tirol is offering one here.

Bakauke 40-piece Sembei Assortment

In Japan, variety packs are called "asooto" (アソート) which is the Japanized version of "assortment". This Bakauke pack of 40 sembei in 5 flavors has been in my line of sight for some time. I resisted it because of the hassle associated with reviewing such packs (more pictures, more writing, same number of posts), but also because I think it'll take me a very long time to eat all of this myself and my husband doesn't eat sembei.

In the end though, the price and the fact that I could sample a lot of flavors that I've been considering purchasing individually made me take the plunge. I found this at a discount snack shop for 269 yen ($3.12). I'd also seen it for a somewhat higher price at Peacock supermarket, but it's not the sort of thing that tends to show up in just any old market. I think this would be a good thing to have on hand if you tend to have a lot of visitors to your home or have a family and can eat it quicker than the likes of me can consume 40 sembei.

Like all bakauke sembei, these come in a banana shape. The package doesn't offer nutrition information for each flavor, but I'd guess that they are similar to the other flavors I've reviewed and are about 20-35 calories each per cracker. My guess is the black sesame one is higher in calories than the other varieties.

Spicy Soy Sauce:


The strange thing about this soy sauce cracker is that it neither looks nor smells like the typical "shoyu" variety. It's not covered with a semi-sticky veneer of soy sauce. This does small very faintly of soy, but also vinegar. In fact, the predominant taste is a mild vinegar one, not a soy sauce flavor. This reminded me more of a very subdued version of the "Happy Turn 200%" sembei. That's not a bad thing at all, but I think this could have been a bit more intense in flavor. Nonetheless, this was perfectly enjoyable despite its lack of strong spice.

Black Sesame and Soy Sauce:


For some reason, this cracker is wrapped individually while the others come two to a pack. This is the most "fried" one and is bumpy and super crunchy. It smells lightly of sesame and of soy sauce. The exterior is very shiny and quite appealing to look at. These have a mixture of sweet and savory flavors including honey. All of the components come together well to present a multi-layered taste experience with all of the flavors complimenting each other well. I really enjoyed this.

Seaweed and Soy Sauce:


This was the flavor that I had the lowest expectations for because I'm not a huge fan of nori (seaweed). It's not that I can't eat it or find it gross. I can certainly consume it, but if I have a choice, I'd prefer not to have it included in foods that I eat. That being said, this is the sembei for those like me who are indifferent toward nori. The base soy flavor is deep, savory, and complex. The amount of small flakes of nori are enough to make the flavor present, but not overwhelming. The only bad point about this one is that the outside is a bit sticky so you need to eat it with the wrapper on or be prepared to wash your hands after touching it.

Spicy Curry:


This smells lightly of Japanese curry roux blocks, which is to say that the scent is somewhat different from actual curry powder and miles away from real Indian curry. The flavor is mild at first, but builds up a bit on your tongue by the end of a second cracker. There is no heat whatsoever in these and they're mildly salty. I get the sense that these were designed for people who have what is called a "cat's tongue" in Japanese. That is, they are sensitive to foods that are hot in a spicy way. While certainly a nice enough and completely enjoyable cracker, I have more of a "dragon's tongue" (I made that up, it's not Japanese) and would have liked some heat.

Cheese:


I'm going to be a bit lazy on this one and tell you that this is exactly the same as the Bakauke cheese sembei that I reviewed previously. There is no difference between what you get in the bag devoted to "5 cheese" sembei. This is a good thing because I gave those a "happy" rating and thought they were like a higher quality Cheeto cheese flavor.

This was a great value and full of high quality, flavorful, fresh, and crispy rice crackers. If you like sembei, or are going to buy some to send home to people who enjoy it, this is one of the best choices you can make. Despite my initial reservations about buying so much at once, I wouldn't hesitate to buy this assortment again, particularly if I wanted to serve some to guests or keep a stash on hand for late-night T.V. viewing accompaniment.

Tirol Rilakkuma Variety Pack

Since I'm not one to be obsessed with all things cute, I was relatively unfamiliar with the character of Rilakkuma until I started reading Shibuya 246. The character is the blog's unofficial mascot. To me, Rilakkuma seems like the next in a long line of cute Japanese characters that take people by storm. In my uneducated (about cute characters) mind, the cuteness crown was first worn by Hello Kitty and then passed on to Pikachu, and now is being worn by Rilakkuma. I seem to see more and more merchandise bearing the little bear's likeness everyday.


I haven't bought a Tirol variety pack for a long time because I've been so disappointed in them as of late, and I didn't buy this one either. This was given to my husband as a gift after he shared some KitKats with a student. Gift-giving in Japan is a lot like that. You give people things and they feel they need to balance the scale. I'm not sure what this cost, but a pretty good guess would be 100-150 yen ($1.12-$1.68) for 9 candies that are about 1 inch (2.54 cm) square.


The packet shows three flavors on the front: purin (custard/pudding), mitarashii dango (a type of Japanese sweet) and hot cake. This mix is typical for these variety packs in that there is one new and appealing flavor, hot cake in this case, and a couple of repeat flavors from the past. You have to get a bunch of flavors you've already had or don't want to get the one that you do want. I've seen the hot cake flavor (which is a new one) in other similar variety packs as well.

If you look at the picture above, you'll see that there are 4 chocolates cut in half and three of them are the same. Despite the fact that I opened 4 differently designed packages (one of each in the bag), I got mostly mitarashii dango flavor, one hotcake, and no purin. The packets have different cute pictures on them, but the flavors are not marked so I'm guessing that either by design or by random chance, I got almost all of one flavor.

I had sampled the mitarashii dango flavor before, and this time it seemed rather worse. Maybe it was my disappointment at getting so many of it and it being a flavor I reviewed before. It was identical in terms of texture. It had a gummy center with some dark sauce surrounded by white chocolate. I thought it had a very strong soy flavor mixed with intense sweetness whereas I detected bitter orange last time. It's a very strange mix and not very pleasant.

The hotcake is a white chocolate shell over a biscuit with a little syrup that has been absorbed by the cookie. It was very sweet with a very fake butter flavor and a lot of white chocolate. There was not much of a maple or syrup flavor. The cookie adds texture, but no taste.

I would review the purin, but there weren't any in the package.

I liked the hot cake one, though I'm not sure that I'd buy it even if I could get 9 or 10 in a package by itself. It's very sweet. The entire pack gets an unhappy rating because of the poor balance of flavors which constitutes false advertising and because I wasn't very fond of the mitarashii dango flavor. If you're a super fan of Rilakkuma, you might want to pick this up and keep it intact for the packets and their cute designs. Otherwise, I'd recommend giving it a wide berth.

The hot cake chocolate was also reviewed at Snack Love by ebidebby.

Variety Friday: Japanese Christmas Packs

A Christmas goods display at Queen's Isetan market. It includes Christmas boots full of snacks for kids, marshmallows, fondue kits, imported plastic canes full of candy kisses and cookies.

If you're a kid in Japan, you're not likely to be getting very worked up about Christmas. You're far more likely to get excited about the new year's holidays when you get a prolonged vacation from school and can look forward to gift money from all of the relatives. While kids generally get a little something for Christmas, it's nothing like the rain of gifts kids may get in the U.S. or other largely Christian countries.


I have asked students what they were given as children and they have mentioned the style of "stocking" or boot that you see above which is sold for 1050 yen ($11.78). These boots are full of regular snacks like Baby Star Ramen, (plain) popped popcorn, and "bo" (stick) snacks. Yaokin sticks are particularly common.


There are also some big bags of powdered drink mixes and cookies which are offered with Christmas-themed wrapping, but they're also nothing special. The cookies pictured above with a Santa lion motif are just plain and chocolate animal crackers that are around all year being re-purposed.

I have actually purchased and detailed the contents of such Christmas packs before, but not in this blog. I did them several years ago in my former personal blog. I've seen exactly the same packs show up year after year at the local 99 yen shop, so I'm not going to buy a new one and review it again. I will, however, paste the review of one of those packs here for you to read. This was from December 2006, but it is just as valid today:

Santa is almost perversely overjoyed.

One thing my husband and I used to do when we first arrived in Japan was buy some random packaged item and find out what was inside. We stopped doing that a long time ago. I rather forgot why. It struck me that it might be interesting to give that a try again. After sampling the contents of the happy package above, I believe the reason we stopped is for the same reason that you touch a hot stove once and then never do it again. Curiosity may not kill the cat but it can sure turn off his taste buds and offer up a belly-ache.

The Christmas Pack pictured above is meant for children and only cost 99 yen at a convenience store. I didn't have great expectations of gourmet contents and I thought that it may be more interesting because it would show what sort of items are supposed to appeal to children. Unsurprisingly, the items in the bag are the kind of things you see in the candy and snack aisles which are geared toward kids in markets.


This bar resembles a cake when you see a smallish picture of it but if you click and see a larger picture, you can see it is far from a cake. It is called "Merry Christmas wheat gluten (fu) snack". I'm sure many children this year will be writing Santa and asking for special treats made of wheat gluten. The package, as best I can read, seems to be saying that it is a nutritionally-balanced snack. Among the main ingredients are brown sugar, sugar, glutinous flour, and all-purpose flour. It smells like a mixture of burnt sugar and bouillon cubes. The description says something about minerals being in it. The outside is incredibly sweet and the inside is a tasteless quasi-puffed corn snack texture. It was perfectly vile when I forced myself to taste it.


This is a "black sesame mochi choco". I tried to pull this apart so you could see the center but it was too tough to separate. The chocolate just broke up. I did take a small bite of this and it out-did the wheat gluten bar in disgustingness. It was absolutely horrible. I'd try to describe it but I'm trying to allow the brain cells that retain that information to atrophy and die. Among the ingredients for this one are "chocolate" (no ingredients for the chocolate are given), corn syrup, sugar, cornstarch, sesame seed paste, mochi (like rice "taffy", though it's usually called rice "cake"), powdered milk, and soy beans. I liked how the package actually used correct English but confused "they're" and "their" (click the picture to see a larger one to clearly see the slogan). Of course, American young people who have grown up on the internet probably couldn't tell the difference between the two anyway.


This is "morokoshi wa taro" or, essentially, "corn and corm rings". Among the ingredients are corn, taro (a Japanese corm), vegetable oil, and spices. They don't smell like much of anything and taste like an airier, relatively flavorless Chee-to. I'd call these rather inoffensive to mildly pleasant because of the texture.


This one is called "Umaka Christmas" which as best I can work out means "sweet Christmas". My research indicated that "umaka" is another way of saying "umai" in a particular dialect but this may be an incorrect translation. Among the ingredients are corn grits, vegetable oil, sugar, pork extract, salt, onion powder, chicken consomme, Japanese rice (uruchi rice) and fructose. This was the only item in the package which I thought was relatively pleasant tasting. The onion powder and consomme were noticeable and the texture was fine.


This is "Merry Christmas Umai (Sweet) stick". This actually wasn't bad. The chocolate on the outside tasted okay and the inside was a hollow log which tasted like and had a similar texture to Kix cereal only it was puffier and airier. Among the ingredients are sugar, vegetable oil, corn, powdered milk, chocolate mousse, cocoa, flour, non-fat powdered milk, soybean milk and flavoring.

If nothing else, this exercise pushed my husband and I to do some translating. It also explains why Japan imports so much corn. I think a good portion of it must be processed into these sorts of snacks.

To me, this was a classic example of something you see a fair amount of in Japan. That is, it's something which looks far better on the outside than it actually is on the inside. Maybe kids go nuts for this stuff but I bought this bag over a week ago and the QQ branch I bought it from looked to have just as many in stock as when I purchased mine.

Hi-Chew Mystery Pack

Have you ever seen a movie trailer which spoils some of the best mysteries of the movie by revealing some critical plot point or telling you something which would be better not to know? Well, Morinaga obviously subscribes to the same type of thinking. They go to the trouble of making a "mystery pack" and then detail all of the flavors on the back of the bag.

I guess the mystery isn't what the flavors are in general, but which flavor you might get in each packet. The thing is that they also assign "levels" to the candy and give you a clue of what might be in each one which further undermines the mystery. I'm guessing that the lowest level candies are supposed to be easier to identify than the higher level ones.


While I usually take pictures of the open candy, it hardly seemed worth it for these because it's just a bunch of differently colored taffy blobs. The flavors are:

lemon ("Level 1"): very nicely tart with a good lemon scent and flavor; a complete winner on the flavor front, even for someone like me who isn't mad about lemon candies (but certainly not averse to them either). I could guess what this was from the scent alone. The color was light yellow.

lime ("Level 1"): Sharp, tart flavor. I couldn't smell anything when I sniffed it, but my husband said he could and knew it was lime before tasting it.

grape ("Level 2"): this was your normal Kool-aid grape candy flavor. It was classic kid's flavor with perhaps just a tad more verisimilitude to the taste. While I certainly didn't dislike this, the flavor felt a bit cheap. Like the lemon, I easily guessed the flavor by the smell. It was light purple in color.

cantaloupe ("Level 3"): This was very sweet and had only the vaguest hint of melon flavor. It had a very mild perfume-like hint. It wasn't bad, but certainly not a favorite.

pineapple ("Level 4"): This was a pretty interesting candy because it had some of the less sweet notes of real pineapple in it. There's sometimes just a whisper of bitterness in it. This one was a bit of a dead giveaway since pineapple is pictures on the front of the package and it smells a bit like it.

lemon ("level 4"): Smells like lemon and there's a picture of one on the front. That means that they tip you off pretty well. Good lemon flavor which was nicely tart.

In terms of texture, these seemed stickier and harder to chew than the Hi-Chew candies I've reviewed before. They seemed to have more of a taffy or chewy candy element than the disintegrating gum aspects that I've noticed before. Also, they were all one solid color. Most (but not all) of the Hi-Chew I've experienced before were two-toned.

From a Hi-Chew consumers viewpoint, these were tasty. If you want to sample a lot of Hi-Chew flavors in one bag, these would be a good option, but the mystery part is simply silly when they're giving away so much of the game. There are 22 candies in one bag at about 17 calories per candy. Frankly, I'd opt for the rolls with flavors I know I'm going to enjoy rather than buy these again even though they were fine.

Tirol Sweet Halloween Variety Box

Have you ever seen a more adorable or happy-looking skeleton?

I love bright, vivid, clean graphics. Even if I wasn't keen on the candy in this Tirol Halloween box, I'd want to buy it for the bold, clean look. You may not be able to tell from the picture, but parts of the box (the ghost and other creatures and the trees) are perforated so they can be popped up and the box can be used as a little Halloween decoration or display. As it turned out, my husband picked this up at New Days convenience store (for about 210 yen or $2), so the choice wasn't really in my hands.


This is the second of these bright, attractive boxes that I've reviewed (though there have been at least several others which I've passed on). The other one was the W Purin one, and it was actually quite good. I have much lower expectations of these flavors because 3 of them are repeats of flavors that have appeared in less slick variety packs in the past (and 1 was a former 'Premium' candy), and I have reviewed 2 of them before.


The 4 flavors are conveniently written in English: coffee nougat, almond, pumpkin tart, and "milk". Each candy is between 30-35 calories for its 2.25 cm (.9 in) square x 1 cm (.4 in.) tall size. Here are the reviews of each flavor:

coffee nougat:


This smells like milk chocolate even after it has been cut apart to reveal the firm nougat center. At first, you get the milk chocolate flavor, which is your average Japanese milk chocolate (which is to say, on the bittersweet side). The chewy coffee center comes in at the end very strongly when all of the chocolate has melted away and you chew on the toffee-like coffee center. The coffee flavor is similar to fairly decent quality instant coffee and not too strong. I wouldn't necessarily crave this, but I wouldn't mind it either. It wouldn't compel me to buy a box, but I'd certainly eat the ones that came with a variety pack as they are enjoyable enough for the calories.

chocolate almond:


This is the same almond as is included in other variety packs. Since I liked it before, I still like it now. It smells like milk chocolate or cocoa powder. It tastes like pretty decent milk chocolate with a super crispy deeply roasted and crunchy almond. There's a nice mix of almond and chocolate flavor but a bit of a bitter aftertaste from the chocolate.

Milk:


This is a milk chocolate shell with a "cream" filling according to the package description. One of the ingredients is "cream powder", but it doesn't taste much like cream and is similar to actual milk. There's an unusual taste to it, and I believe it is mirin (Japanese sweet cooking rice wine). It's a very milk influence, but it gives it a light liquor flavor. This is pretty good, though rather sweet. Some may find the mirin flavor off-putting or odd though.

Pumpkin:


When I reviewed the premium version of the pumpkin Tirol, it had the same pumpkin coating and cookie center, but it didn't have the "soy sauce" that this has on it. I mentioned in the former review that I thought the pumpkin needed some other seasoning to offset the sense of it being a very sweet squash flavor. It seems Tirol agreed since they added this sauce to the latest incarnation. The variety pack versions are usually smaller, but also simpler than the premium ones, so this sauce was a surprise. Soy sauce in candies often tastes a lot like maple syrup. It is thickened and sweetened and this seems to turn it from soy- and salt-flavored to maple syrup-like. This was good, but my least favorite of the bunch. It still seems like sweetened squash to me, but at least this has an added dimension.

This is a nice collection, and I really love the size of these. I like to have just a bite or two of something sweet after lunch and one of these generally does the trick without making me feel overly full or like I've just piled on more calories on top of lunch. This is a more desirable combination of flavors without any stinkers in the bunch than some of the other variety packs I've sampled. I'd definitely buy this again if it came around next year for Halloween. I only wish that I could find a reason to preserve the box and wrappers because they're insanely cute Halloween graphics.

Nescafe Happy Pack w/Raspberry & Passionfruit KitKat

Nestlé loves you. No, really, it does. If you don't believe me, buy this Nescafé "Happy Pack" because it's their valentine to you. You can tell by the fact that they have plastered hearts all over everything. In fact, I'm sure that they would have made a heart-shaped KitKat to put inside of it had it not defied the laws of nature and snacking.


Even the insert in the box is shaped like a heart that you unfold. Nestlé knows that you'll be more receptive to their promotional materials if they give them to you in a geographic shape which expresses the company's affection for you.


The "Happy Pack" showed up at a local discount snack store for 168 yen (about $1.70). It includes 3 packets of flavored instant coffee and 3 mini size passionfruit and raspberry KitKats. Each mini bar has about the same amount of candy as 1.5 fingers of a conventional KitKat. I'll admit that I mainly bought this for the KitKats, and, to do justice to them, I need to rate the box's contents separately.


The three types of flavored instant coffee are green tea, orange and caramel latte, and café latté. I drank the café latté only. I'll admit that up front. I sent the green tea one to Marvo at the Impulsive Buy (along with one of the KitKats) and the orange one is still sitting around. I was very careful to prepare the coffee precisely as the directions state. That is, I carefully measured out the 130 ml. of water that was required. It was thick and foamy, but so very bland. It tasted just like regular, blah, instant coffee, weak and inoffensive, with too little coffee and too much powdered milk. The thing that is keeping me away from the last packet is the fact that this stuff is just full of corn syrup, and it doesn't taste sweet.

Because I would definitely not buy the instant coffee portion of this again, I'm giving the coffee an appropriately low rating.




The mini raspberry passionfruit KitKats mainly smell like raspberry. The outside of them is noticeably darker than the usual KitKat bar and has a nice bittersweet chocolate flavor. It complements the berry flavor very nicely and is also a nice mix with the limited sweetness of the passionfruit. If there is anything about this to complain about, it'd be that the raspberry completely overwhelms the passionfruit for the most part.

Because I'm not a super great fan of bittersweet chocolate, I can't really give this a very happy rating, but if I could buy these bars without the lame instant coffee, I'd definitely get them again. I think people who are fans of darker chocolate might really go for these and it's certainly one of the nicest fruit KitKats I've ever had.

Yaokin Umaibo Variety Pack

What looks like a label in this package is actually a sheet of paper with 3 stickers.

"Umai" seems to have several different possible translations, though the general meaning is always the same. It's used to refer to some food being tasty, though sometimes it means sweet and sometimes it seems to mean savory goodness. At any rate, if you watch any Japanese cooking show (and if you come to Japan, there are hundreds of them to choose from on a single night of T.V. viewing - yes, I exaggerate), someone will be sampling a dish and saying, "umaiiiiiii". I've told my husband that you could probably serve them a fossilized bit of dog poo on one of those shows and they would dip it in soy sauce and exclaim, "umai" (delicious!). They are paid to say everything is fabulous regardless of what it's really like.

This kid's pack of 7 snacks and a sticker was on offer at the local 99 yen store, so this cost a little under a dollar. It includes a collection of "bo" (stick) snacks that you can generally buy for 25 yen each and two small packets of salted treats. The variety pack gives you a little more value for your money than buying the individual snacks by themselves.

These snacks are made by a company named Yaokin which specializes in a wide variety of snacks which are cheap, small, and largely marketed toward children. They also sell small toys like balloons. A lot of their kid's snacks and these sticks have a cartoon character that is a knock-off of popular ear-less anime cat Doraemon on them. There's a very colorful catalog of all of their products available for download on their web site. You can get it by clicking on the catalog download text "2009年カタログ ダウンロード on the page I linked to in the previous sentence.

Each stick is a different flavor. One of the reasons I don't review this sort of item often is that it's a lot of work talking about and photographing each item, but the appeal of something with so much variety for so little cash is irresistible on occasion, so here we go.

*****

First, the sticks:

Note that all of the sticks are the exact same thing with different flavor powders. They are all a corn-based tube that is light, puffy, and pleasantly crispy. They are about 12 cm. (4.7 in.) long.

Salami:


The smell of this was a little off-putting. It did smell like salami seasonings, but something smelled a bit strange. The stick is covered with parsley flakes and you can really taste it. There's also pork powder and oil flavoring, but neither of these comes across very distinctly. Mostly, I tasted garlic, parsley, and a nondescript fake meat flavor. This was one of the lesser sticks of the bunch, though it wasn't really bad. I just found the mystery taste and smell to make it less appetizing.

Note: There's an illustration of a Sony AIBO-style robot dog riding a scooter on the packaging as well as a mention of a "campaign" (contest) on the company's web site. The campaign is for free gifts for 1000 people who send postcards with a portion of the packages from these sticks. Kids can win 2 GB USB thumb drives, an umaibo video game, a puzzle, or a battery meter. I'm not sure what kid wants a battery meter, but there you go.

Mentai (marinated pollock roe):


This looks very red so you expect it to have some heat, but the truth is that it's simply bathed in liberal amounts of paprika in order to simulate the color of pollock roe (which is what mentai means in Japanese). It smells and tastes fishy with a heavy kick of paprika, garlic and salt. The web site information on this says that mentai is the most popular of their stick snacks, but I'm not a great fan of fish-flavored food. That's probably because I'm not a fan of fish in general. I think this isn't bad, but I didn't finish it. I'm guessing someone who enjoys fishy things would find it more appealing.

Corn potage:


Corn potage is a soup of corn, onions, and cream that usually includes garlic and parsley flavors. It's sold as a powdered mix in nearly every market and convenience store in Japan. This tube of corn snack smells exactly like the powdered soup. It also tastes like it. It's immensely savory with all of the soup flavors and just a touch of sweetness. I really liked this. In fact, I think this is a different shaped variation on the corn potage snack that I previously reviewed and enjoyed.

Cheese:


The scent of this one is very familiar. It smells like the Marui Cheese rings or like planters cheese balls. In fact, this is like a puffier version of the cheese rings. Since Yaokin seems to have a relationship with Riska, which makes the Marui Cheese rings, it could be the same flavoring. This was nice, though I could have gone for a little more cheese flavoring for the volume of crispy corn tube. Nonetheless, the taste was zesty, fake cheese like you would expect on a salted cheese snack and it was pretty good. Note that this is slightly greasy and left marks on the tissue I put it on.

Tonkatsu (pork cutlet) sauce:


The smell is a non-descript savory smell, mildly reminiscent of soy sauce. The taste is very, very sour as if someone has mixed a teaspoon or two of soy sauce with vinegar. Subsequent bites are spicy and it grows a little hot, but in the way that garlic can be hot rather than red peppers. This was a bit intense, but not bad. I think fans of salt and vinegar chips might enjoy this. Note the "pigs in space" motif of the packet.

Snack packets:

Corn and corm puffs:


This is "morokoshi wa taro" or, essentially, "corn and corm rings". Among the ingredients are corn, taro (a Japanese corm), vegetable oil, and spices. They don't smell like much of anything and taste like an airier, relatively flavorless Chee-to. I'd call these rather inoffensive to mildly pleasant because of the texture.

Seafood (Umaka Chanpon) corn puffs:


The graphic on this bag reminds me of the American animated comedy, South Park. Specifically, it looks like a crude 3D rendering of the character of Stan Marsh. The character looks angry, like the offspring of some sort of rightist radical. I'm not sure why he's so worked up. His corn snacks are pretty tasty. They don't have a smell that is easy to pin down. That's probably because there are so many spices mixed up in them including pork, chicken, garlic, and seafood extracts. Mainly, the garlic stands out with a bit of a meaty, savory aftertaste. They're pretty salty with a hint of sweetness. My only reservations about them relate to the texture. They are slightly soft and it'd be nice if they had more snap in their crunch. There are only 12 grams (.4 oz.) in the bag, but that makes it a nice size to accompany a sandwich.

*****

Though these are packaged for kids, the snacks themselves really have little to do with children. They're all pretty normal salted corn snacks. I ate them one at a time over about three weeks time and largely enjoyed sampling them. Since the price is so low and the portion sizes rather modest, I think these would be good for someone to just have on hand for satisfying a craving for something salty, though it is pure junk food. I also think they'd make good souvenirs for people back home since they are cheap, colorful, very Japanese-looking, and contain the sort of food that most people can tolerate at worst and may enjoy at best.

Tirol Variety Pack Mini (milk mochi included)

Tirol releases a constant stream of "variety packs" for about a dollar (100 yen) a pack. When I first started doing these reviews, I was interested in trying all the various packs, but my enthusiasm has since waned. One of the reasons for this is that often these packs include a couple of old flavors and perhaps one or two limited edition or new flavors. You can pretty much bet on the mix being calculated so that the newer flavor is there to lure people to buy 9 candies to sample one or two.

From the top to the bottom: Bis, Almond, Cappucino, Milk Mochi

The package contains 9 candies and the distribution is annoying. They give you 3 of the rather pedestrian "Bis" (biscuit) candies instead of tripling up on the mini version of one of the "premium" flavor candies. I counted how many were in more than one pack when I bought this at the store, so I'm sure it wasn't just the packet I bought.


The candies are molded with a top pattern like most mini versions of Tirol chocolates except for the almond one which has an almond embossed on top of it (click this picture to load a larger version to see more detail).

Cappucino Choco:
This smells a lot like instant coffee. There are two distinct layers and each is a different flavor. The taste is mixed between slightly bitter instant coffee (like Nescafé) and sweet milky white chocolate. Most Tirol candies I've had are very soft, but this is dense and chalky with a strong snap. If you like instant coffee and white chocolate, you'll love this. If you're looking more for an espresso taste, which I'd prefer, this is okay, but not great. I think the coffee portion would have benefited from a little cinnamon to add depth to the flavor.

Almond:
This smells like milk chocolate or cocoa powder. It tastes like pretty decent milk chocolate with a super crispy deeply roasted and crunchy almond. There's a nice mix of almond and chocolate flavor but a bit of a bitter aftertaste from the chocolate.


Milk Mochi:
This flavor is the one which compelled me to purchase the mix. It smells like white chocolate and, unfortunately, tastes mostly like overly sweet white chocolate with a chewy gummy center. There seems to be a tiny lemon note. To get a sense of the mochi center, I sucked off the coating from the second half of the piece I sampled so I could eat only the gummy. It had very little flavor, but nice texture. This was a big disappointment.

Bis:
I already knew that the Bis was going to be a little bland, crunchy cookie in milk chocolate and it smelled like cheap chocolate. The chocolate tastes flat, like there isn't enough milk in it and there's too much sugar. It's also firmer that usual for a Tirol chocolate. There's a lot of crunch from the cookie which dominates most of it, There's also a rather intense cocoa flavor from the thin chocolate coating. It seems that the chocolate was made extra potent so that less of it could be used to surround the cookie while still holding the chocolate flavor.

The almond was the winner from this pack. The rest was fairly disappointing, but by no means bad. I'll finish the bag eventually, but I have no desire to buy any of the varieties included in this bag again except the almond. The milk mochi variety is classified as "rare" on the Tirol web site and comes in two different color packages (blue and pink). It also says that you can only get these in variety packs, which I believe means there is no premium version sold individually. It's not worth buying a variety pack for, nor worth seeking out as a rarity.