Daiichi Vanilla Bar

The Japanese seem to have a taste for sweetened condensed milk which I never developed. This is reflected in the fact that they'll squirt some from a tube onto their strawberries. In fact, there are some pervy videos out there of Japanese women provocatively squirting milky, semi-translucent fluid onto their mouths and faces. It's sweetened condensed milk, but we're supposed to think it's something else.

These are made by the same company that made the chocolate cream bar which I reviewed favorably. I bought this at Lawson's 100-yen shop where it was on display in the freezer case next to the chocolate version.

I had some hopes that this "vanilla bar" was actually vanilla. Unfortunately, I didn't taste any vanilla in it at all. The reason that I mentioned the love sweetened condensed milk at the start of this post is that this is the sort of frozen treat that is clearly designed for Japanese tastes. It doesn't smell like anything at all and the taste is like powdered milk. It's sweet but not overwhelmingly so.

The texture of the ice milk inside of this bar is much firmer than the chocolate cream bar in the interior and less brittle and hard on the outside. I even let it soften a bit to see if it would take on the same super creamy aspects as the chocolate bar, but no joy.

On the plus side, each bar is only 85 calories and you get three 75-ml. (2.5 oz.) bars for 99 yen ($1.06). On the minus side, the ingredients include palm oil and Sucralose and, though this is not bad at all, it just doesn't taste like much. Clearly, there is no vanilla flavoring in it, or so little as to not be detectable. If you like powdered or condensed milk enough to eat it in ice cream form, this might float your boat, but if you like something which is more flavorful, give this a pass. Note that this almost made "indifferent", but I can't in good conscience give that rating when I threw out the last bar rather than eat it.