Pizza Hut and Morinaga Milk Caramel Pizza (product announcement)

The Japanese have to show that they can take anything America does and do it better. They've finally turned their attention toward the excess which is "dessert pizza". Given the enormous task involved in taking something as sacred as putting sugary delights on pizza dough, Pizza Hut decided to combine its research forces with that at Morinaga, a company known well for it's caramel delights.

As you can see by the ad, the pizza costs 800 yen (about $8) and is topped with "colorful marshmallows", almonds, and caramel sauce. It is 25 cm. (about 10 in.) in size. This monstrosity became available on June 10 and will be making new cavities for a limited time. You can have it delivered to you, but only if you buy at least 1400 yen worth of food at the same time.

Morinaga Crackling Choco Balls and Potato Choco Balls (product information)

When I was a kid, I remember trying Pop Rocks. It was sort of cool feeling them crackle in my mouth a few times, but then I lost interest. Years went by and I grew up without feeling any desire to re-visit Pop Rocks. At some point, I started dropping in on designer chocolate shops in Tokyo. One of those was Leonidas and they gave me a sample. Lo and behold, it included Pop Rocks. It was one of the most expensive chocolatiers I'd ever experienced, and they were designing their candy with little carbonated bits of sugar.

If putting Pop-Rock-style candies is good enough for Leonidas, then it's good enough for Morinaga. If nothing else  convinces me that this is candy designed for kids, the existence of a "crackling" version does. This is adventure candy. If I run across some at a Japanese market, I'll probably give them a shop, but I would have very low expectations.

Morinaga's other somewhat unusual offering is "potato". It's being promoted a "light and crispy". This is another one that I'll pick up if I see it. I would anticipate that it has potato-chip-like bits in it and that it won't have a lot in the way of potato flavor to offer, but rather be textured white chocolate.

If any of my readers get to these before me, please feel free to share your impressions in comments. If they're not particularly interesting, you can save me a little money. :-)

Morinaga Summer Amazake (product information)

One of my former coworkers, a British woman prone to stealing our German potatoes when we went out to restaurants to eat with her, told me that her grandmother was sick and likely to pass away soon. I told her how sorry I was, but she said that there was no reason to be sad because her grandmother was "ready" to shuffle off this mortal coil. She said that her grandmother, who was in her late 80's, had seen the world change so much since she was born that it exhausted her. When her granny was born, there were no airplanes and her son ended up being a pilot. The world had come so far so relatively fast that she felt out of place and ready to move on.

We often don't think about how fast things have changed because they do so seemingly gradually within the span of our lifetimes. However, even within my 48 years, lifestyles have dramatically changed. If a person could live to be 300, I'm sure that their 20-year-old self would find the world that their 299-year-old self would mundane was amazingly different.

When we think about such changes, we usually focus on technology - computers, internet, cell phones, locks that no longer require keys and shopping that no longer requires cash. However, there are other ways which take a little more attention to detail and one of those is seasonal food. When I was a kid, we could only get oranges "in season". These days, you can get nearly any food year-round (though location does matter to some extent), but the price is affected by availability. The world has grown smaller in such a way that produce that can be grown somewhere far away can make it to our local stores before it spoils, at least with the help of some chemicals.

I thought about this when I discovered that Morinaga is selling summer amazake (a sweet fermented rice drink with a low alcohol level). Usually, amazake is sold as a warm drink in winter and is fairly common at shrines during New Year's celebrations. It's a winter seasonal thing, but not Morinaga is offering it chilled, freeze-dried, and frozen for summer enjoyment.

The question I thought about was why this drink hasn't been positioned this way regularly for decades. Why limit it to winter consumption? Well, the reason is that we get into habits and forget to change. We build a little mental box that says there is a time and a place for such things even when there is no longer a reason. Frankly, I like it when companies do things like this because I think that thinking outside of that unnecessary box is good for us. I know they just want to sell more drinks, but, if it gets people thinking about doing something outside of routine, it's all for the good. 

Morinaga Kinako Mochi Choco Ball

Candy makers speak in a sort of code. As children, we come to understand this code, but, as an adult, I had completely forgotten about the spycraft of sweets marketed toward the short set. For instance, "hot" in candy code often means, "strong cinnamon". It does not mean that chili is infused into the mix. That is only the case for candy designed for adult buyers and candy snobs who think that mixing hot stuff with sweet stuff is the bee's knees.

American candy makers have their code words and Japanese ones do as well. This was a fact I had not considered when I spied this box of "kinako mochi" or "toasted soy bean and pounded rice cake" flavor of Choco Ball. When I think "mochi", I think of chewy, slightly elastic, and soft covering on the outside of a traditional Japanese sweet. In candy code, however, "mochi" is what they call "gummi". That is necessarily a bad thing, but my level of enthusiasm would have been dialed back a bit had I remembered that this contained a core of German ingenuity rather than stretchy Japanese rice.

I found this small box (26 grams, a little under an ounce) of candy at Mitsuwa Japanese market on what I would consider a "very good day" in terms of scoring both interesting and affordable snacks. It was $1.19 (119 yen), which is still more expensive than it is in Japan (85 yen or 85 cents), but is very reasonable for an import.

When I flipped open the "beak" on the top of the box, I felt the very familiar scent of kinako "chocolate"; that is to say, white chocolate infused with toasted soybean. This is a smell that I love and welcome, and I think that kinako makes a very good match for white chocolate because it has no sweetness. I carries more of a nutty flavor from the roasting and only a hint of its soy roots. When I say, "soy", think soy beans, not tofu. There is quite a big flavor difference.

Each tiny little ball is about the size of an M & M, though, obviously, shaped differently. There 19 balls in the box, and the whole thing is 118 calories (about 6 calories per ball). I tried to get a cutaway view, but they're too small and soft for that. Biting into the white chocolate exterior causes the outer portion to crumble off of the gummy inside. Clearly, these are meant to be eaten in one go. Considering the small size, I imagine they're much more likely to be designed to be consumed a few at a time rather than in two bites. 

The outside has a nice sweetness and an earthy, nutty flavor from the kinako. The gummy inside is fresh, soft, and chewy, but it's so small that you have to make a special effort to get much of a "chew" in on it. That's okay. It invites you to be mindful of the experience. My tongue detected no flavor from the gummy inside, but that is no surprise both because of the size and the fact that they probably wouldn't trouble themselves to infuse it with something resembling the mild flavor of rice cake.

I really liked this, but I'm a kinako junkie. I think this is a very approachable option for those who may be a bit reluctant to try Japanese sweets, especially since it tastes a little bit like peanut butter. If you can find a box for a reasonable price, I say, go for it. 

If you're interested in a wallpaper showing Kyro-chan, the illustrated bird mascot on Choco Ball, you can download a few designs here. 

Morinaga Dars Bitter Chocolate

The way in which our tastes develop is something I've expounded upon on multiple occasions. I do this because I get royally fatigued at the notion that the tastes of one nation are somehow more evolved than those of another. Since I spent 23 years in Japan, I had more than my share of dietary comparisons based on the perceived American diet (burgers, shakes, fries, Coke, hot dogs, and pizza) and the perceived Japanese one (sushi, rice, miso soup, fish, vegetables). 

The reality of the former is that it's not as dire and destructive as people think and that of the latter is that it's not nearly the nutritional Superman that people seem to think it is. The truth rests somewhere in the middle, of course, and any individual's diet will vary. I know that I had to say again and again to my students that, NO, I do not like hamburgers or steak, and, NO, I do not eat fast food. I hate fast food. The truth is that I didn't grow up eating fast food since my family was so poor. That was back in the old days when fast food actually cost more than food that was considered healthy.

Since I grew up with so little fast food, I never developed a strong taste for it. And, after all, as I've said far too many times before (and I'm sorry to bore my audience who deserves better), we like what we grew up with and what we become acclimated to. That's probably why some of my lovely readers will sample something I liked and hate it. My tastes got rewired in Japan to some extent.

When it comes to the training of the taste buds, the Japanese are much more acclimated to bitter flavors. I'm guessing this is because their cuisine incorporates more of them and this gets their palates accustomed to them earlier and with greater frequency than the average 'merkan. This is one way to explain the popularity of goya and various dishes prepared with it.

This also explains why Dars would release a "bitter" chocolate variety. I'm sampling it not because I like bitter flavors (as I'm a sissy American), but because it is Dars, the darling of the Japanese chocolate industry in my eyes. Frankly, as I've gotten older, I've also learned to enjoy darker chocolate and stronger flavors more. I'm guessing this is because of neurological diseases or wilting of my once perceptive taste buds or some such age-related decay. It's best to simply accept that you're going with grace and just be glad that you have a higher chance of enjoying food that you wouldn't have found palatable when you were young and full of yourself.

When I first tried this, I wasn't entirely keen, but the second round (delivered in two-square bursts) hit me a lot more favorably. The chocolate isn't intensely bitter, but it definitely has an edge to it and is a bit strong. It's not really proper dark chocolate, but it's closer to it than most consumer-level offerings of such. The main benefit, as is always the case with Dars, is its creamy, fatty nature which will unfold if you are patient enough to hold one of these little squares on your tongue and allow it to slowly melt. If you just gobble it down, well, then you're missing half of the reason to have these instead of some other dark chocolate.

I liked this because it was potent without being unpleasantly intense. There is just enough sweetness for a dark chocolate sissy like me to enjoy it and the texture, as always, was creamy when warmed in the mouth, but had a nice snap when I bit into it. Each square is about 20 calories, and you get 12 servings (Dars = doz, as in dozen). I paid about $2.20 for this at Nijiya Supermarket, and I think it was well worth it. If you're hardcore about dark chocolate, this probably won't do the trick for you and if you are strictly a milk chocolate devotee, this may also fall short. If you're somewhere in the middle, you can come join me on the bitter dark side of Dars. 

Ramune candy and kid's gum (round stuff)

This post is a review of three items that are unified in two ways. All of them are round and I got them all as part of the Sakura Box monthly candy box. Note for my readers, November is KitKat month and they're offering 5 unique KitKat flavors. I mention that not because they sent me free candy (though they did), but because I know many people are especially interested in Japanese KitKats.

This is part of the selection I received in the October candy box and these are the types of small things that are very common in the kid's snacks section in Japanese markets. I am familiar with all of these things, and I once had the little boxes of gum with fruit illustrations on them, but it was so long ago that my aging brain lost the memory. Well, it's either my age or the fact that one isn't exactly stowing away such memories as if they were precious and not to be forgotten. It is, after all, only bubble gum.

Marukawa Fusen gum (upper right in the picture) is one that I saw around for pretty much the duration of my 23 years in Japan. It was often sold in multi-packs that included all available flavors, but also as individual packs of one flavor. I also often saw enormous tubs of it as prizes in UFO Catcher machines. I'm not sure who would want such a huge amount of these little pellet-shaped bits of gum, but I guess someone out there really loves it, especially little kids.

 See? It is all round stuff!

The orange tastes a lot like Bayer's orange baby aspirin in the U.S., except with a bit more tartness and sweetness. The grape is your typical grape gum flavor. The melon is probably the weirdest one because it tastes strongly of quite sweet cantaloupe in the initial burst of flavor. In fact, it's rather too strong and my taste buds rebelled at first.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, all flavors of this gum have a very short half life on the flavor front. Within 5 minutes, pretty much all of the flavor is gone and you're left with some pleasantly soft and pliable bubble gum and a generic sweetness. Incidentally, I chewed all 4 little gum balls (each is about the size of a large pea) at once. I can't imagine that anyone would chew one at a time. As bubble gum goes, this is fine. It's nothing spectacular, but if you were a kid and wanted to stuff your maw full of a big wet blob of it and blow a bubble that would explode all over your face, this would do the trick.

The "tsuppai (sour) lemon" gum, which contains three larger gum balls but the wrapper said it was only 2 servings, is made by a company called "Meiji Gum". I should note that both Marukawa and Mei specialize in gum, which seems like an odd choice, but I guess it's what a lot of companies do in America as well. You just never think about someone saying to himself (it's usually a "him"), I think I'll start a chewing gum company. In the case of Marukawa, that was said in 1888, apparently. That's some forward thinking.

As promised, this is sour lemon gum. In fact, it was a bit too intense for me and I had to spit it out after a short chew. That doesn't mean it's bad. It just means I'm a sourness wuss, or that it didn't go over too great after chewing the sweet tiny little gum balls.

I give both types of gum an indifferent rating because they are pretty much just kid's gum in approachable flavors. The main benefit of them is that they have a good texture and carry an intense candy-like burst of flavor at the start. The main drawback is that the flavor doesn't last long and that once it drains away, you're left with sweetness (or sourness) and not much more.

 Finally, I tried the ramune candy which comes in the plastic blue-green soda bottle in the upper left of the picture at the top of this review. It is made by confectionery powerhouse, Morinaga. If you don't realize it, they're the folks that are delivering HiChew to the world. These are pressed powder candies like SweeTarts, but they are looser and softer than those American sweets. If you bite down on them, they quickly dissolve into a soft blobby bit in your mouth. If you let them dissolve on your tongue, they yield slowly and release the flavor of bubble gum. They're sweet, but not overbearingly so and have a fresh flavor which is hard to pin down.

I actually like powdered candies like this more than the average adult. I'm not sure that I'd keep a stash around the house, but when I happen to buy one or are given one, I enjoy them more than I might expect and that was certainly so with this ramune candy. 

Morinaga Coffee Caramels

My brother-in-law is not a coffee drinker. For some, that sounds suspiciously like a form of heresy. For others, that makes complete sense as not everyone goes for what the Tick referred to as "that bitter black urine." He, my brother-in-law, not the Tick (because, oddly, I don't have conversations with fictional characters about coffee... about other matters, perhaps, but that is between me and my psychotropic medication), says that he thinks coffee smells good, but he doesn't like the taste. Of course, Starbucks endeavors to fix that problem for most people by creating blended drinks full of milk and sugar that mask the flavor of the elixir of wakefulness and expand our waistlines. 

When I approach anything coffee-flavored, I think about the appeal from two sides. First, how will "real" coffee drinkers (the kind with hair on their chests and shaking hands) feel about it? Second, how will coffee wusses feel about it? With this caramel, I'm pretty sure hardcore coffee fiends will be left in the dust. It's coffee flavored, no doubt, but it's mellow, sweet, milky, and delectably buttery. One thing I can say about Morinaga's large line of caramels is they never skimp on the fat. That being said, it may distress some to know that the primary ingredient is corn syrup followed by sweetened condensed powdered milk, more powdered milk, and then vegetable oil. It's only late in the list that things like "coffee" and "butter" show up.

However, this isn't about food purity. It's about taste and texture and Morinaga generally does a very good job turning out a smooth and tasty blob of sticky goodness. Sometimes they fail on the flavor front, but this is not one of those times. If you like lattes, frappucinos, or other sweet coffee beverages and aren't going for a pure coffee experience, these should be in your pocket for a sweet fix. If you're the kind of person for whom black is the only acceptable color for your coffee, you'll probably be disappointed in the coffee flavor intensity, but still enjoy the fatty richness and sweetness on the whole. 

I got this candy courtesy of Sakura Box (that means "free") as part of their "monthly candy bag" which I reviewed the Friday before last. 

Morinaga Peach Hi-Chew

For some reason, I never realized how many product names sound like sneezes. "Hi-chew" is definitely one of them, but so was "Gatzun". The latter sounds like a more manly expulsion, whereas the former has a more high-pitched feminine feel. Next time you sneeze, try to work one of these two product names into the process. I'm sure it'll make it more enjoyable. Also, there may be some sort of money to be made as a shill for products by sneezing out their names. It's like the whole thing where idiots tattoo company names onto themselves for cash, except, less permanent and quite a bit stupider. Still, I'd sneeze out a product name in a public place for cash, but then I'm currently unemployed and would humiliate myself for food.

Turning to the point of this post, which is not sneezing, but Hi-Chew... I didn't know that this particular product was so pervasive here in the U.S. until I came back. Not only is it on many supermarket shelves, but you can buy big bags of it at Costco. It's not nearly as "exotic" as I imagined from my isolation from Western culture in Tokyo. Still, I guess the flavors that were on offer there were a bit more exciting, though not by a long stretch. Kamu kamu was still essentially"grape", though it did sound like a weird thing.

I found this at Cost Plus for $1.50 quite some time ago. I snapped it up before I realized that I could get better booty at the Daiso Japan and in a fit of "homesickness" for Japan, I bought anything that had even a whiff of Japanese snack culture associated with it. Of course, this is made by Morinaga, and that it was made under license of that very company. Based on my experiences dealing with business people, that means that the Taiwanese factory workers who lovingly watched a machine craft these Hi-Chews while yawning and scratching their behinds were being watched by a Japanese manager.

Most of my readers probably know what Hi-Chew is already, but I'll tell you again anyway (even though I'm not paid by the word). It's like gum mated with a piece of caramel. Each wad will give you about 20 seconds of chew before dissolving into sugary strands onto your teeth. The main benefit of these is that they tend to be very flavorful and this one did not disappointment. It had a nice, almost realistic peach flavor with a slightly perfumey sense to it. I don't think that a slightly floral note which is unnatural is a bad thing necessarily. It worked for me on this, but it may put off people who are sensitive to it and find it "soapy".

I liked this, though I didn't "love" it. Occasionally, I crave fruity candy and I'd certainly find this an attractive option at such times. Mainly, I keep Hi-Chew around for several months and eat it super slowly and this one will certainly do the job nicely until the last few pieces melt into inedible globs that I won't be able to peel off of the wrapping paper.

Morinaga Earl Grey Twig Chocolate (Product Information)

Image from Morinaga's web site.

On the Starship Enterprise, that's NCC-1701-D, not NCC-1701, you can imagine the ladies of Japanese descent wringing their hands and fretting about what to get Captain Picard for Valentine's Day this year. After all, the Japanese celebration of said holiday encourages women to give men chocolate rather than vice versa. Well, Japanese women of the distant future, Morinaga has your back and is proving that it is ahead of the times by offering an Earl Grey variety of its popular twig chocolate. Instead of having his usual cuppa, he can munch on one of these crispy treats and remember you when promotion time rolls around.

Of course, the women of the original Starship Enterprise had it easier as pleasing Captain Kirk was usually a simple matter of finding an alien babe of low moral fiber and setting them up for a coffee date. After that, nature would take its course and the Captain would be winking at you the next morning to let you know that you'd be moving ahead on the rankings in no time. The NCC-1701 was a swinging place and Captain Kirk didn't need a cup of Earl Grey to get his mojo started. 

Getting back to the matter at hand, I never reviewed Morinaga's Koeda (twig) chocolates because I tried them early on in my days in Japan and didn't really find them all that exciting. The chocolate tends to be on the soft side and not particularly exciting flavor-wise. I prefer chocolate with some good snap. They have little bits of almond in them and you'd think they'd have crispy bits, but they don't have enough to impart much of a strong almond flavor or a satisfying crunch. 

The "twig" name comes from the shape of the candy, which resembles the gnarly bark of trees in the eye's of some, and like something that may have come from a particular symmetrical bowel of an errant dog in the eyes of others. It wasn't on aesthetic grounds that I didn't have them, but simply that, while an adequate candy, they never really did it for me. They suffer from being rather insufferably boring, though the brand has been around for a very long time and I'm sure it has its fans. 

The earl grey flavor is a special summer variety and I'm sure it's meant to encourage people to enjoy a less "heavy" flavor in the heat. These are blended with bergamot to bring out the sense of Earl Grey, but even if I was able to buy this, I probably wouldn't. I tend to enjoy my tea best in liquid form. 

Morinaga Yuzu-cha

There is a tendency among those who are not native to a culture to take assertions from media as if the natives are taking them at face value. This tea, for instance, is marketed as something which is meant to help conserve energy in these days of nuclear-disaster-induced cutbacks (setsuden). Of course, it seems that winter isn't really a big time of year for setsuden as most trains, shops, and homes are heated to within a few degrees of the temperature on the surface of the sun, but the concept of saving power lingers in the hearts and minds of PR folks all over Japan.

When I read Morinaga's PR site about this product and the other variations that are on offer (cocoa and ginger tea), I thought, "boy, the Japanese sure are gullible if they think they'll heat less water using this type of instant tea as compared to making it themselves." I'm  making the common assumption that the Japanese aren't rolling their eyes at the ludicrous notion that they will heat less water to dissolve a brick of pre-made yuzu stuff than if they simply stir yuzu marmalade into the same amount of hot water. So often, this is the root of a lot of erroneous cultural beliefs. If the media says it, the Japanese must believe it 100%, right? After all, we believe it when commercials tell us that Pop-Tarts and Sugar-frosted flakes are "a good part of a nutritious breakfast". 

As an enormous fan of yuzu, a flavorful citrus fruit which is a cross between a grapefruit, a lemon, and an orange in taste, it may surprise my readers to learn that I had no idea that it was used to make tea.  I've been seeing enormous jars of yuzu marmalade on sale at local grocers and thinking that it looked like a tasty option for my morning repast, but the volume was such that I'd have to eat it everyday for a couple of months to get through it. It was only after buying this rather expensive (198 yen/$2.58) bag of a mere 4 half-cup servings of tea and doing some research that I learned that people are plopping spoons of it into mugs of hot water.

This caught my eye at a local supermarket, Inageya, as I was heading for the register. Most instant tea and coffee in Japan is chock-full of sugar and high calorie, but this weighs in at a modest 29 calories per serving. I don't often feel truly excited about trying a new snack these days, but I was quite enthused about this. It did not disappoint.

As the instructions say, I removed a brick from its foil package and added 100 ml. (1/2 cup) of hot water. The brick fizzed up in a way that would make an Alka-Seltzer fanatic happy and settled in to make an intense yellow tea with bits of peel floating around in it. The smell is of heavenly citrus, unsurprisingly, and though this is called "tea", it has no leaves of the common tea plant (Camellia sinensis) in it. It is mainly yuzu and sugar in its purest form, but as this instant variety it has artificial sweeteners, potato starch and other unsavory chemicals to create the tidy little fizzing brick.

The taste of this is very intense and sweet. It packs a wallop in terms of both zest and a bracing sugariness. I can see how this would be the perfect pick-me-up after a walk in the brisk winter air and it would probably really help wake you up if you're tired. It's  not something that I could see relaxing and casually sipping at, but rather a slow drink that you take sips of and savor. Personally, I thought it was incredible, but I can see where others may find it too strong or too sweet. 

My guess is that it'd be vastly more economical and possibly even tastier to make the tea from a jar of marmalade rather than these instant packets. One of these days (very soon), I'll buy a jar and try the real deal for comparison. However, if you've never had yuzu tea and just want to try it, this is a good way to sample a small amount rather than invest in a big jar of marmalade (and I've only seen relatively big ones). Also, if you want something to keep in a back-pack or a desk drawer, this would be the bee's knees. I can definitely see buying this again, though I frankly wish it were a bit cheaper.

Dars Biscuit

Living in a foreign culture, and trying hard not to be too ethnocentric makes me frame my gustatory experiences differently than I did back home. One of the things which always rubs me the wrong way is the elevation of one culture's choices over another. In particular, the idea that Japanese cuisine is carefully designed for health concerns. A culture doesn't decide to eat fish, seaweed, soy, and rice because of nutrition. They do it because that is what is available in their particular geography. The food culture grows around the available resources, not concerns about nutritional purity. Tastes fall into line with that culture's readily available options because humans like what is familiar.

Traditional Japanese cuisine is a combination of the elements which were easily attainable within the island's borders, but since the world has become a smaller place and food culture is widely shared, new options are constantly being injected into the Japanese diet. Developed countries have the extreme luxury of being able to mix and match a plethora of food options. I doubt that things like cookie chocolates would exist in Japan if it weren't for the influence of European baking culture. Of course, chocolate wouldn't be here without the Americas. Thinking about it this way, it doesn't seem like this product is very "Japanese" at all.

When it comes to chocolate, confectioners can't seem to decide if they want to sell esoteric combinations (like chili, sembei, etc.) or stick with traditional pairings that are known winners. With Dars, which is better known for its fatty, creamy chocolate, Morinaga decided to "mix it up" a bit by adding something textural. I was, frankly, a bit dubious of this entry in a long line of cookie chocolates, particularly considering my favorite way to consume Dars is to put it in my mouth and allow the creamy chocolate to melt on my tongue. That's definitely not going to be the case with this one. You can find these pretty much everywhere that carries Dars (convenience stores, markets) for the time being. It's usually 100 yen ($1.25) for a box of 12 small pieces.

Each little square is the same size as a usual bit of Dars. It has a volume not too dissimilar to a Hershey's Kiss and a calorie count which matches (19 calories per piece). There is a generous amount of crunchy cookie, but not so much that it isn't nicely held together by the chocolate. The scent is nice, but not intense. You can tell just from the smell alone that this isn't going to be anything near dark chocolate. The chocolate is sweet and milky, but not cloying. The cookie bits are crispy, buttery and rich and help cut through any overpowering sense with the sweet candy.

Most of the time, the cookies don't play much of a major roll in the flavor of the chocolate. They are just studs of texture which undercut the intensity of the chocolate. In this offering of Dars, I think they actually contribute 50% to the overall enjoyment of the candy. That being said, these are not for people who like less sweet candy or intense chocolate. This is good for those who like things milky.

Morinaga Tanita Restaurant Vanilla Purin dessert

The "Tanita Restaurant" brand of 100-calorie desserts has been on the shelves for awhile in Japan and I'd been hoping to get around to sampling one of them for quite some time. The main thing stopping me was the boring nature of the standard offering. It was pretty much flan or plain pudding with caramel sauce. I like flan as much as the next person, but this is a country that is drowning in plastic tubs of thick pudding with various types of burnt caramel sauce on the bottom. It's a real yawner as a taste option. It's on par with the never-ending stream of strawberry KitKats in terms of the lack of excitement it creates in me. Though vanilla pudding with orange sauce is hardly an exotic flavor combination, it is more interesting than what I can buy at nearly any kiosk, convenience store, and market in Japan, so I took the plunge. Since buying this, some more interesting flavors have come around (e.g., Japanese pumpkin), and I may get to one of those later.

The main selling point of the Tanita Restaurant recipes is that they are low calorie and supposedly delicious. This is a collaborative effort between food-making giant Morinaga and a maker of health-related products called Tanita. Tanita provides a cookbook with meal recipes that are under 500 calories and Morinaga gives you a chance to chase that healthy home-made meal with a processed dessert. The web site for this dessert promises that it gives you a 50-80% reduction in calories.

You can buy these desserts pretty much anywhere, but I picked this one up for 100 yen ($1.30) at a Lawson 100 convenience store. It contains 85 grams (about 3 oz.) of thick, custard-style pudding with an orange sauce on the bottom. You can see a lot of little black specs in it which I imagine are real vanilla beans. This is surprising given that this is a pretty cheap dessert, but the flavor bears out the real vanilla flavoring. The sauce has very mild orange flavor. The pudding is quite sweet and has a slight bit of powdered milk flavor. The texture is creamy but quite solid. You can tell that this was thickened with gelatin to give it some heft. Surprisingly though, it does not have any artificial sweeteners in it, though it does contain high fructose corn syrup.

This is a surprisingly tasty little dessert and well-worth the calories and cost. While it is made with a filler (seaweed-based gelatin, agar agar), it is creamy enough to have a nice texture and the vanilla really shines through. If I had to come up with a complaint, I'd say it is that the orange sauce should have a stronger flavor profile, but I wasn't particularly bothered by its subdued nature. If you're calorie conscious and seeking a pretty nice little dessert, I'd definitely recommend giving this a try.

Morinaga Zoom

Product marketing and positioning is something which I often take note of when searching for snacks. This offering by Morinaga appears to be one of those snack releases which is screaming "volume" at you, though the truth is that it's not so heavy as just "large". The box is 18.25 cm x 8.5 cm (7.2 in. x 3.3 in.) and the vivid yellow with bold logo is very eye-catching. This is part of what drew me to it while perusing the offerings at local convenience stores. This is available at many shops, but I bought it at Sunkus for 105 yen ($1.30).

I imagine products like this are targeted toward young people, and men in particular. It's not so much the size, though that is a part of it. I think that snacks directed at women tend to have each piece individually wrapped so they can eat a small portion and leave the rest without fear of them going stale. Since this is six pieces in a tray, I think it's for bigger appetites (or for sharing). Each piece is only 30 calories which makes for decent portion control.

Though this is somewhat unusual for Japan, it's actually a variation on a crunch bar with less chocolate and more cookie and rice puff than candy. The small twist on this compared to similar bars is that this is made with bits of langue du chat cookies rather than something more pedestrian. Honestly though, I don't think that anyone could tell the difference with the small size of the pieces. They're tiny, about the size of a small bead, and I couldn't much tell the difference between the puffs and cookie pieces.

I consumed this at room temperature, and while it didn't melt in my hand, the chocolate was rather soft and I felt that the texture would have been better if I'd had it cold (I refrigerated the remainder and will try it again). The taste was mild and enjoyable though. The chocolate is closer to a malty milk chocolate, though not as "malty" as something like Crunky. There's just enough "bite" in it to keep the chocolate present along with the flavor of the crunchy cookie and puffs. It's not strong, but still pleasant. 

I rather liked this and would be happy to keep a box of it in the refrigerator at home or at work to satisfy a particular craving now and then. It's not going to be a favorite, but I hope it isn't a flash in the pan and stays on the market for an occasional purchase. It's lighter than a chocolate bar, and sometimes that's the sort of sweet I want.

Dars Mint

I wasn't aware of these Dars mint chocolates until they were mentioned to me in comments. Given my love of (almost) all things Dars, I headed off to a local convenience store to see if I could find them. They are new enough that not every place is stocking them, but I located a box at a Lawson's for 128 yen ($1.60).

I snapped up a box from the display case as well as a new Tirol chocolate for review later on and went to one of the two registers. One was occupied with a single customer and the other apparently free but the minute I stepped up to the register, the clerk bolted down to the other end of the counter and fussed around behind the other clerk. I patiently waited for her to return after doing whatever needed to be done. When she came back after about a full minute, the first thing she did was look at me and say, "just a minute please" and went to run off in the other direction. At this point, I figured it wasn't worth the time and I'd put the candy back and try another store. After I picked up my chocolates and went to put them back, she suddenly decided she could actually manage to do her job and accept my money for the goods on offer at the store. How gracious of her... Yeah, service in Japan is universally wonderful, except when it blows chunks as it occasionally does.

That's not a minty filling oozing out. It's water from the knife I used to cut this with so don't get your hopes up.

Getting to the Dars, the thing I love most about Dars is that it is creamy and fatty and unfortunately, that aspect is strangely missing from this. It is much firmer than usual and the chocolate is bittersweet with a good hint of mint which is neither overpowering nor too sweet. I have to wonder if the chocolate used in this is simply not milky enough for the rich, creamy feeling in the mouth that I associate with this particular brand name. Each candy, incidentally, is 22 calories so there isn't much of a calorie reduction coming along with a less creamy experience.

These are certainly nice enough. The flavor balance is good, but, as one of my commenters said, these are not my favorite mint chocolates. For a better quality experience with a similar flavor profile, I'd recommend After Eight mints. That being said, these are cheaper than those particular candies and at the moment easier to locate. The only thing I don't like about these is that they do have the aftertaste that I sometimes experience with Japanese chocolates which are on the bittersweet side. These are not the sort of thing you want to clear your palate after a meal, but rather just to satisfy a craving for mint and chocolate together. Soon after though, I need a cup of tea or to brush my teeth to wash away that aftertaste. I'm giving these a slightly grudging "happy" rating. I like them and will finish the whole box, but I'm not sure I'd buy them again.

Morinaga Chocolate Caramel

Morinaga offers a variety of caramels in an old-fashioned box design. They both attract and push you away because they seem uniquely Japanese, but they seem like the sort of thing that your grandfather kept in a drawer in his garage when the taste in his mouth from chewing tobacco felt a bit funky and he didn't feel like rinsing off his dentures.

The truth is that my experiences with this line has revealed a very finely-made caramel with a soft texture. The "black sugar" caramels remain one of my favorites. For those with other tastes, there are also adzuki, green tea and plain old caramels available as well. This chocolate version is new. The web site for the product says they were released in Tokyo in August of this year. It also promises that the sweet chocolate and caramel flavors will "satisfy the heart".

The ingredients for this include "syrup" (probably sugar syrup or fructose-based syrup), sweetened condensed milk, sugar, vegetable oil, cocoa powder, wheat protein, butter, black honey, salt, sorbitol, and "flavorings". One thing about most Japanese caramels is that they are rarely made with butter, so they are fine in texture and tasty, but lack deep, rich buttery flavor. That's generally not a problem, but it does make them a different experience from eating European-made caramel.

You can find these in most supermarkets and dedicated snack shops. For the time being, they are also available in convenience stores, but I'm guessing that will change once the product ages a little more. The price is usually 100 yen ($1.20). There are 12 caramels (4.9 grams/.17 oz.) in the box and each is 21 calories.

Candy like this often does not have a strong scent and this was no exception. It smelled faintly like caramel. The texture is nice and soft , offering a good chew without pulling out your fillings. The caramel is pleasantly sweet without being overbearing, but it doesn't really taste strongly of anything and the chocolate element is so weak as to be nearly undetectable. The fact that "cocoa" is so far down the list of ingredients is a clue as to why this may be the case.

These are fine enough as a generic caramel. They are well-crafted and pleasant to chew on, but ultimately don't leave much of an impression. Certainly, I'll slowly finish the box, but I wouldn't buy them again. I'd rather buy the more flavorful black sugar caramels.

Morinaga Lemon Tea Cookies

There are two ways to read the name of this product. One is "lemon" tea cookies and the other is "lemon tea" cookies. In most Western countries, "tea cookies" are a category unto themselves. In fact, you can find a lot of recipes on the internet for tea cookies and tea cakes. It was with that thought in mind that my husband picked up this box of sandwich cookies. He loves lemon cookies and was keen to give these a try.



I should have paid closer attention to the box design when we picked this up at Seiyu supermarket (157 yen/$1.75). The illustration is the same as the one that appears on bottles of Morinaga's various tea beverages. These are cookies flavored with tea, not cookies that are lemon and designed to be eaten with tea.


When my husband opened the first packet anticipating a nice lemon cookie, he gave it a sniff and said, "oh no." These smell strongly of Earl Grey tea and not at all of lemon. The biscuit is a nicely crisp butter-cookie-style-cookie. Since they're made with shortening and margarine, they don't have any real butter taste. The tea flavoring is carried in the cream filling in the middle and it's relatively strong. The lemon portion is incredibly weak. You mainly detect it as a faint aftertaste.

These are very nice cookies if you like tea flavoring, and I do, but my husband hates it. The only thing that makes me hesitate about buying these again is that they are 64 calories each for a cookie little bigger than an Oreo. That's a bit on the hefty side for a small treat. I really like the cookies themselves though, and would recommend trying them if you want a nice tea time snack without the tea.

Angel Pie (Mini)

Angel pies are something that I've seen around Japan for a long time. In fact, I think I may have purchased a box of them a very long time ago. The full size pies are about 6.5 cm or 2.5 inches in diameter. The mini ones are about 3.5 cm or 1.4 inches. The big ones are usually sold in boxes of 6 in supermarkets. I picked up this tiny one at an AM/PM convenience store for 30 yen. It was a premium price for such a small morsel, but I wouldn't be reviewing it now if I had had to buy a whole box of the big ones as my lack of a strong impression upon initial purchase years ago probably indicated I was less than overwhelmed. Also, at 40 calories, it's an indulgence that I can make without much guilt.


The Angel Pie is one of Morinaga's "biscuit line" of products. It was introduced in 1961 and is one of their better known cookie-style products. If you'd like to see a history of the pies and their packaging, you can have a peak at Morninaga's site's history of the product. You can also pick yourself up a desktop picture of a bare-assed angel munching one of the pies if you're into quasi-kiddie porn illustrations. I think this was named "Angel Pie" because of Morinaga's logo (which is an angel) as well as the notions of cloud-like marshmallow filling.


The angel pie is a fake chocolate coating over a super soft graham-cracker-style cake and a soft marshmallow filling. The softness of the pie when chewing is emphasized as a positive attribute in Morinaga's blurb on these. It doesn't smell like much at all. There's a faint whiff of cheap chocolate. The first sense you have when you bite into it is of the graham cracker-style cake. It's a weak flavor, but it's the most prominent of all of the weak flavors. You are hit, for mere seconds, by a mild chocolate flavor and finally with an odd aftertaste which I believe is supposed to be the taste of the marshmallow filling.

This was a very "blah" experience. It wasn't bad at all, but it just wasn't very good. The funky marshmallow flavoring is off-putting, but the truth is that all Japanese-made marshmallows have a strange aftertaste, so it's par for the course. The main problem is that the textures don't have enough variation and the flavors are all too weak. It's inoffensive, but I wouldn't buy it again or even eat one if I was offered one for free unless I was very, very hungry because I wouldn't feel it was worth the cost in calories.

Dars Crea Strawberry

My husband picked this box of Dars Crea up at Okashi no Machioka sweets shop for a mere 69 yen (76 cents). I'm not sure why they were so cheap when this is a somewhat new version of the Crea line. In the past, I've reviewed hazelnut and chestnut and caramel Dars Crea quite favorably. I wouldn't have purchased this, however, because it's strawberry and no good can come of it. Strawberry chocolates let me down 80% of the time, and I wasn't keen on seeing my beloved Dars line's reputation as the perfect consumer chocolate besmirched by an implementation that was unlikely to make my taste buds happy.

There are 9 chocolates in the box and each is 33 calories. The ingredients include sugar, vegetable oil, cocoa powder, whey powder, strawberry powder, and butter oil. With two types of oil, it's no wonder that Dars are rich and creamy chocolates. That being said, I'm not overjoyed with the fact that these candies are made with vegetable oil.

The scent is of chocolate with a vague hint of strawberry, and the texture is all that I've come to know with Dars chocolates. That is, it's smooth, creamy and fatty. The problem is the taste. The strawberry tastes too strong and fake, even though there is 2.5% "strawberry powder" in it, which I believe is supposed to mean there is real berry flavor in it. I guess part of the problem is that even when you start with real strawberries, their essential qualities are lost when processed into powder.

My concern when my husband presented me with this was that this was going to be the only Dars chocolate that I would have to give an unhappy rating to (at least to date), and I was right. Even my husband, who very much likes strawberry-flavored sweets, didn't care for these. Perhaps the bar was set too high, or perhaps these just are too fake tasting. Either way, I have no choice but to say I wouldn't buy these again and probably won't be finishing the box. The only thing that saves them from getting a "very unhappy" rating is that I wasn't really disgusted by them so much as greatly disappointed. I could choke them down, but the calories wouldn't be worth what little enjoyment I'd get.