Crunky (mini) and Hello Kitty Choco Marshmallow

Last week, I talked about the Dagashi box that I purchased from Oyatsu Cafe and this week I'm going to start reviewing the contents. I'm beginning with the two tiniest items and I have to say it's good that I've already had a lot of experiences with them in the past or I wouldn't have enough of a taste on hand to do a proper review. Yes, I'm winging about how small these were. I've gotten bigger freebies at sample hand-outs at events in the U.S. and attached to tissue packets given away on the streets of Tokyo.

First, there is the itty-bitty, teeny-tiny Crunky that appears to have been designed to be left on the Lotte Hotels pillows en lieu of a mint. The candy inside is literally about the size of an Andes Candy so you can get two tiny bites before it's all gone. On the plus side, I was impressed with how Lotte shrunk the whole thing down and made it look perfectly like its older brother with all detail intact.

I didn't expect to be reviewing this item at all as I was sure that I'd already reviewed the standard issue Crunky bar in the past. However, a search of my archives revealed that I had overlooked this Japanese version of a Nestle's Crunch or Hershey's Krackle bar. I covered a ton of variations, but never the regular bar and though they all have the same crispy bits, all Crunky are not created equal.

To illustrate this, I'll tell you an anecdote from back when I was working at Japanese office, one of my more obnoxious coworkers, a would-be Lothario (or, as they're sometimes called in Japan, a Charisma Man) who looked like Bruce Willis's "Mini Me", asked another of my coworkers, a man who spent all day day-dreaming of his own aikido dojo, to pick him up a Crunky bar at the convenience store on the first floor of the building we were working in. Dojo-boy brought Charisma Man a box of "Crunky Kids". The "Kids" version are like a nugget type of Crunky with a shiny exterior and the shape of a square pellet. Upon receiving his box of Crunky bits, Charisma Man exclained, "Aw, I didn't want the kids!" What he was saying was that no spawn of Crunky is as good as the original.

Incidentally, I'm happy to say Dojo Man is now in charge of his own dojo and doing well in life. I don't know what happened to Charisma Man, but it's possible he's actually functioning as Bruce Willis's Mini Me for all I know. Chances are he is off somewhere battling an STD of some sort though as one of the things he loved to brag about was how he only had intimate relations with "nice clean girls" and therefore didn't need to wear a prophylactic. At any rate, he didn't get his regular Crunky that day, but I got mine (albeit a tiny one).

The main thing that separates a Crunky from it's American crunch bar brethern is that it uses malt puffs inside instead of relatively bland rice puffs. This gives it a greater flavor complexity as the malt brings a nice depth to the mix of somewhat coffee-like, sweet milk chocolate in the bar. The texture really is the thing and the Crunky is nice crunchy with soft chocolate that melts quickly in  your mouth and has a silky, rich mouth feel.

The only difference between this mini version and the standard bar seems to be the size of the puffs. Either the usual puffs have been chopped up a bit to fit the low profile of the bar, or they've got tiny little elves crafting miniature versions of them for this version. Either way, this is tasty and it was quite a(n extremely brief) walk down my taste memory lane.

When I opened the little marshmallow packet and looked at the nicely formed little wad of mallow, I was transported back to my memories of the Japanese version of a treat I love in the U.S. One of the things that rarely worked for me in Japan was the basic marshmallow. They seemed like they were all formulated and injected into molds and were quite rubbery and had a funny taste which I couldn't identify.

Though this little wad had a nice and potent tiny dollop of intense bittersweet chocolate in the middle, it doesn't escape the all-too-common weaknesses of other Japanese marshmallows. It is too firm and chewy and brings to mind a pencil eraser when you compress it between your fingers. It's sweet and has a decent flavor, but the texture is just all wrong.

I think that some people have remarked in the past that Japanese marshmallows are different because they don't use animal-based gelatin and instead use agar agar (from seaweed). That may indeed be the issue, but, if so, I'd rather eat hooves and bones and enjoy a soft, tasty marshmallow. Yes, I am a horrible, horrible person. And, yes, this is a sub-par marshmallow even for a kids' snack. I'd probably rate it a bit better keeping in mind that this is dagashi (kid's snacks), but it's actually not so different from all the other marshmallows I had in Japan. I did have some nice marshmallow snacks in Japan, but only if the marshmallow was a lesser component in the mix. The best thing about this marshmallow was the adorable package it came in.

Source for both products: Oyatsucafe "Dagashi box" (part of a $15/month subscription box)

Crunky Chestnut

I'm a sucker for anything chestnut, but I haven't been keen on white-chocolate-based Crunky bars since trying the caramel latte bar. It's not that there was anything so wrong about that bar, but I haven't been wowed by the Crunky variants. Like plain KitKats, the regular milk chocolate version of Crunky seems to always be superior to the imaginative flavor offerings.

For those who are unfamiliar with Crunky, it's Japan's version of a Nestlé's Crunch bar, which is available in Japan, but in limited markets. The main difference between Crunky and Nestlé's bar is that the former is made with crispy rice and the latter with malt puffs. That makes the crispy bits in a Crunky carry more of a cereal flavor in addition to adding texture. In Nestlé's bar, the crispy rice bits don't do much for the flavor profile.

This particular Crunky smells a bit like coffee and caramel, but in a very subdued way. One of the ingredients for this is caramel, so that part isn't surprising. I think that chestnut often carries a bit of a muted coffee-like flavor. One of the other ingredients if tamarind, a fruit that is used to make jams, drinks, and frozen confections in some Asian countries. It's also a natural laxative, though I'm hoping that has nothing to do with this bar.

The sweetness of this is not too overbearing, and the chestnut flavor seems light and earthy. It has the sense of tasting like real chestnuts at about 50% their actual intensity. Since chestnuts aren't powerfully strong anyway, it's just a bit more muted than I would prefer. I would have preferred a richer taste and I think a little salt might have developed the flavor profile a bit better.

One of the things I like about Crunky is that it gives you a lot of great texture without too much sweetness. That being said, I have to ask myself if I would buy one of these bars again. As decent an experience as this was, I'm not sure that it's an experience worth repeating, particularly if you're calorie conscious (and I am). The entire 48-gram (1.7 oz.) bar is 269 calories. There are 24 little blocks and each has 22 calories. For such a small amount of pleasure (about half the volume of a Hershey's kiss which weighs in at 25 calories), I'm not sure it's worth a repeat beyond the novelty of a first experience.

Crunky Biscuit

One of the things which helps me post with the frequency that I do is the fact that I can share whatever I buy with my husband. I couldn't possibly eat 4 or 5 days worth of treats myself without putting on a lot of weight or chopping out a bunch of healthier calories. Unfortunately, this symbiotic relationship has been put (at least) temporarily on hold because my husband had a blood test with some discouraging results. It's not necessarily at a serious point at this time, but he needs to lay off the sweets and shape up his diet a bit for a time.

Fortunately for me, there are avenues to pursue which allow me to keep reviewing without a second snacker on hand. One of those would be AM/PM's selection of single portion packets. I'm not sure why that particular convenience store is the one that carries the most small packages of individual snacks, but it does make it easy for someone to sample without having to put away a ton of junk food. The only problem is that you pay quite a lot more per serving for the luxury of buying just one small serving at a time.

Since I like (plain) Crunky bars, I figured that I'd pick up this single-cookie biscuit for 40 yen (43 cents) at AM/PM. For those who don't know, a Crunky is like a Nestle's Crunch type of bar with malt puffs instead of rice and Japanese-style milk chocolate (that is, slightly bittersweet) instead of American-style milk chocolate. I wasn't sure what to expect, but when I opened the package, I was a little disappointed to see that this is simply a cookie with Crunky bar in the middle. The filling is hard milk chocolate and has the same malt puffs as a standard Crunky. There were no modifications made to the recipe to make it a cookie filling.

The cookie on the outside is a nice enough sandwich cookie. It had a stronger flavor than some cookies because it was baked to a darker state than some of these types of cookies. This brought out the grain flavor. The main problem with this is that neither the cookie nor the Crunky are enhanced by their pairing. It's like a marriage between two nice people who are poorly matched. The cookie would be better off married to a cream filling. The Crunky is actually better off staying single.

Since there was only 1 cookie to eat (62 calories), I ate all of this. I wouldn't buy it again, and I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't have finished a bigger bag by myself. It's probably not quite fair to give it an indifferent rating. I imagine that I'd be giving it an "unhappy" rating if this were in a larger portion, but I did eat it all, and it wasn't an unpleasant experience. However, I can't recommend it.

Crunky Ball Nude (Gianduja)

Despite the highly provocative naming of this particular line of confections, I have been resisting the allure of the Crunky balls. This is mainly because, while I love the malty crisped rice nature of the basic Crunky, I have been disappointed in at least half of the variations that have been on offer. Those that I did like tended to get by based on format alone. That is, a chocolate covered Crunky almond couldn't lose because it's an almond and a wafer bar won me over because it was a wafer and I love those. The addition of Crunky wasn't much of a merit.

The thing that "got" me to buy these balls was the fact that they are gianduja, or made with hazelnut paste. No, it wasn't the fact that I could make enough verbal hay out of the "nude balls" name that I could metaphorically line all of the stables at the Kentucky Derby, though that certainly would have been a reasonable motivation. Frankly, I would like to know why these are called "nude", but short of having a conversation with someone at Lotte, I'll probably never know for sure. Let's just assume that it's the filthiest possible explanation we can imagine and move on.

I found these for 100 yen ($1.30) at Lawson 100 convenience store, but you can find them pretty much anywhere these days. Note that with the yen growing oddly more powerful, the prices when translated into dollars continue to see inflated, but things are pretty much the same in Japan. One box is 57 grams (2 oz.) and has 27 balls about the size of a largish malted milk ball. Each morsel is about 11 calories and the entire box is 292 calories.

When you pop open the foil package and give it a whiff, it smells like regulation consumer chocolate. If they're cool, the outside is dull looking. Mine melted at room temperature in the Tokyo summer and then looked good and shiny, but also created a big mess all over my hands. I suggest storing them in the refrigerator if you're an anal retentive type and don't want them to melt and reform into a large mutant mass of malt puff and gianduja.

The first bite provides some potent hazelnut chocolate flavor. The bulk of the candy is made up by a giant malt puff inside which is light and crunchy and seems fairly flavorless at first. The second bite brings across a sense of coconut, though I think this was my taste buds fooling me about a mix of nutty and malt flavors. I enjoyed the first bite, but was less a fan of the second.

These are not bad at all, but I set the bar pretty high on gianduja. Nutella and anything made by Ferrero. In fact, I wonder if these are to some extent inspired by Ferrero Rocher, a ball-shaped candy which is made up of a thin wafer shell filled with hazelnut paste and coated in milk chocolate and nuts. This is like a low-rent version of that in which the delicious wad of hazelnut paste is replace with puff and used sparingly on the outside coating and malt puffs replace the more expensive nuts. Maybe they have nothing to do with each other, but I think there's more "crunk" and too little gianduja for my tastes. I'll finish this box, but I'll keep buying Crunky mini bars instead of this latest variation.

Caramel Latte Crunky

Before Nestlé started releasing hundreds of varieties of KitKats in Japan (yes, there was a time when that wasn't the case), Crunky was the candy du jour for most foreign folks. How can you go wrong with a bar which resembles a Nestlé's Crunch and has a funny name? Of course, the venerable Crunky is not this version of Crunky. The old favorite is plain chocolate with crispy malt puffs. That bar, incidentally, was changed some time in the past year. They increased the number of malt puffs such that the bar has become more puff than chocolate. It has a much heavier "cereal" flavor than it used to have.


This variation on the Crunky keeps the explosion of malt puffs, but mixes them with white chocolate. If you're hoping that it's lower calorie because of the cereal aspect, you're in for some bad luck. It's 269 calories for the entire 48 gram (1.7 oz.) bar. When you give it a sniff, you smell that telltale sweetness of white chocolate with undertones of caramel and malt. The malted puffs are not excessively airy so the bar is dense, but crunchy and easy to bite into. It is called caramel latte, but I didn't detect any sort of coffee flavor and there is no coffee in the ingredients list. The caramel part was subdued and that was okay with me because a weak caramel flavor is preferable to strong, fake caramel flavors.

This is a pretty nice bar, but the explosion of malt puffs carries it close to the edge of being a cereal bar. That doesn't bother me at all. In fact, in the milk chocolate Crunky, I like it, but I'm not a strong fan of caramel or white chocolate so this is one of those things I'd nibble at very slowly and not buy again. For those who like caramel, this might be the bee's knees, but only if they aren't looking for something super rich and decadent.

Crunky Almond Chocolate

Back when I was still working at a Japanese company, I used to fuel my late day energy lag with chocolate covered almonds. Most convenience stores carry at least one of several varieties of them. My favorite was Meiji's. The only problem was that the box was 105 grams (3.7 oz.) and resistance was futile. Buying a box was tantamount to admitting that I was going to overindulge in a big way. Chocolate-covered nuts are very dense in calories.

The Crunky Almond chocolates come in a box which is more manageable at 37 grams (1.3 oz.). The whole box is 212 calories or 22 calories per candy and cost 99 yen. Because the Meiji box is bigger, it costs about 180-200 yen. Note that Lotte, which makes Crunky products, has their own version of chocolate covered almonds both with and without crispy bits in the coating. These Crunky almonds seem to duplicate their existing product.


The candy looks and feels almost exactly like other types of chocolate-covered almonds. It's smooth and shiny and has almost no smell at all because of the shiny waxy coating. This gives them a very polished look, like part of a good bridge mix.

Despite my affinity for chocolate-covered almonds, I strung out eating this box for quite awhile, eating about one-third at a time. The first time I tried them, I couldn't sense much chocolate taste at all, but I think that was because my sense of smell and taste were suppressed for some reason. Initially, I thought that it was the waxy coating on the outside because sucking on them for awhile seemed to open up the flavor in a way that just crunching on them didn't. The second and third samplings were much richer and more appealing. The chocolate is deep, familiar Japanese bittersweet chocolate. It pairs well with a deeply roasted, crunchy almond.

The "Crunky" crunchy bits didn't do much for the overall experience except dilute the intensity of the chocolate a small amount. There's a hint of their malted puff flavor as a leftover taste, but it's not very strong. The almond and chocolate mostly overwhelm the puffs. The puffs do add a bit more crunch to the chocolates, but I'm not sure that it really needs it since the chocolate coating is solid and a little hard and the almond very crunchy.

These were quite good, but I can't say that they're necessarily better than a regular chocolate-covered almond. The main benefit of these over the other varieties is that the portion control is nicer for someone like me who finds it hard to resist the bigger boxes. I'd definitely buy these again, but if I saw them side by side with the Meiji almonds in the same portions, I'd still probably go for the pure chocolate coating of the regular chocolate-covered almonds.

Crunky Wafers

If you have worked in a Japanese office, then there is a very high chance that you have had the experience of being given snacks or treats. Most of the time, such food items are purchased as souvenirs (omiyage) when a coworker travels for business or personal reasons. Often, you get seasonal or regional foods.

During the 12 years I worked in a Japanese office, there were many occasions on which I was given such snacks. I often asked the office ladies (it was always women who doled out treats as men did not serve food or drinks in a Japanese office), known as "O.L." in Japan, what I was getting because the packages did not describe the contents. The information about the food was usually on the box that it came in and I never saw the boxes themselves.

One day, I was handed something and asked the O.L., Tomomi, what I was being given. Tomomi was well-known for wanting to practice and improve her English and this gave her a chance to try and come up with the right words for a fairly simple conversational exchange. She told me that the food she was handing me was what sounded like "way-haas". After some good-natured confusion, I figured out that what she was saying was "wafers". In Japanese, wafers are ウェハース (we-haa-su). Now, every time I see wafers, I think "way-haas" instead of wafers.



Since I love way-haas, I was pleased to see this Crunky bar at an AM/PM convenience store. I don't remember exactly what it cost, but I think it was around 60 yen (66 cents). The bar is quite small at 6 cm x 5 cm (2.4 in. x 2 in) and has 75 calories.

It smells like a Crunky bar with a plain wafer scent mixed in. The texture is very crispy and it's quite dry. It's more solid than a regular wafer because of the relatively thick and firm chocolate filling. The filling is not a cream like most wafers. It's actually thin layers of Crunky chocolate crunch bar. It's not too sweet and has a nice chocolate flavor with a wheat-like wafer flavor. You can't really detect the malt puffs in the Crunky filling.

I liked this, as did my husband. It is a very "utilitarian" kind of treat because it's not exotic, super sweet or rich. A lot of the pleasure is in the texture and the lack of heavy sugary sweetness. If your really like wafers, this is definitely worth giving a try, but this may not be for everyone.

Ryoma Sakamoto Purple Potato Tart Crunky

And so, we come to the end of my dalliances with political revolutionary Ryoma Sakamoto themed candies, because, frankly, I'm sick of them. His likeness has been slapped on everything these days and the snacks his face is applied to are nothing special. Though I liked the yuzu cookies, the other items haven't really lit my fire. This Crunky would be included in that sad group.

Frankly, Crunky has really let me down in most of its variations. While I like (not love) the regular bar, its malt puffs don't seem to work well with other flavor mixtures or textures. I think the puffs are too strongly flavored and compete with whatever they're with, and mainly milk chocolate works with them. Someone at the Crunky product design level needs to say that when they use the Crunky brand to crank out derivative products, they should use bland crispy rice, not their regular malty puffs.

I had some small expectations for this because "purple potato" is essentially the brother of another color of the yellow-fleshed sweet potato, and I love sweet potato. The candy even smells nicely sweet potato-ish and the very first sense on the tongue also conveys that lovely tuber's essence. Unfortunately, that hint rapidly turns into strong sweetness and malt puff flavor once you start crunching your funky crunchy little morsel. At the end, you're just in textured malt puff and buttery white chocolate land. If you adore white chocolate, that's not a bad place to live, but it wouldn't be my residence of choice.

You can pick these up nearly anywhere for about 100 yen ($1.20) for a box of 10 individually wrapped slabs. Each is only 22 calories and 3.9 grams (.14 oz.), so you're essentially getting a Hershey's kiss portion with about three times the wrapping with every bit. They aren't bad at all, merely not great. Though I think that they may be loved by malt puff and white chocolate fans, I wouldn't buy them again and I think it'll take me some time to finish the box. I'd rather spend my calories on other chocolates most days.

Lotte's Olympic Recipes (product information)

Olympic ice cream, with a Japanese twist. Personally, I think Japan should have been on the green tea ice cream, but no big deal... (All images from Lotte's web site)

One of my many little pleasures in life is looking at sites devoted to retro recipes. There are several out there, but my favorite is Retro Recipe Attempts. I like it because the woman who writes the posts actually tries the recipes to see how well they hold up to modern tastes. One of the reasons these retro recipes are so funny, besides the fact that they often sound and look unpalatable, is that it's clear in many cases that the entire ingredient list was constructed to maximize the use of a particular company's products. In some cases, it means adding just that extra inconsequential spoonful so that you feel compelled to buy another product.

The Gallery of Regrettable Food similarly showcases recipes which include copious amounts of products that you never knew could be used in cooking. I never would have guessed that you could use 7-Up in salad dressing, for making pie crust or to baste a ham, for instance. You can even spice up your kid's glass of milk with a bit of  it. Yum, yum.

Americans aren't the only ones attempting to shoehorn in as many products as possible when creating recipes and most of the major Japanese food manufacturers have recipes on their sites to encourage maximum consumption of their products. The adorable ice cream parfaits pictured above are part of Lotte's efforts. They will encourage you to use 4 kinds of candy and 4 varieties of their "Lady Bordon" ice cream. The little "surprise" to this is that the bottom isn't ice cream, but yogurt. I'm not sure if that's about adding a balance to the sweet flavors or a hint of nutrition, but it sounds like a horrible combination to me. Candy and yogurt don't play well together. Lotte recommends this as a way to offer color and cuteness. They don't mention much about flavor.

To continue the Olympic theme, they have this winner's circle featuring the Koala's March cookies as the winners. I like how they avoided using any reference to flags of actual nations. It's very politically correct of them. This recipe uses Toppo for the pretzel stick flag pole and Crunky cookies for the platform. I've reviewed or sampled all of these products at one time or another, and, while I believe these are cute as a monkey's ear, I wouldn't care to consume any of them. Most of these are way too sweet.

They also have an actual recipe for cookies that will allow you to construct a ribbon rather than simply assemble their various sweets. However, they would not be complete without one of their cookies. It seems that the "gold" medal warrants a Ghana cookie. Crunky cookies are part of the bronze, and that's quite rightfully so. Anything and everything Ghana is far better than those who relate to Crunky.

Finally, you can make your own medals. I guess the Koala's represent Olympic champions. I'm not sure what the little Toppo pretzel rods are symbolic of (javelins?) nor the little balls of "capuche" candy (shot puts?). The things that look like little bowls are called "colo galita", and I was utterly unfamiliar with them prior to researching these recipes. They're little waffles filled with two kinds of chocolate. They're not new as they were introduced by Lotte in late October 2006. I just never noticed them or saw them in shops.

I think it's rather nice that Lotte posted these adorable recipes. Though it does smack of the same self-serving commercialism as things like a 7-Up cookbook, at least these aren't trying to suggest that you incorporate them into your dinner plans.

Crunky Pumpkin Purin

In addition to missing out on American holidays, there are some holiday-related dubious pleasures that I also cannot take advantage of. One of these is the post-Halloween candy sales where everyone goes out and picks up snack-size bags of treats bearing a Halloween motif for a fraction of their former price.

I can say now that I have had my first experience in Japan with buying reduced price Halloween candy, and that it was completely planned. The Crunky Pumpkin Purin (pudding) candy had been recommended to me by a few friends so I went looking for it. When I found it, the 238 yen ($2.65) price for 49 grams (1.7 oz.) rubbed me the wrong way. To offer you a point of comparison, a regulation size Crunky bar is also 49 grams/1.7 oz. and sells for only 100 yen ($1.11). I found this at Family Mart in a bargain basket on November 2 for 119 yen ($1.32).


This variation is essentially a broken up bar with it's squares wrapped in foil packets and put in a nicely designed Halloween themed box. Each square is 3.9 grams (.14 oz.) and 22 calories. It's a monument to wasteful packaging in the service of cuteness. The candy itself is very sweet, as is so often the case with white chocolate-based bars. That being said, the strong sweetness works well with the pumpkin flavor.

I felt the pumpkin flavor (and smell) was very strong in a positive way, and that there was a hint of salt. My husband said he couldn't detect it at all, but something was there that he couldn't identify. I think that was because he was expecting pumpkin pie rather than the squash-like flavor of Japanese pumpkin. The texture is just right with enough malt puff crispy pieces (not rice) to lend texture without undermining the pumpkin flavor.

This is a nice thing to have around for a small treat with tea, but I wouldn't buy it at the original price. I would also warn those who don't like super sweet treats that this is not for them. That being said, I'd certainly buy it again if it rolled around again next year for a more reasonable price.

Zunda Pretz

I have three words for you: Funky Monkey Babys (sic). No, they are not my new pets, but it'd be awesome if they were. And, no, I don't listen to them, as they are actually a Japanese music group. And finally, they are only tangentially related to this review (but, yes, still related). It's simply an extremely cool name for a rock group. Frankly, I think they should promote "Crunky" in Japan ("The Funky Monkey Babys present Crunky.")

The Funky Monkey Babys were a part of the reason that I received this regional Pretz as a gift. One of my students attended a charity concert for the victims of the Tohoku disaster in Sendai and picked this tidbit up for me. Zunda, as a few folks may recall from a Zunda KitKat review, is mashed soybean and is  used in cuisine in northern Tohoku. When my student gave it to me, I asked her if she had already sampled it, and what she made of it. She made one of those faces which suggested that, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. When she relented and gave an opinion, said it was very salty, and that it was good with beer. Beer makes everything better, it seems. I'm sure it's how men manage to watch interminably boring professional sports. Being a teetotaler, I'll never know for sure, but I'm going to try these Pretz with Coke Zero.

This is a tiny little box of Pretz with zero information printed on the box. I'm guessing it was part of a multi-pack of souvenirs that one could buy and distribute to friends and coworkers after a scenic trip to what I'm sure many believe is a rapidly expanding nuclear wasteland in the general area. Still, it can't be all bad if the Funky Monkey Babys are willing to go there. A little research revealed that this was, indeed, part of a 6-pack for 630 yen ($8.26). Each box is 27 grams (just shy of an ounce). It's on the expensive side for the volume of snacks, but on par for souvenirs.

My expectation was that this was going to be pretty good. My students reluctance to endorse it didn't really daunt me because many Japanese people have more sensitive palates than foreigners do. This is due to the fact that much more food is subtle or bland in Japan rather than flavor blasted. I guessed that what was too salty for her may suit me just fine.

The sticks are half as tall as usual sticks. They are impressively green and smell strongly of edamame. One bite revealed why this is so. They have an strong, but not unpleasant, chlorophyll flavor and are like having a mouthful of edamame. They've definitely done a good job of incorporating the flavor of zunda. The other savory flavors, like chicken extract, build up the flavor profile but don't separate out from the basic soy bean flavor. Despite what my student said, I found these strong and flavorful, but not particularly salty.

I really enjoyed these and would definitely consider having them again if they become available locally. If you really, really love edamame, these should float your boat, but they may not suit all tastes. For me, I found them unique and refreshing.

Oyatsu Box Dagashi Edition (Unboxing & Service Review)

Back when I was still living in Japan, people who read this blog would occasionally ask me why I didn't start a business selling the snacks I wrote about. My answer was always that I'd done mail order before (Japanese KISS collectible items, mainly records), and it's generally not worth it for a low-value commodity like snacks. It was worth it for a high value commodity like recording collectibles because you can get some suckers to fork over $400 for a set of records which is really a pretty Japanese re-issue of music they already have.

At any rate, I am certain that, had I gone into the snack sales market, somebody "in the know" would do what I am about to do. That is, dissect the contents and the value and remark on how "worth it" it is. Before I get to that though, I'd like to say that I do understand the intangible value associated with the experience of getting these types of boxes. I currently subscribe to a quarterly subscription box from The Mysterious Package Company. It's the sort of thing which I do because it is a complete surprise and it represents enjoying the creative output of people both in the visual and literary sense.

These Japanese food boxes are part surprise, and part value of contents. Many services offer them. My intention is to shop around for what seems to be the best experience in terms of three factors:

Service: I measure this by speed, packaging sturdiness and design, response time to issues, presence of any problems, and packaging design/appearance (including how contents are arranged).

Value: This is where I look at how much each item would likely cost in Japan and how that compares to the price. I will also consider the shipping weight and expense as well as packaging costs.

Overall experience value: I would call this the overall "joy" factor. How happy am I after I open the box and survey the contents? How much fun or novelty is involved?

To be fair to the oyatsubox folks, they give you some idea of what to expect by posting the contents of past boxes on their web site. Before I orderd this, I knew it would largely consist of cheap children's snacks (or portions of multi-packs that had been broken up and distributed among multiple parties) because that is what "dagashi" means. Most of what they show from past boxes are items that would cost you 20-50 yen in Japan and mini snacks. The "Dagashi Box" subscription promises 8-12 snacks including a kit for making candy. My box had 9 items.

First of all, the concrete details. The box is sturdy enough and nicely printed with the company's name. It weighs 258 grams and was sent by the small packet rate by SAL, or so it seems based on the fact that it took a shade over 3 weeks to arrive. The company e-mails you when they ship and they ship subscriptions at the beginning of each month. I joined on April 22, 2017 and my box was shipped on May 2nd. It arrived on May 25. This is consistent with the 2-3 week time frame when using SAL. Assuming I'm right about the method of shipping, this cost 380 yen ($3.40) to ship. They say, "free shipping," but obviously somebody is paying and the cost is rolled into your subscription. I don't know what it costs for the company to have these small boxes printed up especially for them, but I'd be surprised if it was more than about 50 yen. It could easily be less.

In terms of service, the e-mail that told me when the box shipped was lost in a "promotions" tab in my gmail and I didn't find it so I contacted the company about this. They told me when the notification was sent and the date the package was sent. Their service was sufficiently prompt and polite. I will say that they have a tendency to send a lot of mailings relative to the duration of my relationship with them. They send promo coupons and advertising. It's not overbearing, but it was a little much.

Getting to the meat of things, however, the most expensive item in the box is likely the Neru Neru candy making kit. These sell for 100 yen. Everything else was definitely 20-50 yen in cost or less. A tiny mini Crunky was likely about 10 yen or less. My best guess of the total cost to the seller of all of the items in my box would be 300-400 yen (likely around 320-340 yen). That means that, if I want to be generous in my estimation, their out of pocket total was around 830 yen or $7.51. About half of your subscription fee goes to costs and about half goes to labor/profit. Of course, I'm assuming they pay retail for their snacks. They may pay wholesale.

I don't find this to be exorbitant given that I know what would have to go into making this happen. Somebody has to run the web site, maintain subscriptions, print shipping labels, assemble and pack boxes, shop for the items and sort them out, and then take the boxes to the post office or manage a pick-up with them. If they don't have a ton of subscribers, it's pretty labor-intensive for not much money. If they have a ton, then it's likely a pretty good money maker. And while I don't find it unreasonable, I will say that it's a far worse deal than if you have access to an Asian market as their mark-ups are generally no more than 50% and sometimes less. However, a market's selection would be much more restricted as well and not everyone has access to such stores.

In terms of the "joy" factor, I was pleased to see the box and relatively happy with the contents. Some of the items are ones I've had before. In fact, I reviewed the Apollo strawberry chocolate in the past, albeit in a different package. That was actually the only item I'd reviewed before, but I'd be stunned if I'd never sampled Caramel Corn or the Kokeiya corn snack during my time in a Japanese office when such snacks were regularly passed around. I will be reviewing the items in the box individually in future blog posts so I'm looking forward to that.

I can't help but think that my copious experience in Japan makes this less thrilling for me than it would be for someone who had only been there as a tourist or who had never been there at all. There is a sense of things being novel and really "cool" when you open up a package of colorful snacks with foreign characters on them that you can't understand which can't be re-experienced once you're familiar with them. I used to talk about this situationwith my students in Japan. They told me that it was interesting knowing Japan through my eyes because so much of it was so mundane to them that it was essentially invisible. Now that I'm back in the U.S. again, I understand all too well what they meant.

If I were not me, I think I'd be pretty happy with the experience of getting this for only $15 a month as a purchased "experience." That's a pretty cheap subscription rate for nearly any box you might be interested in and there are enough items to allow you to slowly consume a few items a week without running out before the next one. That being said, because this is dagashi, much of the thrill needs to be in the unusual nature as kid's snacks are notoriously not very good quality or especially tasty compared to those for the more general or adult markets. These are more vibrant and colorful, but the tastes are likely to be sweeter, saltier, and less complex than other snacks.

My only complaint is that including just one tiny Crunky and one Hello Kitty marshmallow seemed a bit too cheap. Given that these items are parts of multi-packs and likely cost so little, I think either including more of those types of items of another brand or type or putting in a couple of these snacks would have represented a more generous package without costing much more at all. It would also be better business sense in that it would allow the recipient the possibility to share these tiny snacks with others and possibly increase the chances that someone else might want to subscribe after having some small samples from a friend's box.

My plan is to see what Oyatsu Cafe has to offer for their other, more expensive box, the Oyatsu Box which promises 10-14 "full size" snacks and one vending machine toy ("gachapon") for $25. I changed over my subscription and should see that box some time in June. One of the nice things about the Oyatsu Cafe subscription access is that you can alter your type of subscription on the fly so you can switch off between types if you want to change from time to time for different experiences. You can also cancel from the account page if you'd like to stop. Their interface is clean and easy to work with and that's certainly a plus.

I can't rate services the same way I rate the snacks, so I'll just give my subjective evaluation on my three criteria.

Service: Excellent
Value: Adequate
Experience: Good

Worth it? Yes, but only if you are interested in kid's snacks for the novelty and colorful nature rather than for the quality of snacks.

Note: I am not promoting Oyatsubox. They did not provide me with any free samples. I paid as anyone else would for my subscription. They don't know I'm a Japanese food blogger or that I would be posting about them.

Super Size Ghana Special Holiday Bar

The box says, "creamy milk and the richness of cacao, new standard chocolate." (You can click any picture to see a larger version with more detail.)

Around this time of year, confectioners in Japan start super sizing their core candy products. You can get super sized Pocky, Crunky, and Ghana bars among other things. My husband and I had never purchased one of these monster confections until now. He selected the Ghana bar because, as a solid chocolate bar, it has the greatest long term eating potential and can be used for baking in a pinch.

The super size bars are available at this time mainly to offer as Christmas or (more commonly) New Years gifts for kids. However, one of my students who has a birthday in December was given one so sometimes young adults give them to each other. Personally, I think these would make a great group souvenir of a trip to Japan to share with your entire office if you happen to be in Japan during the limited time they are offered. You could also set them aside for a friend or loved one who has particularly severe depression or PMS issues. There's enough chocolate here to see them through an entire month of difficulty (as well as add a pound and a half to their body weight).

Though I haven't reviewed Ghana bars before, they are not new to me. You can buy normal (about the size of a Hershey's chocolate bar) Ghana for a bargain price in many supermarkets. One close to me regularly sells them for 88 yen (97 cents) each, which is about 12 yen (13 cents) cheaper than similar basic milk chocolate bars of the same size. This big bar costs about 800 yen ($8.79) and pretty much is roughly equal in volume to 8 smaller bars so it's not cheap, but it's also not priced at a premium.


The box is 30 cm (11.8 in.) long and 14.5 cm (5.7 in.) wide and has a snowflake design on it to make sure you know its a winter holiday gift. A regular Ghana box is entirely red with the logo in the middle. The chocolate is packed in an unassuming foil pouch. I'm guessing this is to keep it fresh for a long time. My bar's expiration date is September of 2009.


The chocolate bar is divided into 20 individual blocks. Each block is 4.5 (1.8 in.) by 2.3 to 2.5 cm (.90-.98 in.) in size. The side pieces are bigger than the inner blocks. If you had kids and they were supposed to share this bar, they'd be fighting over the bigger pieces at the edges. Each block is 84 calories. If you went insane and gobbled it all down, you'd be putting away 1,680 calories from the entire huge bar.

Ghana chocolate smells mildly of chocolate. These thick blocks are a little tough to bite through compared to the normal thin bars that are available year round, but I have to admit that I have a weak bite. The chocolate flavor is subdued at first, but becomes rich and deep as it melts in your mouth. It doesn't seem too sweet at first, but the sweetness builds up as you roll it around on your tongue. The chocolate itself seems to lack depth. You don't pick out any deeper flavors like coffee, nuts or any fruity notes. It's very fatty chocolate with a good portion of cocoa butter, so it's quite satisfying, but it is the sort of chocolate that is well-suited to the palates of children and those who like sweet chocolate that doesn't have a very strong milky taste.

Comparing a basic chocolate like Ghana to Hershey's in America and Cadbury in the U .K., I'd say that Hershey's has sour, yogurt-like flavor and has a chalkier texture and Cadbury is much milkier. The odd thing about Ghana to me is how the sweetness and basic chocolate flavor come through so strongly without the sort of heavy milky flavor that seems so common in other milk chocolate bars. Ghana has more of a "hot cocoa" which is made in part with water taste than a "hot chocolate" flavor which is made with 100% milk. It's good chocolate, but it's different from what you might expect back home.

••••••••••••••••••••••••••


Marble choco (マーベルチョコ) Santa dispenser wishes you a "Happy Merry X-mas", because it's not enough to just be "merry" or "happy". You must be both.

Merry Christmas to all of my readers. I hope you have a beautiful holiday and can relax with friends and loved ones. Thank you for reading. It's very appreciated.

Daiso (Meito) Kuchidoke White Chocolate

Most Americans grew up knowing the difference between Coca-Cola, RC Cola, and a store brand cola. We know that the store brand is a knock-off of Coca-cola and that it will be much cheaper, but inferior in taste and likely mouth feel (because of a variation in carbonation). RC Cola wasn't as bad as the store brand, but still a big step down from "the Real Thing" (aka Coke).

When you encounter brands from another country, you have little idea what is what. The big cheeses will eventually reveal themselves if you pay attention, and the lesser brands may or may not build their way into your brand awareness consciousness. Glico (Pocky), Lotte (Koala's March and Crunky), and Meiji (Hi-Chew and Meltykiss/Meltyblend) emerge as the premium consumer-grade snack makers. Meito, the manufacturer behind today's item, is definitely closer to the RC Cola level than the Coca-cola level. In fact, they're just a few steps up from store brand.

Rather ironically, Meito created this chocolate as a store brand item for Daiso. For those who don't know, Daiso is a 100-yen shop in Japan and has branches in the U.S. at which it typically sells items for $1.50. It is an awesome store in Japan with a lot of utilitarian and cool items. In the U.S., it's still pretty great, but the selection isn't nearly as good.

This product is clearly designed to have the look and feel of Meltykiss/Meltyblend chocolates. The packaging is similar as is the square-shaped chocolate in individual foil packets. Both are also dusted with cocoa powder on the outside and meant to resemble truffle-like chocolates. The main difference aesthetically is that the cocoa powder on the outside of these is much lighter in color than Meiji's Meltykiss. The use of "kuchidoke" or "melt in your mouth" is also meant to evoke the image of the more popular brand name product. Meltykiss is only sold in the winter because it's supposed to, well, "melt".

The first thing I noticed about this was that it was harder than a Meltykiss chocolate. The outer coating seemed more like a crisp shell dusted with cocoa powder that surrounded a core of plain white chocolate than the ganache/truffle-style experience of the competitor it seeks to emulate. I could tell by how hard it was to cut through and how the outer shell shattered that it was definitely not the same as a ganache or soft truffle chocolate. It does melt in your mouth, but not as a soft, yielding, fatty chocolate. It melts in the way that nearly any kind of chocolate would do so if you held it on your tongue long enough.

The flavor is actually quite good with a deep flavor of chocolate hitting you after it melts on your tongue for a moment. That is, I imagine, the outer coating melting away and the effect of the cocoa powder. The second flavor is less impressive and that's the white chocolate coming through. For at least a short time, it let's loose some cheap white chocolate flavor before it yields to a richer, creamier flavor. All in all, it's fine, but a mixed bag and certainly not on par with Meltykiss/Meltyblend in terms of quality.

There is absolutely nothing "wrong" with this chocolate taken on its own except for the fact that it doesn't live up to its promise either as a knock-off of Meltykiss or as a "melt in your mouth" experience. Given that Meltykiss in the U.S. costs $4.00 (usually) and this is $1.50, it may be unrealistic to expect better for such a low price. However, you can spend your money on something domestic which will be just as good if not better. Though I enjoyed these on a certain level, I definitely wouldn't buy them again and am not inspired to try the other varieties in the Daiso line - at least not at this time.

Shoei Delicy Crunch Chocolate

One of my earliest memories of shopping for snacks in Japan is of this particular chocolate bar. It used to be sold at a convenience store nearby that was called "L & W". Those initials stand for "Liquor & Wine". The store was about a two-minute walk (tops) from our apartment and in addition to booze, they sold various snack foods.

They were one of the few shops two decades ago that was open past 7:00 pm and we were on a "English school (eikaiwa) teacher's schedule" at the time. That means we started work at 1:00 pm and finished around 9:00 or 10:00 pm. While the markets were long-closed by the time we got home, the liquor shop was usually open and a popular place to browse for our early experiences with Japanese food. They converted to a "Sankus" ("Thanks") convenience store after about a decade. Eventually, the elderly owners went out of business entirely as the glut of convenience stores in our area pushed them out. It was rather sad because they were in business for about 15 years of our time here and we frequently went to the shop. It's funny the things one little candy bar can make you remember.

When we first purchased this bar, for what I'm guessing was about 30 yen (33 cents) as that is about what it costs now, we couldn't read Japanese and it was a surprise to learn that it was a small chocolate crunch bar. It's pretty small at 9 cm x 5 cm (3.5 in. x 2 in.) and kitschy with its Japanese money motif. I don't recall if we bought it often, but I do know we bought it at least several times because it was so approachable among Japanese snack foods. We bought this bar at Seiyu supermarket, but you can probably find it in any store with a fairly large kid's sweets section.



This candy is small and cheap with a little card in it that is a fake 1000 yen bill that is a good miniature representation of a real bill, except for the fact that the fake bill says "kid's bank" on the back of it. So, it's pretty obviously designed for children. That means that one can't expect much from the quality of the candy. A lot of kid's candy is too sweet and poorly made.

When you open the package, the chocolate smells like sweet chocolate, and has a surprisingly appealing scent. The texture is a little soft, but firmer than many Japanese chocolates. I noticed that cocoa butter is not on the ingredients list for the chocolate. It has "cocoa powder" and "cocoa mass". My guess is that it is, perhaps, not as fatty as some other brands, and the flavor is definitely not as intense as some other Japanese chocolates. The crunchies are quite good, but not terribly crisp, and there could be a few more of them.

It's actually quite a decent candy and pleasantly mild. It's a better quality, less sweet candy for kids than the usual kid's sweets, though it's certainly not on par with the big ticket company's (Meiji, Lotte, Morinaga) consumer chocolates that are designed with a broader market in mind. For a cheap candy though, this is not a bad crunch bar at all, and makes for a nice Japan-specific souvenir to parcel out to more timid sorts back home. I'd certainly buy this again if I was in the mood for a crunch bar. In fact, I'd buy it before a Crunky because it's smaller and the puffs are just regular corn puffs instead of malt puffs and carry only texture and no flavor.

ZenPop Sweets Box February 2019 unboxing (Cheese!)

When I was a child, I remember a commercial which showed a gorilla tossing around Samsonite luggage as a way of demonstrating how tough it was. Though I doubt gorillas tossed my ZenPop box around, it did encounter some sort of trauma in shipping. The boxes themselves are quite sturdy and this is the first time I've ever received one which took on any damage at all. Perhaps a gorilla did get to it to do such damage.

Whether or not the box is a beat up is not the question. The question is how the contents fared despite the hard knocks it took. Fortunately, not one item in the box was harmed despite the licking it took. It may have helped that many of the items were cheese-related and in puffy bags with air.

I am especially delighted with this box since the theme is cheese. I once told my husband that, if I had to eat one type of food and only one type of food for the rest of my life, it would be cheese. He even got me a cheese of the month club membership for Christmas. While not everything in the box is cheese themed, the overwhelming majority is.

There are more savory items, of course, because that's what one would expect from cheese.

Savory:

Super Kari-Kari Cheese Pretz: This is supposed to be super crunchy because it's very thin.

Bourbon Petit Cheese Crackers: These are like tiny Ritz-style crackers with a cheese filling. They're a little like the Lance sandwich crackers that are so common in vending machines, except they are tiny.

Umai-Wa Cheese (corn snack rings): This is a ring version of the famous "umai bo" sticks. I'm guessing this will be little different than the sticks, but it'll likely be less messy.

Ura-Caramel Corn Double Cheese (corn snack curls): The information in the ZenPop box says these aren't "caramel" at all despite the name. Caramel corn is a brand in Japan as much as a flavor so I'm guessing that's why there is a misleading name.

Cheese Rice Crackers: These are small, hard crunchy rice snacks called "arare" (which I think means "hail", but it's been awhile and my Japanese is fading away). I loved this style of snack in Japan, though the did tend to be the least healthy version of sembei.

Horo Buono Cheddar Cheese (balls): I've never heard of anything like these, but they sound and look a lot like Planter's cheese balls.

Calbee Black Pepper and Cheese Potato Chips: Calbee makes the thinnest and crisipiest chips so I think these are going to be amazing.

Dagashi Cheese Snack: This is the funniest little thing because it is so tiny. It's supposed to be Camembert-flavored cheese with fish paste, but I'll have to take the tiniest of bites to get a sense of it considering it's smaller than the top half of my pinky finger.

Sweet:

Crunky Baked Cheese Tart: This is a weird one because it's a chocolate bar which is made with gouda. Most sweets that are made with cheese in America are made with cream cheese. This is a little like the baked KitKat though and is can be toasted to bring out a unique experience.

Asahi Cheese Tart Bar: This is a "healthy" bar fortified with vitamins. It is supposed to be a dough/cheesecake type of center with a cookie wrapped around it (much like a tart with cheese filling).

Choco-ball Chocolate Banana Flavor: This is supposed to be a chocolate biscuit covered with banana-flavored chocolate. It sounds terrible actually because banana-flavored anything tends to be disappointing.

Strawberry Chocolate: These are dagashi, or kid's snacks. They're strawberry chocolates on a stick (like a lollipop). I'm guessing these will be super sweet and artificially flavored.

Pikachu Ramune Candy: This is another dagashi with a ball that is strawberry outside and melon inside. Despite the name, it doesn't seem from the description like there is any ramune (Japanese soda) flavor.

Anpanman Ball Chocolate: The center of this is a cookie and the outside is chocolate. It's like a malted milk ball with a cookie center instead of malted milk.

Tirol Kinako Mochi Chocolate: This is the only item that I've reviewed before and it is super tasty. Previously, I reviewed the "premium" version (larger piece) and this appears to be  the smaller version, but it tastes the same.

I've said before that I believe that ZenPop's package has the best value for a snack pack and this box continues to convince me of that. There is a decent mix of sweet and savory as well as dagashi (children's snacks) and snacks designed for adults. If you'd like to consider ZenPop's box, you can buy one or subscribe by going to their site. Note that I was given this box for review at no cost. Hopefully, I'll do better reviewing the contents than I did with the previous box. ;-)