ZenPop Sweets Box February 2019 unboxing (Cheese!)

When I was a child, I remember a commercial which showed a gorilla tossing around Samsonite luggage as a way of demonstrating how tough it was. Though I doubt gorillas tossed my ZenPop box around, it did encounter some sort of trauma in shipping. The boxes themselves are quite sturdy and this is the first time I've ever received one which took on any damage at all. Perhaps a gorilla did get to it to do such damage.

Whether or not the box is a beat up is not the question. The question is how the contents fared despite the hard knocks it took. Fortunately, not one item in the box was harmed despite the licking it took. It may have helped that many of the items were cheese-related and in puffy bags with air.

I am especially delighted with this box since the theme is cheese. I once told my husband that, if I had to eat one type of food and only one type of food for the rest of my life, it would be cheese. He even got me a cheese of the month club membership for Christmas. While not everything in the box is cheese themed, the overwhelming majority is.

There are more savory items, of course, because that's what one would expect from cheese.

Savory:

Super Kari-Kari Cheese Pretz: This is supposed to be super crunchy because it's very thin.

Bourbon Petit Cheese Crackers: These are like tiny Ritz-style crackers with a cheese filling. They're a little like the Lance sandwich crackers that are so common in vending machines, except they are tiny.

Umai-Wa Cheese (corn snack rings): This is a ring version of the famous "umai bo" sticks. I'm guessing this will be little different than the sticks, but it'll likely be less messy.

Ura-Caramel Corn Double Cheese (corn snack curls): The information in the ZenPop box says these aren't "caramel" at all despite the name. Caramel corn is a brand in Japan as much as a flavor so I'm guessing that's why there is a misleading name.

Cheese Rice Crackers: These are small, hard crunchy rice snacks called "arare" (which I think means "hail", but it's been awhile and my Japanese is fading away). I loved this style of snack in Japan, though the did tend to be the least healthy version of sembei.

Horo Buono Cheddar Cheese (balls): I've never heard of anything like these, but they sound and look a lot like Planter's cheese balls.

Calbee Black Pepper and Cheese Potato Chips: Calbee makes the thinnest and crisipiest chips so I think these are going to be amazing.

Dagashi Cheese Snack: This is the funniest little thing because it is so tiny. It's supposed to be Camembert-flavored cheese with fish paste, but I'll have to take the tiniest of bites to get a sense of it considering it's smaller than the top half of my pinky finger.

Sweet:

Crunky Baked Cheese Tart: This is a weird one because it's a chocolate bar which is made with gouda. Most sweets that are made with cheese in America are made with cream cheese. This is a little like the baked KitKat though and is can be toasted to bring out a unique experience.

Asahi Cheese Tart Bar: This is a "healthy" bar fortified with vitamins. It is supposed to be a dough/cheesecake type of center with a cookie wrapped around it (much like a tart with cheese filling).

Choco-ball Chocolate Banana Flavor: This is supposed to be a chocolate biscuit covered with banana-flavored chocolate. It sounds terrible actually because banana-flavored anything tends to be disappointing.

Strawberry Chocolate: These are dagashi, or kid's snacks. They're strawberry chocolates on a stick (like a lollipop). I'm guessing these will be super sweet and artificially flavored.

Pikachu Ramune Candy: This is another dagashi with a ball that is strawberry outside and melon inside. Despite the name, it doesn't seem from the description like there is any ramune (Japanese soda) flavor.

Anpanman Ball Chocolate: The center of this is a cookie and the outside is chocolate. It's like a malted milk ball with a cookie center instead of malted milk.

Tirol Kinako Mochi Chocolate: This is the only item that I've reviewed before and it is super tasty. Previously, I reviewed the "premium" version (larger piece) and this appears to be  the smaller version, but it tastes the same.

I've said before that I believe that ZenPop's package has the best value for a snack pack and this box continues to convince me of that. There is a decent mix of sweet and savory as well as dagashi (children's snacks) and snacks designed for adults. If you'd like to consider ZenPop's box, you can buy one or subscribe by going to their site. Note that I was given this box for review at no cost. Hopefully, I'll do better reviewing the contents than I did with the previous box. ;-) 

Yaokin Ebi Mayo and Chicken Curry Umai Bo

You can probably tell that the one on the left is the chicken curry since there's a picture of a chicken on the package, but I'm going to tell you anyway because I'm pedantic like that.

Today's items come to you (and me) courtesy of Skoshbox. These were part of the monthly goodie box that they sent me a free sample of and reviewed last week. 

When I was a kid, growing up in a run-down rural area of Western Pennsylvania, my parents used to "go out" in the only manner in which someone could in the area in which we lived. The only type of social experience that one could have there was at one of several little watering holes. There weren't any restaurants in the town, at least not at that time. You could go out and eat frozen, deep-fried food out of a plastic basket lined with paper and have a beer, you could stay home, or you could drive about a half hour to an hour away and look for something marginally better. 

My sister and I were too young to go out with our parents, and I imagine it would have been a colossal bore if we had; no kid wants to sit around a dark, dank, smoky room while a bunch of men and a handful of women get either quietly or noisily drunk. The highlight of my parents going out was that they'd often placate us for sitting at home with a babysitter who we hated (and we hated all of them) by bringing back tiny bags of Wise potato chips. I remember being happy when my mother would hand over 1 oz. bags of barbecue chips, and annoyed when she'd pony up plain ones.

For me, Wise brand potato chips are indelibly linked to my childhood. It's not only because they were something that I only ate as a kid, but also that they are associated with the region I grew up in. You can't get them in California. I'm guessing that, similarly, Japanese kids might connect their youth with Yaokin's umai bo. It's a salty snack "stick" which is made of puffed corn, comes in a variety of flavors and costs about 10-20 yen a stick, depending on whether you buy them individually or as part of multi-packs.

The fact that these are designed for kids is clear based on the colorful cartoon designs on the outside as well as the fact that no calorie or nutrition data is included. Kids, after all, do not have to worry about calories, right? That doesn't mean they aren't good for adults, though. It's not like there aren't people of all ages out there who are still eating Cap'n Crunch. 

Sorry for the blue cast. My photo taking situation is a bit odd at present.

The ebi mayo (shrimp mayonnaise) stick was the one I started with because I am not a fan of shrimp and I wanted to get the one I was least likely to enjoy out of the way first. I gave it a sniff, twice, and my suspicion that this was going to be very "fishy", or perhaps more accurately, "seafoody" was confirmed. I was encouraged, however, by the large amount of red powder on the outside. I associate that with "hot" and "spicy", but, on second thought, I figured that it is also a color that may be associated with, well, shrimp.

Though this smelled incredibly strongly of shrimp, the actual flavor was more balanced than I expected. The mayonnaise aspect was much more present than the shrimp. It had a nice savory undertone and was ever so slightly sweet as well as salty. Even though I hate shrimp, I really didn't have a problem with this. While I wouldn't seek it out, I wouldn't turn my nose up at it either.

The chicken curry was something I was actually looking forward to as I love both flavors. Just as was the case with the shrimp mayo version, the animal product portion of this was muted next to the other flavoring. Curry is definitely the dominant flavor. In fact, this tasted very much like Japanese curry roux. That is not to be confused in any way with Indian curry, but it is a nice flavor. This has curry flavor on top with a savory undertone and a little sweetness. 

The "umai bo" series of snacks is not meant for adults, but is marketed toward children. To that end, these are not snacks with serious flavor depth or intense or strong flavors. They are still very, very tasty and have a nice, almost fresh, corn flavor with good crunch. I like how airy these types of snacks are. They're giving you texture and the illusion of volume, but are not especially filling. 

I like these, even the shrimp one, and I hate shrimp. This is the sort of thing which I will always associate with life in Japan and a childhood there which I didn't actually experience. They're light, tasty, crispy, and portion-controlled. They're pure junk, of course, but a little junk now and then is unlikely to send anyone to an early grave.

Yaokin Vegetable Salad Umaibo

Some time ago, I bought a variety pack of Yaokin salted snacks which included 5 varieties of "umaibo". "Umai" is "delicious" and "bo" means stick. I figured that this would cover pretty much all of the umaibo I'd ever want or need to sample. These are very cheap kid's snacks, and tend to be a bit greasy, nicely crispy, and fairly flavorful. Their main appeal is in the texture, which is a large airy corn puff, and their relatively strong natural corn flavor. Though they come in different flavors, but are generally a similar experience with a backbone of savory flavors like garlic, onion, chicken, beef and pork with another flavor layer added into the mix as the dominant one. Their main appeal, frankly, is that they are incredibly cheap and come with sometimes amusing package designs.

The reason I find myself reviewing another umaibo is not that the package is claiming that they have added more deliciousness (umai uppu!), but rather that my husband was handed a magazine in a plastic bag that also included this umaibo. Free snacks! All you have to do is be on the right street corner when someone is handing out a magazine which is almost all advertising and almost no actual content. If you want to buy one for yourself, they'll set you back about 10 yen (13 cents) at most supermarkets or snack shops.

Though this claims to be "vegetable" flavor, it smells rather fishy. I'm not sure why that should be because it doesn't taste fishy. In fact, it's hard to pin down what it tastes like at all because there is a general melange of spices. The ingredients list includes cabbage, onion, bell pepper, potato, and garlic seasonings. It tastes pretty good in the way that things that are very, very bad for you can taste. There is so much oil on the exterior that placing it on a tissue to take a picture left an oily spot on it.

Since I didn't buy this, I can't really speak to "buying it again", but if someone gave me another one for free, I'd certainly eat one again. All of these Yaokin snacks are economical salted snack niceness. There's no nutrition data on these, but I imagine they're made with damaged fats and have little of redeeming value. Still, the portion size is smallish and the texture is good and they are flavorful. Next time someone gives you one for free, I recommend taking it.

Variety Friday: Japanese Christmas Packs

A Christmas goods display at Queen's Isetan market. It includes Christmas boots full of snacks for kids, marshmallows, fondue kits, imported plastic canes full of candy kisses and cookies.

If you're a kid in Japan, you're not likely to be getting very worked up about Christmas. You're far more likely to get excited about the new year's holidays when you get a prolonged vacation from school and can look forward to gift money from all of the relatives. While kids generally get a little something for Christmas, it's nothing like the rain of gifts kids may get in the U.S. or other largely Christian countries.


I have asked students what they were given as children and they have mentioned the style of "stocking" or boot that you see above which is sold for 1050 yen ($11.78). These boots are full of regular snacks like Baby Star Ramen, (plain) popped popcorn, and "bo" (stick) snacks. Yaokin sticks are particularly common.


There are also some big bags of powdered drink mixes and cookies which are offered with Christmas-themed wrapping, but they're also nothing special. The cookies pictured above with a Santa lion motif are just plain and chocolate animal crackers that are around all year being re-purposed.

I have actually purchased and detailed the contents of such Christmas packs before, but not in this blog. I did them several years ago in my former personal blog. I've seen exactly the same packs show up year after year at the local 99 yen shop, so I'm not going to buy a new one and review it again. I will, however, paste the review of one of those packs here for you to read. This was from December 2006, but it is just as valid today:

Santa is almost perversely overjoyed.

One thing my husband and I used to do when we first arrived in Japan was buy some random packaged item and find out what was inside. We stopped doing that a long time ago. I rather forgot why. It struck me that it might be interesting to give that a try again. After sampling the contents of the happy package above, I believe the reason we stopped is for the same reason that you touch a hot stove once and then never do it again. Curiosity may not kill the cat but it can sure turn off his taste buds and offer up a belly-ache.

The Christmas Pack pictured above is meant for children and only cost 99 yen at a convenience store. I didn't have great expectations of gourmet contents and I thought that it may be more interesting because it would show what sort of items are supposed to appeal to children. Unsurprisingly, the items in the bag are the kind of things you see in the candy and snack aisles which are geared toward kids in markets.


This bar resembles a cake when you see a smallish picture of it but if you click and see a larger picture, you can see it is far from a cake. It is called "Merry Christmas wheat gluten (fu) snack". I'm sure many children this year will be writing Santa and asking for special treats made of wheat gluten. The package, as best I can read, seems to be saying that it is a nutritionally-balanced snack. Among the main ingredients are brown sugar, sugar, glutinous flour, and all-purpose flour. It smells like a mixture of burnt sugar and bouillon cubes. The description says something about minerals being in it. The outside is incredibly sweet and the inside is a tasteless quasi-puffed corn snack texture. It was perfectly vile when I forced myself to taste it.


This is a "black sesame mochi choco". I tried to pull this apart so you could see the center but it was too tough to separate. The chocolate just broke up. I did take a small bite of this and it out-did the wheat gluten bar in disgustingness. It was absolutely horrible. I'd try to describe it but I'm trying to allow the brain cells that retain that information to atrophy and die. Among the ingredients for this one are "chocolate" (no ingredients for the chocolate are given), corn syrup, sugar, cornstarch, sesame seed paste, mochi (like rice "taffy", though it's usually called rice "cake"), powdered milk, and soy beans. I liked how the package actually used correct English but confused "they're" and "their" (click the picture to see a larger one to clearly see the slogan). Of course, American young people who have grown up on the internet probably couldn't tell the difference between the two anyway.


This is "morokoshi wa taro" or, essentially, "corn and corm rings". Among the ingredients are corn, taro (a Japanese corm), vegetable oil, and spices. They don't smell like much of anything and taste like an airier, relatively flavorless Chee-to. I'd call these rather inoffensive to mildly pleasant because of the texture.


This one is called "Umaka Christmas" which as best I can work out means "sweet Christmas". My research indicated that "umaka" is another way of saying "umai" in a particular dialect but this may be an incorrect translation. Among the ingredients are corn grits, vegetable oil, sugar, pork extract, salt, onion powder, chicken consomme, Japanese rice (uruchi rice) and fructose. This was the only item in the package which I thought was relatively pleasant tasting. The onion powder and consomme were noticeable and the texture was fine.


This is "Merry Christmas Umai (Sweet) stick". This actually wasn't bad. The chocolate on the outside tasted okay and the inside was a hollow log which tasted like and had a similar texture to Kix cereal only it was puffier and airier. Among the ingredients are sugar, vegetable oil, corn, powdered milk, chocolate mousse, cocoa, flour, non-fat powdered milk, soybean milk and flavoring.

If nothing else, this exercise pushed my husband and I to do some translating. It also explains why Japan imports so much corn. I think a good portion of it must be processed into these sorts of snacks.

To me, this was a classic example of something you see a fair amount of in Japan. That is, it's something which looks far better on the outside than it actually is on the inside. Maybe kids go nuts for this stuff but I bought this bag over a week ago and the QQ branch I bought it from looked to have just as many in stock as when I purchased mine.

Yaokin Umaibo Variety Pack

What looks like a label in this package is actually a sheet of paper with 3 stickers.

"Umai" seems to have several different possible translations, though the general meaning is always the same. It's used to refer to some food being tasty, though sometimes it means sweet and sometimes it seems to mean savory goodness. At any rate, if you watch any Japanese cooking show (and if you come to Japan, there are hundreds of them to choose from on a single night of T.V. viewing - yes, I exaggerate), someone will be sampling a dish and saying, "umaiiiiiii". I've told my husband that you could probably serve them a fossilized bit of dog poo on one of those shows and they would dip it in soy sauce and exclaim, "umai" (delicious!). They are paid to say everything is fabulous regardless of what it's really like.

This kid's pack of 7 snacks and a sticker was on offer at the local 99 yen store, so this cost a little under a dollar. It includes a collection of "bo" (stick) snacks that you can generally buy for 25 yen each and two small packets of salted treats. The variety pack gives you a little more value for your money than buying the individual snacks by themselves.

These snacks are made by a company named Yaokin which specializes in a wide variety of snacks which are cheap, small, and largely marketed toward children. They also sell small toys like balloons. A lot of their kid's snacks and these sticks have a cartoon character that is a knock-off of popular ear-less anime cat Doraemon on them. There's a very colorful catalog of all of their products available for download on their web site. You can get it by clicking on the catalog download text "2009年カタログ ダウンロード on the page I linked to in the previous sentence.

Each stick is a different flavor. One of the reasons I don't review this sort of item often is that it's a lot of work talking about and photographing each item, but the appeal of something with so much variety for so little cash is irresistible on occasion, so here we go.

*****

First, the sticks:

Note that all of the sticks are the exact same thing with different flavor powders. They are all a corn-based tube that is light, puffy, and pleasantly crispy. They are about 12 cm. (4.7 in.) long.

Salami:


The smell of this was a little off-putting. It did smell like salami seasonings, but something smelled a bit strange. The stick is covered with parsley flakes and you can really taste it. There's also pork powder and oil flavoring, but neither of these comes across very distinctly. Mostly, I tasted garlic, parsley, and a nondescript fake meat flavor. This was one of the lesser sticks of the bunch, though it wasn't really bad. I just found the mystery taste and smell to make it less appetizing.

Note: There's an illustration of a Sony AIBO-style robot dog riding a scooter on the packaging as well as a mention of a "campaign" (contest) on the company's web site. The campaign is for free gifts for 1000 people who send postcards with a portion of the packages from these sticks. Kids can win 2 GB USB thumb drives, an umaibo video game, a puzzle, or a battery meter. I'm not sure what kid wants a battery meter, but there you go.

Mentai (marinated pollock roe):


This looks very red so you expect it to have some heat, but the truth is that it's simply bathed in liberal amounts of paprika in order to simulate the color of pollock roe (which is what mentai means in Japanese). It smells and tastes fishy with a heavy kick of paprika, garlic and salt. The web site information on this says that mentai is the most popular of their stick snacks, but I'm not a great fan of fish-flavored food. That's probably because I'm not a fan of fish in general. I think this isn't bad, but I didn't finish it. I'm guessing someone who enjoys fishy things would find it more appealing.

Corn potage:


Corn potage is a soup of corn, onions, and cream that usually includes garlic and parsley flavors. It's sold as a powdered mix in nearly every market and convenience store in Japan. This tube of corn snack smells exactly like the powdered soup. It also tastes like it. It's immensely savory with all of the soup flavors and just a touch of sweetness. I really liked this. In fact, I think this is a different shaped variation on the corn potage snack that I previously reviewed and enjoyed.

Cheese:


The scent of this one is very familiar. It smells like the Marui Cheese rings or like planters cheese balls. In fact, this is like a puffier version of the cheese rings. Since Yaokin seems to have a relationship with Riska, which makes the Marui Cheese rings, it could be the same flavoring. This was nice, though I could have gone for a little more cheese flavoring for the volume of crispy corn tube. Nonetheless, the taste was zesty, fake cheese like you would expect on a salted cheese snack and it was pretty good. Note that this is slightly greasy and left marks on the tissue I put it on.

Tonkatsu (pork cutlet) sauce:


The smell is a non-descript savory smell, mildly reminiscent of soy sauce. The taste is very, very sour as if someone has mixed a teaspoon or two of soy sauce with vinegar. Subsequent bites are spicy and it grows a little hot, but in the way that garlic can be hot rather than red peppers. This was a bit intense, but not bad. I think fans of salt and vinegar chips might enjoy this. Note the "pigs in space" motif of the packet.

Snack packets:

Corn and corm puffs:


This is "morokoshi wa taro" or, essentially, "corn and corm rings". Among the ingredients are corn, taro (a Japanese corm), vegetable oil, and spices. They don't smell like much of anything and taste like an airier, relatively flavorless Chee-to. I'd call these rather inoffensive to mildly pleasant because of the texture.

Seafood (Umaka Chanpon) corn puffs:


The graphic on this bag reminds me of the American animated comedy, South Park. Specifically, it looks like a crude 3D rendering of the character of Stan Marsh. The character looks angry, like the offspring of some sort of rightist radical. I'm not sure why he's so worked up. His corn snacks are pretty tasty. They don't have a smell that is easy to pin down. That's probably because there are so many spices mixed up in them including pork, chicken, garlic, and seafood extracts. Mainly, the garlic stands out with a bit of a meaty, savory aftertaste. They're pretty salty with a hint of sweetness. My only reservations about them relate to the texture. They are slightly soft and it'd be nice if they had more snap in their crunch. There are only 12 grams (.4 oz.) in the bag, but that makes it a nice size to accompany a sandwich.

*****

Though these are packaged for kids, the snacks themselves really have little to do with children. They're all pretty normal salted corn snacks. I ate them one at a time over about three weeks time and largely enjoyed sampling them. Since the price is so low and the portion sizes rather modest, I think these would be good for someone to just have on hand for satisfying a craving for something salty, though it is pure junk food. I also think they'd make good souvenirs for people back home since they are cheap, colorful, very Japanese-looking, and contain the sort of food that most people can tolerate at worst and may enjoy at best.