Doutor Acerola Cranberry Yogurt Drink (product announcement)

Image from Doutor.

Starting today, Doutor coffee shop (maker of pretty nice sandwiches and less great coffee) will be offering a yogurt drink designed to appeal to those who go to coffee shops with the idea of improving digestion. the big selling point is that it includes Morinaga's plain bifidus yogurt. Acerola is supposed to be good at preventing certain types of cancer and is rich in Vitamin C. I'm guessing cranberry is there for the flavor mainly, but I have noticed that cranberry seems to be an up and coming flavor in Japanese snack and fast food.

Personally, I've never gone in for smoothie types of drinks. I'm sure they're packed with goodies, but they're also stripped of a lot of the beneficial things and have more sugar than eating fruit and yogurt by themselves. If you want breakfast on the go, this does appear to be a pretty interesting choice. 

Random Picture #216

For those who don't know my particular regional supermarket options, I'd like to start out by saying that Safeway is a chain of markets that is common in California. It may be available in other areas, but I know it is not on the East Coast as my sister (who lives in Pennsylvania) had never heard of it before I moved to California. It's like Giant Eagle or Kroger's in the East, or Seiyu in Japan. That's my way of saying it's a pretty boring all-purpose market at which you don't expect to find anything especially exotic.

All of that being said, it seems even boring markets in my area carry bontan ame and Pocky. At first, I was really impressed by them, but now I see these items so much that I don't even notice. That being said, a new Safeway opened recently in the Cupertino area and I was shocked to find this Japanese "purin" (pudding) container for sale there. This particular branch also carries bakery items from the Sogo bakery and I'm guessing their range is broader because the area hosts a lot more residents of Asian descent. The lesson for me is to not take for granted that a chain store is a chain store is a chain store. You never know what surprises might be lurking. 

Haagen Daz Lemon Ginger Float Sorbet (product announcement)

Haagen Dazs Japan gave fans of their frozen desserts a chance to sample this product before its official release on July 7. On June 2, Nissin market sold a lemon ginger float flavor before the rest of Japan could get their tongues wrapped around it. It's an interesting thing to do because the flavor is definitely going to be widely released so this isn't test marketing. It's more about making something exclusively available via a particular vendor for a limited time. It's not quite the same as limited edition Oreos only being sold at Walmart (as often seems to be the case), but it's one standard deviation away from that.

This is definitely one of the more promising unique flavor combinations that Haagen Daz has come up with. The only thing about it which could be the case is that it has a little bit of an "I have a cold and this is the flavor of tea that would probably make me feel better" vibe about it. If there was some honey in the mix, it'd definitely be a (much tastier) substitute for cough syrup. 

Riska Shittori Kinako Snack

When I was teaching enormous numbers of business students (via telephone - about 300 per busy season), they often talked about building brand name loyalty with their customers. These were companies like Toyota, Sumitomo, Brother, and Nippon Denso. In their cases, loyalty meant some pretty big bucks as they didn't sell tiny things.

The way in which they cultivated this greatly valued loyalty was to lavish attention on customers who worked at the upper management levels. They sent out the same salesman and he'd sweet talk the client. After years of working together, it was that much harder for the customer to move along to a cheaper vendor. Snack companies don't have the luxury of taking it to the customer on that level - both because they have too many of them and their products are so low margin.

So, how does a snack company build brand allegiance? It's something that I pondered because I tried this Riska product, loved it, and then realized the brand makes a good number of economical and tasty snacks, but no one pays much attention to them. If I look back through my blog at all of the Riska products I've reviewed, I liked every one of them and two of them, Corn Potage and Heart Chipple, are in the pantheon of my all time favorite salty snacks.

I'm wondering what it is that Riska isn't doing to build brand loyalty. In my opinion, they have the goods, but they don't have the profile. Someone at Riska should get on that. And, they should also try to export more of their products to the U.S.

This snack is a kinako (toasted soy flour) version of the more common chocolate variety. Like the chocolate version, this has a somewhat puffy, but crisp corn base. You can see from the picture that they're rather airy. Think about the inside of a corn-puff snack with bigger air holes (like an expanded and less crispy Cheeto). "Shittori" means "moist" and the crispy nature of these corn puffs seems to be softened a bit by the white-chocolate based coating. The coating is flavored with kinako, so it has a bit of the nutty soy flavor that one associates with toasted soy powder. It's sweet, but far from cloying and the kinako flavor pairs very well with the muted, earthy corn flavors. It's a much better match than the chocolate in the original version.

A whole bag of these is 80 grams/2.8 oz. I paid $1.58 (161 yen) at Marukai Japanese market (a veritable bargain for a Japanese import). It's a lot of snack for the price and the whole bag is 446 calories. However, it's supposed to be three servings so it's only lethal if you pig out. Tempting as that may be, I've found that you enjoy them more if you put some limits in place as the acclimation to the taste will limit your enjoyment over time.

I loved these, but I also love kinako. I would definitely buy these again and I hope that Riska ups its brand profile and gets into more markets. Even in Japan, I tended not to see them everywhere and it's even harder to find them here in the U.S. If you can find them, I'd recommend giving them a try.

Nongshim Banana Kick Snack

I've often thought that it would be cool to work for the art department of a snack company. You can come up with all sorts of kooky mascots for equally kookily (not actually a word, I know) named products. I'm sure someone sat around frowning in concentration to come up with a banana that is kicking into the air at an invisible soccer ball when pondering this bag's design.

The "genuis" of this design isn't the anthropomorphic 'nana. No, that was easy. The hard part was deciding his attire, and, I'm sure, if he might have been a scandalously nekkid banana. I'm sure there was much more frowning and thinking as the designer came up with a little word association to think of what to do besides put on a flirtatious and energetic-looking banana. You could imagine him saying, "hmmm... hmmm... (though likely he said "hmmm..." in Korean since this is a Korean product)... bananas... banana split... banana boat... banana peel... bananas shake... bananas and... bananas and monkeys! Yes, who doesn't associate monkeys and bananas? So, we've got a monkey. Why would a banana hang out with a monkey? Well, he must be on safari. Yay! Ideao acquired!

Now that I've gone through the sophisticated creative process, I'm far less certain of the cool factor of working in the art department of a snack company. Perhaps it would be better to design the flavors or food varieties, but that's a post for another time. I've procrastinated long enough and it's time to talk about the actual food contained within the bag.

I bought these because, frankly, they sounded awful. I picked them up at a Korean market for about a dollar and I did it because it was too strange not to. It's not strange because it's banana, but rather because it's a banana salted snack puff. We don't tend to put fruit flavors on our puffs here, so this seemed like a chance to try something quite different.

I assumed this would be sweet, and I'm not exactly a stranger to sweet corn puffs after living in Japan for awhile. It is sweet and has a strong, but not particularly fake, banana flavor. The puffs themselves are super light and crispy. I've had this bag sitting around for more than 2 months, but it stayed fresh (shockingly). That being said, the date was July 11, 2014, so I beat the expiration. Of course, it was sealed.

The banana aspect of these reminds me a great deal of the type of banana chips that are shellacked with sugar on the outside and that people eat because they are supposed to be healthy. There is also an undercurrent of basic corn puff flavor. This could be a cereal, except that it is sweeter than even something like Cap'n Crunch.

The first ingredient in this is corn flour followed by sugar, rice bran oil, banana powder, palm oil, skim milk powder, artificial flavor, salt, lactose, egg white powder, and turmeric (no doubt for color). It's no shock that these are so sweet given that sugar is second on the list. They are surprisingly not so fattening. The entire bag (45 grams or about 1.5 oz.) is only 190 calories. For a salty treat, that's not bad.

These are not bad really, but it is too sweet for my tastes. I was never a fan of banana chips in general, but I could see this really appealing to someone who loves them. Not only does it tastes like them, but these are more fun to eat due to the light texture. They're very close to being something I like, but ultimately, just too sweet to merit a "happy" rating.