McDonald's Salt Caramel and Mango Passion Orange McFlurry (product announcement)

When I was growing up, McDonald's had two ice cream options. You could have a shake or a pathetic little sundae made up of vanilla ice cream and some anemic chocolate sauce. Because I am not a fan of any fast food, and less of a fan of the golden arches than most other types of said cuisine, I hadn't really noticed the whole "McFlurry" business. I have a hazy recollection of when they were introduced and that they were either a collaboration with Dairy Queen or a rip-off of their "Blizzard" concept, but that's pretty much it. I've never had one in either Japan or America, but every nerve in my Spidey sense says they are probably pretty sweet.

The specimens above are new McFlurry flavors - salt caramel (252 calories) and a mixture of mango, passion fruit and orange (230 calories). If someone were to force feed me one of these, I'd go for the fruity one, though I have to say that the salt caramel one could be intriguing. The funny thing about these is not the flavors. Though they are somewhat unusual, the whole salty sweets thing has been a big fad for years now (it was in force when I left in March 2012) and passion fruit is the only slightly uncommon element in the fruit one. The bizarre thing is that McDonald's plans to offer these only between 10:30 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. It strikes me as weird that they'd choose such a time period as it makes these seem more like "brunch" options than a sweet treat. Personally, I think offering them from 1:00-4:00 would have been a better choice, but I'm guessing this limit is based on the effort and time it takes to make them than when consumer demand might be highest.

Haagen Dazs Mango Crispy Sandwich (product information)

If I had any doubt that the mango fad continues to march ahead unabated in Japan, the choice of mango ice cream for a Haagen Dazs crispy sandwich proves that fact. In fact, I'm starting to wonder if mango is going to join tiramisu as one of those fads that never fades away and remains in the mainstream for decades. I can't say that it would surprise me since mango is, of course, pretty awesome. However, I was not a fan of this line of ice cream sandwiches in Japan. The "crispy" shell in my experience took on moisture form the ice cream and lost some of its snap. It was also fairly brittle and tended to flake and crumble more than a conventional ice cream sandwich.

Beyond that, I made my own mango "ice cream" by buying bags of frozen mango pieces from "Lawson 100" (100 yen per bag) and adding a little milk to it and blending it in a Magic Bullet or food processor. You can't really get more "mango" than that. Sorry, Haagen Dazs. 

Yuki & Love Mango Mochi

Have you ever been in a situation in which someone tries very hard to convince you of something and the more they try to get you to believe them, the less you do? If your friend was trying to get you to go on a date with another friend, you'd probably become suspicious if they used too many superlatives. "He's a great guy, really. He works hard, has a great job, and is trustworthy. He's the best cook I've ever known. He's great, really!"

By the second "really," your suspicions are going to be aroused and you won't be shocked when you meet him and find he has an enormous horned toad tattooed on his face and is still living at home with his mother. He probably also has a collection of pet reptiles in his basement "bachelor pad," and an unabashedly displayed collection of adult diaper pron. No, I'm not speaking from real life experience, fortunately.

I think that there is an inverse relationship between how good something actually is and its claims of how good it is. This not only applies to dates, but also to food. I should have thought of that before buying this mango mochi, but Asian food so often has such claims earnestly displayed on it that I've learned to tune it out. This one says, "Tastes good, absolutely delicious products." If that weren't enough, there is a little crown on it that says, "King of the Tawiwan mochi." That was the one that should have told me that this was a potential toad-faced loser with a stack of diaper porn.

Perhaps I'm being a bit too harsh on this, but I did have somewhat high expectations. I found this at "Ranch 99" Asian market for around $2.00 (200 yen) and was happy to find a new flavor among the more common taro, sesame, peanut, brown sugar, and green tea. I wished I'd tried the green tea instead.

The mochi itself was actually quite good. It is tiny - about the diameter of an American quarter or a little bigger than a Japanese 100-yen coin - and only 90 calories per serving, but it manages to pack a little funk into its petit package. The mochi is soft, fresh, and nicely chewy, but the thick jelly-like center which is supposed to be mango has a strange taste to it.

This starts out okay with a bland flavor that becomes sweeter as you get more of the center flavor. It is definitely mango, but the finishing flavor is polluted by something which tastes like melon, but not any melon that you'd want to eat. I'm guessing this flavor comes from the cassava starch in the ingredients list, but I've never had cassava so I don't know what it actually tastes like. All I know is that something ruins a fairly promising mochi and I'm going to say the cassava is the toad tattoo on an otherwise decent-looking face because most of the other ingredients are sugar (maltose, water, sugar, cassava starch, mango juice, gelatine, glucose, sorbic acid, natural flavor, and a bunch of artificial colors). The weird thing is that that is mochi, but there's no rice listed!

I may choke down one or two more of these, but chances are I'll spring them on unsupecting visitors or throw the rest out. Life is too short for weird-tasting fruit mochi. I'm sure you'll see that on a bumper sticker one day, just as I'm sure you'll meet someone with a toad tattooed on his face (likely sooner rather than later given how many people tattoos there are in America these days).

Random Picture #184

In Monday's post, I mentioned all things mango in Japan. I felt that it would be appropriate to follow that up with the sembei that I didn't review (or purchase) during my shopping expedition. Though this wasn't incredibly expensive, I felt that the lemon flavor would suit me better since most mango-flavored things tend to taste a bit too much like mango puree that was formed on the far side of the fruit's viability. Still, if this is still around in a month, I may persuade myself to give it a try. I'm a sucker for unique sembei flavors.

I wonder if many of my readers are regular consumers of sembei and if they'd be "adventurous" enough to give this a try. What do you think?

Glico Tropical Pocky

Recently, I was looking through a copy of "Elle" magazine. No, I'm not a fashion aficionado. It was free and I was on a sociological "expedition" within the confines of my home. I was looking at it not for the articles, which was fortunate since there are probably fewer than I can count on one hand, but for the ads. For those who have never taken a look at this particular periodical, it is pretty much all advertising for fashion-related items, especially clothes.

The point of scrutinizing the ads was to note certain aspects of them. What was the ethnic balance of models, where did certain products tend to be advertised (the front of back of the magazine), what products were advertised, etc. Though not scientific, I do believe that I learned a few things about how advertisers try to reach their markets and who they are focusing on. For instance, I noted that anti-aging products - so-called "serums" - did not include a model at all, but simply showed a big bottle of the product. Food was rarely advertised, but when it was, it was clearly marketed for the calorie conscious and toward the back of the magazine.

What is my point in all of this? My point is that we are marketed to in specific ways. There are a lot more conclusions I reached, which I won't bore you with here, but I am very aware that I believe I'm making choices when I am not. There may be 25 different types of Oreos in the store, but I'm still not in control of the choices I make. Whatever those 25 types are, I didn't choose them. Some marketing person decided on what would appeal to the broadest customer base and packaged them to make that base want them more. Products are positioned, choices are narrower than we believe, and we are not in control even when advertisers offer the illusion that we are.

If you think about this for a second, you'll see what I mean more clearly. If you wanted to eat a pumpkin-flavored Oreo with a yellow cookie, and I would want to eat such a cookie, could you? That's the choice I'd like to have, but it's not there on the shelf. It sounds like a fine holiday option, but it is not available. I'm given what I'm given, and can only choose from those options.

This leads me to the Tropical Pocky, of which mango is an integral component (pineapple is the other part). Mango started to explode in popularity a few years before I left Japan. Suddenly, I started seeing packets of dried mango everywhere then that was followed by various snacks being offered in mango flavor (including sembei/rice crackers). I'm pretty sure this all started with news that mango was going to cure you of cancer, wrinkles, or male pattern baldness. Once that news got out (if such news existed, which it probably did in some form or another), people started eating the fruit and once they developed a taste for it, everyone started to flavor food with it.

Japanese people didn't choose mango. Someone on a news program, a T.V. show, or another media outlet chose to highlight it and then everyone decided this was a bandwagon to jump on. So, I experience a plethora of mango-flavored snacks from a fad that started at some point in the not so distant past and continues to slog onward into the future. Mango could be the "tiramisu" of the future - a fad that started the integration of a flavor into the collective tastes of the country and never got old. Or it could just fade away over time.

This is not "mango", though it is listed as one of the ingredients and I have to imagine that there is a reason that it is listed as a copilot with pineapple and that it is listed first. It's the same reason that "Brad Pitt" is listed before "Matt Damon". Sure, we recognize both of them, but which is going to have a greater likelihood of drawing viewers?

At any rate, despite the billing of mango and pineapple, this is dominated by the pineapple and is far too sweet for my tastes. It reminds me of an overly sweet fruit punch, but the type that is made with real flavors rather than artificial ones. It has some verisimilitude to the real deal, but is too concentrated. If this were a drink instead of a Pocky stick, I'd be adding ice or water to it to water the flavor down. If you've ever felt that 100% fruit juice was just too much for you then you'll see what I mean.

This isn't an awful Pocky, but it's far from the greatest in my opinion. I won't throw the rest away, but it'll be a slow road to finishing the box - a stick here, a stick there, and eventually it'll be gone. I wouldn't buy it again, however, and I'm inclined to avoid other fruit-flavored Pocky after this experience.

Kanro Pure Mango Yogurt Gummy

Recently, I contacted a woman who used to do psychic readings. I've never been to one, but I know this one to be genuine as she did a reading twenty or so years ago and was correct about some fairly specific details. I know this for certain because I listened to a cassette of the predictions. There's no dancing around the accuracy of what she said because there's no memory distortion at play.

This woman no longer does readings. In fact, she said she hadn't been doing them for a very, very long time, but she'd "pull a card" for me. I'm not sure what that means, but the card she came up with was "expectations". As part of the "warning" she included, she pasted in what I'm sure is a common statement that this is something that I need to interpret personally and not meant in any way to be a bigger message than anything I make of it.

This experience got me thinking about expectations and why we have them and how they are formed. Mainly, they are based on history. We decide what to expect based on the patterns of behavior or experiences in our past. If your neighbor gets up every morning and walks into his kitchen naked by his open window, squats and does a few knee bends culminating in a blast of flatulence, and then pours his coffee and sits down for a nude read of the paper both gas- and clothing-free, you will be shocked to see him show up in a suit and then reading from an iPad. You'll be shocked, but you'll also be relieved.

Sure, you could choose to just not look at him through his morning horror show, but it's like a car crash. It's hard to look away. And, sure, you think you wouldn't look as you have been reading this, but you would. Trust me. You would.

Like all other things, we form expectations of products based on past experience with the brand. My expectation of the Pure line of Gummy candies is that they will possess a certain tartness and not be too sweet. I also expect that the fruity flavors will be relatively balanced and not too overbearing.

I was very excited when I saw this mango yogurt flavor on sale at Marukai market because I had been aware of it for awhile. I figured it would be pretty good, but my expectations, unfortunately, were not met.

The main problem is that the mango is overbearing and too sweet. The yogurt presents itself as a sort of sour dairy undertone, but it isn't really strong enough to ameliorate the intense mango puree flavor. Don't get me wrong, I love fresh mango, but this feels like it has been amped up by boiling it down into an intense mush of mango and stripped of the moisture that evens out the flavor of a fresh mango, not to mention the little acidic sense you get when eating one.

I'm not sure if this is actually all that bad or if my expectations were just too high. Pure has generally been greeting me with a three piece suit and an iPad every morning. This time, it feels more like the naked fart experience. Still, I'm sure that it'll be better next time. Experience creates such an expectation in me.

Pure Grapefruit Honey and Peach Mango Gummy (product announcement)

Image from Kanro.

One of my friends recently remarked on Facebook that part of the process of making gummi candy involves boiling animal bones. She's a vegetarian, so this was something of concern to her and she wanted to let other friends who may subscribe to her moral code know to avoid such candies. I'm rather torn at this point about whether or not to warn her about marshmallows as well, as they also often contain gelatin derived from animal products.

The rational side of me, which I try to keep firmly in check at all times, would also like to point out that this is actually not food that contributes to the death of animals. No one is killing animals to boil their bones for gelatin products. It's actually finding a use for the parts that are leftover after all of us savage omnivores have consumed the flesh. My guess is that, if we all stopped eating meat, then all gelatin-related products in America would cease to be made from bones and would be made the way they are in Japan, from seaweed. I don't think people would be raising cows to toss their meat in the trash and boil the bones.

The good news is that I can recommend Japanese marshmallows and gummy/gummi candies to her and she can enjoy them without violating her personal ethical code. Since Pure keeps offering up new and interesting flavors, there's no end to the fun you can have sampling their candies. And, they are good gummies. I've tried a lot of them and rarely disliked one. Okay, I really didn't care for the apple and ginger ale one, but the rest were quite nice.

There are actually three new flavors on offer, but I couldn't put them all in the headline. There are the grapefruit and honey and peach mango flavors pictured at the top of the post as well as a yogurt mango flavor shown above this paragraph. It's clear that mango blends are one of the more popular food fads right now. Mango has been in the spotlight for a few years now, and clearly it's popularity has not waned. The yogurt and mango flavor features a split color scheme, supposedly featuring one flavor on each side. It was released in June. The other flavors will be available at the end of the first week of July at convenience stores. 

Kanro Pure Yogurt Mango Gummi (product announcement)

I once sat down and tried to organize lists of seasonal flavors in Japan. In fact, one day, this list will make it into some sort of blog post since there are definitely patterns to the releases based on how hot or cold it is outside. Just as "Sugar Cookie Sleigh Ride" tea is released by Celestial Seasonings each winter as Halloween comes our way, spring starts seeing sakura (cherry/cherry blossom) flavored snacks. 

Kanro is releasing a yogurt and mango gummi and saying that it has a "summer" feeling. I'm not sure that mango is a summer fruit for Japan, unless they are getting lots of imports from Mexico, but I do know that it was once a fad to eat dried mango and now it has become as much a part of regular Japanese living as tiramisu, which also began its days as a fad food and stayed on pretty much forever. 

The release date on this is given as "mid-June", so it may already be out or soon be in stores. Most Pure flavors make their way to Nijiya markets so I'm hoping to get a crack at this in the future. I've only met one or two Pure flavors that I didn't like, and I'm guessing this is probably pretty good. If you get your hands on it before I do, feel free to leave a comment and let me know what I might be in for. If it sucks, you might be saving me a couple of bucks and I'd certainly be grateful for the head's up.

Tirol Summer Assortment

I'm fully cognizant of the fact that it is no longer summer, and that this bag showing sun, seagulls, and palm trees is incongruous with the cool breezes, dying leaves, and chilly air of autumn. Actually, with climate change, I'm not sure that we actually experience fall in that fashion anymore, but for the sake of argument, I will admit that I'm reviewing this seasonal variety pack rather late in the game. To be fair, I bought it recently at Nijiya market in San Jose, CA (it could not be had at the Mountain View branch) and this selection only recently vanished from Tirol's web site. I can't recall what I paid for it, but I think it was somewhere in the $3 (234 yen) range.

This was the sort of thing that I would not buy when I was living in Japan because it includes a very common flavor (nuts crunch), a reissue (mango) with one flavor of interest to me (coconut). Under those circumstances, I would not pop for a bag on non-premium Tirol chocolates. For those who don't know or remember, the Tirol brand is offered in two different sizes. One is a smaller square sold in 9 packs and the other is a larger (about 1 inch/2.54 cm.) size which is sold individually. The premium candies larger size means they are generally more sophisticated in construction with multiple layers of fillings. The non-premium ones, such as these, tend to be simpler as it's hard to layer in much in such a tiny presentation. In general, the variety packs lack the flavor depth and potential of the premium candies. 

The strange thing is though that I thought I'd already sampled two out of three of these chocolates, but reviewing my backlog, I see that I had never tried any of them. I guess that's all for the better then. 

One has to wonder why peanuts wear bow ties around the world. Is this level of formality a genetic inclination?

Nuts Crunch:

I should note that I balk at writing "nuts" crunch instead of "nut crunch". The Japanese generally don't accept or follow the conventions in English in which you do not use a plural when a noun modifies another noun. That's why they say "peanuts butter" instead of "peanut butter". However, the words are written on the package in such a way that I can hardly deny them, so don't come around telling me that I've adapted crappy English as a result of my time in Japan. My English may be crappy, but it's all on my shoddy editing skills, not absorbing Japanese-English. 

Now that we've got that straight, let me say that this is a very tasty peanut and chocolate combination. It is crunchy, but I think the reason it tastes better than some others is that the peanuts were fried prior to having their fragments embedded in milk chocolate. There's a rich roasted quality to the nuts which makes the flavor profile better even with an extremely small portion in the candy. Incidentally, I intentionally photographed this chocolate upside-down so that the uneven distribution is easy to see. I loved this, and if I could buy a big bag of these alone, I certainly would.

Mango:

This smelled nicely fruity with a slightly perfume-like edge. The outer white chocolate is very, very sweet and quite soft. The jelly inside is also soft and has a zesty edge to it which helps cut through the sweet outer coating to some extent. The flavor is like a really rich mango puree mixed with a bit of powdered sugar. As a small bite, it's really enjoyable, but I think that one small candy would definitely be the limit. Any more than that at once and it's just going to overwhelm one with sweetness.

Coconut:

The coconut scent on this is quite intoxicating and I was encouraged by the fact that it had a dark chocolate coating. I can't think of any reason why dark chocolate should pair better, but it's possible that years of seeing "Mounds" bars made me believe this was the proper presentation. Unlike the aforementioned bar, the coconut filling in this is not too sweet and the bittersweet chocolate cuts through what sweetness there is for two complimentary flavors. That being said, I ate this in two bites and it seemed rather intensely bittersweet by the end of the second bite. I liked this, but I wouldn't go out of my way to eat a lot of them.

I like the Tirol concept of mixing flavors in small portions and the fact that the flavors are often pronounced with balanced sweetness. I don't like the fact that the chocolate is often quite soft and that was the case with these. I prefer chocolate with a greater snap to it. That being said, as small bites of chocolate to satisfy a craving, I don't think one can go wrong with these. The flavors are strong without being overbearing and you really do feel that one chocolate is "enough."

Meiji Mango Chocolate

This is a chocolate party that I am more than fashionably late in attending. In fact, I'd say I'm showing up just about as the hostess is clearing away the dishes and shooing out the final round of guests. The fact that I waited so long to pick up a bar of this chocolate is a reflection of how many other things were more interesting than this rather than a lack of desire to try it. The fact of the matter is that fruit-flavored chocolate is very common in Japan and if I sampled every one of them, I'd have time to write about little else.

All of that being said, mango isn't the most common of such pairings, though mango is currently the fruit-flavored darling of Japan. Dried mango was talked about for its health benefits a year or two ago (I can't keep track of when these food fads start, I've got blog posts to write!) and since then you see mango everywhere and in everything. One thing I can definitely say about Japan is that where the media leads, the people follow with a vengeance. Someone once said eating bananas in the morning would help you lose weight and there wasn't a banana to be found for awhile. I still know women who eat a banana every morning for breakfast based on this (mistaken) notion.

Getting back to mango, and this chocolate in particular. It is a thin layer of mango-flavored chocolate in the center sandwiched between two milk chocolate layers. The mango flavor is very strong and on the sweeter side. The chocolate is fairly overpowered and doesn't really have a strong effect on the overall taste. I wonder if its main effect is to mitigate some of the cloying nature of white chocolate based fruit flavoring rather than to mix and pair with the mango.

All of that in no way says this is bad. It's actually pretty tasty. I think it could have been a little better had the chocolate played a bigger role (or have been a bit darker), but it's still good. I wouldn't say I'm over the moon about it, but I am enjoying slowly eating the bar one or two squares at a time. This is definitely not the sort of thing you're going to wolf down all at one go though. If you're a mango fan, this is worth a try, but perhaps not something worth tracking down at all costs.

Ohayo Tappuri Mango Yogurt

"Ohayo" means "good morning" in Japanese and "tappuri" means "plenty". At first, I thought this was talking about "plenty" of yogurt, which seemed odd considering that this is 4 tiny little portions melded together. Though you only get about 70 grams (about 1/3 cup) of yogurt, the "plenty" applies to the amount of fruit. So, yes, you get about three bites, but each one is packed with fruity bits! Somehow, it still seems like lying in advertising, but I'll grudgingly let them off the hook because this is so tasty.

The company that makes this, Ohayo, has one of those quaint and highly contrived company philosophies which sounds like it was designed by a 12-year-old. It has priorities that all begin with the letter "S" (yes, in English). They are "safety, specialty, service, speed, slim, and smile." On the bright side, the company president actually manages to adopt a grim little smile for his profile picture on the web site because he can't have such a philosophy and adopt the usual grim or stoney look of most businessmen in Japan, so that's one benefit of having a goofy philosophy.

Ohayo is a dairy products company and this is my first experience with their products because I rarely consume yogurt with fruit and sugar mixed in. I usually eat plain yogurt if I'm going to have it, but my change in employment circumstances drew me to this. I now have to pack a lunch a few days a week and these looked like they'd be a nice, sweet finish while still bringing just a tad more to the table nutritionally. Besides yogurt and yogurt drinks, they make pudding, ice cream, and fruit/dairy combo products like smoothies.

This contains both  mango and passionfruit bits in generous amounts for such a small portion. It's only 56 calories, but then it really isn't all that much volume. This is more like a few bites of dessert than yogurt, but it's a very nice mix of intense fruit flavors, moderately sour yogurt and sweetness. It's also cholesterol-free, if that is something important to you. These days, everything in Japan seems to be labeled with regard to cholesterol content. That's a bit odd considering that this is hardly a place where heart disease is the highest risk (cancer is the biggest killer). Frankly, I'm not one of those people who is convinced that dietary cholesterol plays a big role in the formation of bad cholesterol in the body, but that may be me justifying my love of eating eggs for which I'll keel over some day soon.

These are delicious little additions to a meal. If you're the kind of person who craves a bit of a sweet but doesn't want to eat candy, I'd definitely recommend giving this a try to fill your sweet tooth. It's not as good for you as plain yogurt, but it's a damn sight tastier and more convenient for eating on the go. You can find these at nearly any fair-sized supermarket in Japan, along with some other variations like blueberry, kiwi, strawberry, and peach.

Slim & Slim Mango and Grape "Jelly"

When I first came to Japan, diet foods were pretty much nonexistent. There were pleasantly chubby Japanese girls, but they were seen as "healthy", not "fat". In the past decade and a half, diet foods and focusing on weight loss has grown exponentially. You see more products with "Zero" on them every year.

Part of me is sad about this because I think that it reflects diet obsession, which is never a good thing. Part of me is glad because I am a willing consumer of such foods. Of course, I have an excuse, I arrived in this country "pre-corrupted" by Western obsessions with dieting. Sometimes I think that the more we focus on our eating, the fatter we get, and I worry that the Japanese may eventually fall victim to the same problems as Westerners as their culture learns to promote fear of weight gain to sell products which eventually end up causing weight gain and food obsession.

Sociological issues aside, and I'm sorry to get so serious, but sometimes things take on a life of their own, I decided to finally dive in and try one of the plethora of zero calorie "jellies" (actually, it's what we call "gelatin" in the U.S.). I've seen big, single-serving size tubs of them in convenience stores and snack shops for quite some time and had passed on them. When these two varieties of smaller size jellies showed up for 89 yen (97 cents) per bag at Okashi no Machioka, I decided to dive in.

Note that I have tried regular (that is to say, sugar-filled) Japanese single serving gelatin tubs before. I wasn't a fan of them because they seemed toothachingly sweet. I can compare these sugar-free versions directly to that version. The first ingredient is Erythritol on both flavors and their respective fruit purees are the second. I don't understand how each can be zero calories and contain fruit puree, but there it is. The mango version is colored with carotene and paprika.

The mango has a pleasantly fruity smell and a nice mango flavor. It's not too strong, but it is rather sweet. It mainly lacks the citrus tones that you get with a real mango, but the flavor isn't bad at all. The grape smells like a grape lollipop and pretty much tastes like one. I think both of these would have a bit more punch with some citric acid or the equivalent.

I tried these both refrigerated and at room temperature and they're more pleasant when cold. The texture is pretty much what you'd expect for gelatin, though this is less firm and rather soft set compared to American gelatin like that you make with Jell-O mixes. Both also have a bit of liquid which tastes like juice around the outside.

These are pleasant tasting and not painfully sweet (which is better than the sugar-based jellies I tried before). They're even a little bit of a refreshing mouthful (each tub is 22 grams/.77 oz.) in hot weather when you have them cold. The thing that did surprise me though is that they tended to suppress appetite. Perhaps the gelatin is designed to achieve this effect, or it was just psychology, but I really did find that eating two of them (I tended to eat one of each flavor each time) killed my hunger for awhile.

I'd recommend buying these and putting one in your refrigerator if you're on a diet or have a tendency to eat more than you'd like. I think the mango is better than the grape, but both are fine. These aren't healthy at all since they have a chemical cocktail (Acesulfame K, Sucralose), but they seemed to serve me well when hunger struck and I either couldn't eat or didn't want to.

Rincle Petit Cone Ice

If the the Keebler elves were to buy a box of ice cream cones to keep around in their freezers for those days when they had a hankering for ice cream (though really, with all of those Keebler cookies, they don't need more sweets), Rincle cones would certainly fit the bill. I wonder if Glico designed these for diet-conscious adults or small children whose parents grudgingly give them sweet summer treats. Since this is classified as a "family pack" on Glico's site, I'm guessing it is for kids. One thing is for sure, at about about 10 cm (4") in length and 3 cm (1.2") in diameter, they aren't for those with big appetites.

I found these mini cones at a local supermarket and was drawn to the fact that each flavor has 50 calories or less per cone. I knew even before I opened up the box that they were going to be small. The only question was going to be how small. Note that they have been explicitly designed to be fancy-looking and to mimic the sort of ornate cone you might get at some tony ice cream parlor. The appearance of the cones was definitely a priority when Glico designed them as it is mentioned in their PR for this product.

The flavors included are strawberry, mango and double chocolate and vanilla, and double chocolate and cookie. There are 16 cones, 4 of each flavor, in one box and they cost about 200 yen (about $2), depending on whether or not you can find them on sale. Each cone is wrapped in a paper wrapper which is a little hard to remove despite a handy tab. This is because the paper is lined with plastic which stretches. When you pull on the tab, the paper only pulls off around the center and you're stuck trying to open the top. I'm guessing they lined the paper with plastic to try and stop the cones from getting stale or soggy. Frankly, this did not work. When I first bought this box, the cones were moderately crispy, but by the time I got through with half of them, they were on the softer side.

The ice milk is creamy and has a very satisfying texture. The cones, likewise, are not bad, though they don't have much in the way of flavor. They're shaped like waffle cones, but are actually fairly good quality cake cones. Each cone probably has between 2 and 3 tablespoons of ice milk in it. There's so little ice milk at the top of the cone that you'd be hard-pressed to just lick it. If you're lucky, the small blob won't dislodge on the first lick, but really the best you can hope for is to not gobble the ice milk on top in one bite.

Here are my impressions of each flavor:

mango:


The mango portion of this is really just a few little decorative dabs at the top. The rest is good, creamy and satisfyingly sweet vanilla. If you want a strong mango experience, you'll want to give this a pass, but it's certainly quite good as a vanilla cone. This cone was 40 calories.

double chocolate with cookie:


The chocolate portion is pretty much confined to the dabs on top. I couldn't detect the cookie part much at all, though it does add a grainy textural component. You can taste the chocolate a bit, but it's pretty weak. The cone has a bit of chocolate in it as well, but it's so subdued that it barely registered. At 48 calories, this cone is the most fattening of the bunch. It's also the sweetest and my least favorite.

strawberry:


I have to be honest and say that I'm not a fan of strawberry ice cream, but this was good. The strawberry flavor wasn't too intense or fake. My husband, who does like strawberry ice cream, enjoyed this quite a lot. It's also the low calorie winner of the bunch at 38 calories.

vanilla & double chocolate:


This one had the same cone as the cookie one, and the highest amount of chocolate. The top is a nice bittersweet crispy bit and the chocolate ice cream is flavorful and nicely sweet. It was my favorite of the bunch, but there are really no losers. It is 43 calories. Incidentally, I have no idea why this is called "vanilla & double chocolate" since there is nothing vanilla in it. It was also labeled as the "cookie" cone. I think someone just made mistakes on the labels and swapped them in some cases.

Depending on what kind of eater you are and how fussy you are about ice cream rather than ice milk, this is either a wonderful package of portion-controlled ice cream cones, or too little on the portion front. For me, this was great because I tend to want something sweet after a meal, but hate the idea of having a full dessert to satisfy that craving. Since the quality of the ice milk is so good and the sweetness level just about perfect, I was really pleased with these despite the tiny amounts. I'd recommend these for people who occasionally want a few spoonfuls of ice cream, but not for those who aren't satisfied with anything less than a full scoop when they get an ice cream (or in this case, ice milk) craving.

I should also note that the last two cones sat in my freezer for over a month before I got to them and there was quality degradation. The ice cream seemed to have seen a little crystallization from the freezer door being opened and closed and the cones got quite soft. I'd recommend finishing them off quickly, or putting them near the back of the freezer in a freezer quality Ziploc bag to protect them from temperature fluctuations and going stale. Clearly, the paper wrappers aren't going to do enough to keep air out of them.

Mango Purin KitKat Mini

If I were an incredibly huge narcissist, I might start thinking that Nestlé Japan keeps releasing new KitKats to make it harder and harder for me to come up with things to say about them in reviews. While I suffer from the same self-centeredness as most other humans, my ego isn't quite that big, so I have to assume the company is just mining one of the longer running food fads in Japan for a new flavor.

Mango has been pretty hot in Japan for quite some time now. The boom in sales of things like dried mango and mango-flavored foods may be almost two years old by now. I think it has been fueled in part by the idea that mango is healthy for you. I'm guessing some news report or celebrity probably touted its benefits some time ago and the fad hasn't reached a saturation point where everyone is just so tired of mango that they won't eat it no matter how good it is supposed to be fore you.


This bar is only sold in mini form at the moment. It can be bought as one tiny little bar (about the size of 1.5 fingers in total) for about 40 yen (42 cents) or in a large bag representing far more value for your investment, but with more bars than I care to have on hand. I got this mini at an AM/PM convenience store.

The bar smells fruity, though not necessarily of mango. It reminded me of a more generic fruit scent with perhaps a hint of mango. The bar is disconcertingly bright in color. The taste is on the milder side when it comes to the fruit aspects. The description on the web site mentions that it is supposed to be the flavor of "milk" and mango, and I think they did a pretty good job tempering any overly strong fruitiness with milky "pudding" (purin) taste. I thought it had some cantaloupe overtones as well. For a white chocolate-based KitKat, it was refreshingly not too sweet. My husband, who dislikes mango, actually liked this so that's a bit of an endorsement right there.

I'd certainly recommend sampling this if you have a chance, though I'm not sure I'd say you should buy a huge bag unless you adore mango. There's no weirdness to the mixtures of flavor and texture though, so chances are that the worst response would be indifference. The bar was released on July 13, so it should be around for awhile.

This is also reviewed at Snack Love.