Nongshim Banana Kick Snack

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Random Picture #200

My apologies for this being a random picture of something which is not Japanese, but this was a curiosity that I had to ponder and ask my readers about. The sign on this, if you can't see it, says "NS Indian Bob Snack". I don't know if this is supposed to be a Native American whose name is "Bob" (which would be a somewhat unusual name in such a case) or if "Bob" means something in Korean which I do not know about. I'm also not sure what being "Indian" (or more properly since the headdress makes it clear, Native American) has to do with this salted snack product. They are, apparently, made from corn so that may be the missing link.

The manufacturer's web site for this offers not insights other than this is a snack with somewhat politically incorrect overtones that is good for the whole family. 

Nongshim Sweet Potato Snack

One of the lessons that I used to teach Japanese students had to do with symbolic hand or finger gestures. The sign for "ok" in America, creating a circle with thumb and forefinger and raising the other fingers, means "money" in Japan (or so I'm told). Humans do not naturally fall into the same sensibilities about symbols. However, due to globalization, we are coming to share more and more of the them.

I never thought too much about this point until I investigated the web site ran by the  South Korean maker of this snack. I saw that this company is a distributor for American brands that I would not have expected to see abroad. In particular, they sell products made by Welch's, V8, McCormick's, and Kellogg's, and, most strangely to me, Morton. That logo of the little girl with the big umbrella walking through the rain? I'm guessing they must recognize that in South Korea, too. It's weird to consider that they know salt the way I know salt. 

This is my first experience with a product by this company and they lured me in with the promise of a sweet potato experience. The potato on the front is the equivalent of a stick figure in potato form, but he does look pretty happy. I'd like to join him in yam happiness.

I should have looked at the ingredients list before forking over my 99 cents for this 55-gram/1.9-oz. bag of salty snackness. The first item is not sweet potato, but rather is "flour". This is supposed to be a sweet potato snack, not an alchemical abomination! You can't make sweet potato gold out of ground wheat. That is madness.

The second ingredient is sweet potato, but is listed as "white sweet potato". When it comes to sweet potato, I'll admit that I'm a bigoted woman. I like them yellow or orange and am fully prejudiced against white ones. If it's white, it ain't sweet in my opinion. So, I've already gotten off on the wrong foot with this snack and the other ingredients including one that takes up an entire line by itself - fructoooligosaccaride - is not encouraging me to go on.

Nonetheless, I tried to approach this mutant snack with an open mind, and then wished it had stayed closed. The substance within is fried, no doubt, and it is lightly salted, but it is far from being "sweet" or "potato". In fact, what it mostly tastes like is frying oil that has seen far too many re-uses. If you're really eating slow (which I don't recommend as then that frying oil taste is in your mouth all the longer), you can get a very vague somewhat sweet potato-y after taste, but your taste buds have to be flexing all of their buddy muscles to catch this. On a "lucky" bite, you may get an errant bit of sesame seed (a few pieces have one) and it'll taste better. Some are also sweeter than others (no doubt due to getting more sugar-coating), but they'd need a lot more than the occasional extra bit of sugar or sesame seed to make me decide not to throw most of it away.

This was a major disappointment and I won't be finishing the bag. It's not so much that it lacks appeal as the frying oil flavor makes it actively unpleasant. I'd rather have it tasteless than taste like French fries made in oil that had been used all day without a change. It's been awhile since a product has been bad enough to  warrant an unhappy rating, but this one easily took the "prize."