Tohato Ura-Caramel Corn Double Cheese

In England, I'm told that many people refer to any vacuum cleaner as a "Hoover" whether it is made by the Hoover company or not. And, in the U.S., very few people call a facial tissue anything but a "Kleenex" regardless of whether they're blowing their nose into that brand or not. In Japan, staplers are called "Hotchkiss" because that was a popular brand there. It's certainly not uncommon for a brand name of a product to become the name of the item.

Based on the naming of this product,  I'm wondering if "caramel corn" is something people see as representing any product which looks like a curly puff whether it is sweet and contains caramel or not. I have sampled this and there is no caramel in it, though there is corn.

This is a fairly standard cheese-flavored corn puff. The texture is a step above what we tend to see in the U.S. It's lighter, crispier, and lacks the "foam-like" texture you sometimes get in cheaper versions of corn puffs. The texture really couldn't be more appealing. The cheese flavoring is fine, but a bit on the subdued side. This is odd since the ingredients state the flavoring is 80% cheddar cheese and 18% Camembert. The Camembert hits as a finishing note and is distinct, though not potent. It will vanish entirely if you gobble too many down and your tastebuds acclimate to it.

Shockingly, one of the ingredients is "caramel powder," but I couldn't taste it at all nor was there much sweetness despite including Sucralose in the ingredients. If you do the math, the caramel powder is only 2% of the flavoring so it seems that it's there mainly as a token and to validate the naming.

There are some savory powders added in to improve flavor depth (e.g., katsuobushi or fish flavoring) but this still felt like it could use more of a punch. It's possible that my tastebuds after seven years back in the U.S. have lost their ability to detect subtle Japanese flavoring and that I'd have picked up on more of this had I not been "ruined" by life back home, but I tend not to eat too many salty snacks made here anyway.

This was a fine corn puff snack and I wasn't disappointed, though I felt it could have been more. I'll finish the bag for sure, but I won't be craving another.

Note: I received this product as part of my free ZenPop snack box.

Bourbon Petit Cheese Cracker

If you ever wondered what a Ritz cracker would look like if it could mate with another Ritz and reproduce, these cracker sandwiches will sate your curiosity. Imagine happy families of Ritz crackers and their tiny little babies sharing loving glances. Then, Bourbon comes along and rips the infants out of their parents hands, slathers them with cheese, and presses them together. Oh, the humanity!

Each cracker is about the size of my thumbnail and tastes a little buttery. It's easy to taste the cracker separately from the filling because they tend to fall apart. While the crackers are light and crispy and quite enjoyable, the filling is processed cheese and not quite, but close, to being flavorless. There is just the slightest hint of something cheesy, but it could be my imagination or smear of citric acid masquerading as a cheese-like substance at the dairy fancy dress ball.

As crackers go, these fill the bill pretty well. However, for cheese lovers, they just are disappointing. I didn't expect much, and the fact that there is only 8% cheese in the filling isn't helping matters. The packet contains about 25 cracker sandwiches and the whole lot is 245 calories. I didn't finish it because it just wasn't enjoyable enough. I'd rather go for crackers with real cheese.

Note: This item was part of my ZenPop "cheese" sweets box.

Kirin Salty Lychee Drink (product information)

Kirin is doing some sort of promotion in which they talk about the combination of fruit and salt. I am very aware that salt can do a lot of things for various dishes, including boost the sweetness level of various types of fruit (watermelon in particular) as well as add complexity to chocolate and other types of sweets. However, for me, adding salt to a beverage with a sweet base turns it into something resembling an isotonic drink (like Gatorade). This is not what I sign up for when I buy a (hopefully) refreshing bottle beverage.

The inspiration for this is supposed to come from Thailand where pickled lychee beverages with salt are supposed to be a mother-made tradition. I get that information from Kirin, so I don't know if it is true. At any rate, each bottle apparently has a tiny little mother preparing a drink in a miniature kitchen for you so there must be some truth to it.

Kirin recommends some "recipes" if you buy this elixir. They say you can ice it up and crush a bit of mint into it, make ice cubes out of it and eat them, or mix them with seasonal frozen fruit to make a "punch". To me, no matter how you mix it, this has disaster written all over it, but then I'm not one for salty beverages.

Nestle Crunch in Japan (product information)

When I was a kid and went trick-or-treating, I was always delighted to get a Nestle Crunch bar from the houses at which I was begging for candy. I was generally slightly less happy with a Hershey's Krackel. I don't think that was because it was inferior. I believe both bars are pretty mundane consumer milk chocolate (meaning too sweet, very milky, and with weak flavor depth), but I tended to get Krackel's from cheap asses who bought miniature bars. Of course, it was better getting a tiny Krackel than getting saddled with a dark chocolate bar from the same assortment that Hershey sold at that time.

I can't recall when Nestle Crunch started showing up in Tokyo shops on a regular basis, but I can say it wasn't around when I arrived there in 1989. I can also say that I never personally saw a full-size bar and only saw bags of minis for sale. The classic foil-wrapped full-size bar which is similar to a regular chocolate bar, but with the textural bliss of crispy rice puffs, seemed not to be offered to the Japanese market. 

I remember trying a regular Crunch bar once in Tokyo, probably within the last 5 years, and I was very disappointed. I don't know if the Japanese one was different, or if something which suited my childhood tastes failed the test of time, but it seemed very "blah". I tend to think that it was really that they were never that good, but kids have very different tastes than adults.

Currently, Nestle Japan only sells minis of their venerable Crunch bar. They're offering three flavors including a salty version. The salty version came out late last month and is clearly a response to the summer heat. As is logical, salt is a big part of getting through the sweaty months. In Japan, eating cucumbers encrusted with large salt crystals is common, as is salting your watermelon (note: I think these things don't only happen in Japan, just that's a part of seasonal custom there). Nestle recommends that you freeze these for maximum enjoyment. I think that people might want to do that just to keep them from melting in the current heat (which I hear second-hand has been pretty terrible).

Of course, as required by law, there is also a strawberry crunch <yawn>. I think that they are probably melting down the billions of unsold strawberry KitKats that I refused to sample when I was there to make these Crunch bars.

Each bag of minis costs 525 yen ($6.70) and the two flavored varieties have 20 bars in each and the plain has 22. I guess a few spare bars are supposed to make up for perceived boredom. If I were to happen across these. This is the sort of thing I would not have bought back in Tokyo because I hated the idea of buying a whole bag of minis when I wanted to try just one bar. Even if I could pick up one bar though, only the salty one would be of moderate interest. If anyone on the island has tried the salty version, please share your thoughts.