Pure Love Gummy

If you asked someone what "love" tastes like, the answers you're going to get will vary wildly based on the age, gender, and maturity level of the object of your question. Personally, even thinking about what a feeling tastes like sounds like about as warped a case of synesthesia as one could encounter, but I'm willing to play along a little.

This gummy candy was released as part of a promotional campaign in which one could win a date on a white horse with a "prince". By "prince", they mean some smiling dork in a weird costume and by "white horse", they mean a carriage being pulled by one. The winner of the contest could have an awkward encounter and some inane small talk about apple pies with the actor who pretended to be an object of romantic desire. 

Why are apple pies coming into the mix? Well, it appears that "love" tastes like apple. When I bought this package of gummy candy at Nijiya market (for $2.19/206 yen), I didn't know what they were going to taste like and the clerk we asked said she didn't know either. If I had thought for a second, or used some other part of my brain, I would have looked at the ingredients list which helpfully lists "apple juice" among the many chemicals and sugars used to create these vaguely heart-shaped blobs.

When I opened the packet, still oblivious to the composition of the contents, I thought they smelled like super strong pear, but the flavor was much more clearly apple. In fact, it's not just apple, but double strength applesauce flavor with a citric acid bite on the end. Though I like apples in general, these are a bit too strong for me. I also like Pure gummy candy quite a lot, but this one absolutely comes in as the least enjoyable one I've ever had. 

I'm sorry, Kanro, but love definitely doesn't taste like apple to me. In fact, I'd much rather it tasted like orange. If there is any balance in the universe, come next setsubun, there will be a "hate" candy to represent the yang to the love candy's ying. I'm voting that hate taste like the darkest of dark cherry that they can get their hands on, but I'm guessing they'd go for something like durian. 

Pocky Midi (product information)

All images from Glico's web site.

On March 19, Glico released a new version of Pocky called "Midi". It is a shorter, stubbier version of the bread stick with sweet candy-ish coating that people inexplicably go crazy for. They seem to resemble a club or bat with their growth-inhibited appearance. The reason they're so fat is that there is whipped chocolate in the center which is then coated with a more normal Pocky chocolate coating. The "midi" probably stands for "middle".

There are two flavors of Midi, both rather boring. That is to say strawberry and chocolate. Glico, like Nestle Japan, seems to be doing fewer esoteric flavors for its signature products. One of the weirdest options that is not a strange flavor is "Pocky Bran". I guess it's the Japanese equivalent of a Fiber One brownie.

Other than the bran Pocky, the flavor offerings are pretty normal. The full listing is: regular chocolate, thin Pocky (50 sticks per box), matcha (green tea) cream, "pebbly" (tsubu tsubu) strawberry, almond crush (chocolate with almond pieces for texture), cookie crush/crunch (chocolate with cookie pieces for texture), (milk) cocoa, strawberry (smooth), and Panda Pocky (cookies & cream). All of these are pretty pedestrian flavors that have been around for quite awhile. Note that there are other flavors out there, but they are not being promoted in the Japanese market. Some of the more exotic flavors are in other Asian countries and may or may not show up in Japan. I can say that the flavors I've listed are the only ones on the web site, but I've seen coconut Pocky, "milk", and other flavors in Asian markets around me.

It may look like he's holding up a pregnancy tester, but that's supposed to be a Pocky stick. 

Currently, Glico is marketing Pocky with the slogan "Let's Share! Pocky!" I'm guessing there were tons of people who were hoarding it and refusing to let anyone have any, or something. On a brighter side, there are a whole host of nifty downloads. There's some panda papercraft that you can download and fold. An application for iPad, iPod, etc. A New Year's card, which I'm mentioning rather late, but there are no years attached to most of the designs so you can  be really early for next year or rather late for this one. And, of course a whole bunch of wallpapers.

Random Picture #156

Note the cool sample on the right which shows plastic versions so they don't get all gross and rotted while on display. 

One of the first images of Japanese food that was burned into my memory was of a bean cake that looked like a chick. There is a famous manju that used to be advertised on television quite frequently so I have the entire thing along with the inane music that accompanied it burned into my brain. I'm sure it's filed in the same spot as the "Meow Mix" commercials in which cats sing a tune by uttering nothing more than "meow". And don't blame me if you watch the linked commercial and want to drink until you kill all of the involved neurons.

The version shown in this picture, P-chan, is not the one in the commercial I used to see. This is a cheaper variety sold at a discount snack shop in Omotesando, though it looks pretty much exactly the same as every other chick-shaped bean cake. They have white bean in them instead of red. I think most foreign folks find the white ones more palatable than the red. Incidentally, I like to think of these as the Japanese version of "Peeps". ;-)

KitKat World Assort Rebooted (product info. bonus post)

Image from Nestle Japan's web site.

Before I left Japan, there was a KitKat "World Assort(ment)" that failed to inspire me. It was essentially a bag of chocolate KitKats in their various incarnations from around the world. While it's true that the various KitKats from Australia, America, the U.K. and Japan taste somewhat different (and, frankly, the European ones are best in my utterly subjective opinion), it was a pretty uninspired choice for a "world assort".

Apparently, someone got with the program and this rebooted version offers 6 hazelnut mini bars and 7 orange ones (the reason for such an imbalance escapes me). Both of these, in my experience, are from the U.K. versions. I've seen them for sale at Cost Plus Imports for a slightly high cost. If I were in Japan, I'd be all over these because hazelnut in particular is an underrepresented flavor among confections in Japan, and you can never lose with orange and chocolate. As flavors that might interest those who are interested in Japanese sweets, these aren't going to float many boats. For those who are interested in testing the way the wind is blowing in the world of Japanese KitKat, this is somewhat interesting news. 

If you're in Japan, word is that these were released yesterday and they should be showing up on local shelves soon if they aren't already there. 

Kinh-Do Tiramisu Cream Cake

When I thought about coming home to the U.S., there were things I thought I'd never eat again and the Japanese-style custard/cream cakes were one of those things. It's not only that they weren't the most appealing of Japanese snacks (they're not), but rather that I expected not to have access to them. Surprisingly, they are quite easy to come by in Northern California. Even more surprisingly, they're often not particularly expensive. And far less surprisingly (3 surprises in one paragraph!), they're no better than I remembered.

Given my low expectations, one might wonder why I even bother to review such things. There are many reasons... nostalgia, hope springing eternal, the unusual flavor possibilities, stupidity... those are just a few of those reasons. Also, it is my "job" to do these posts for less than the wages paid to waiters and waitresses (which is to say, something around $2.30 an hour) and I have to review something. Beyond that, on the package, it says in English, "a first-class cook seasoned these dishes with advanced techniques and highest-class materials." That's some promise! How can I resist finding out just how advanced and high class they are?

Though these are covered with Japanese writing and look for all the world like they were made in Japan (no other language is on the package), they're actually made in Vietnam. Kinh Do Group mainly makes food, but has a few other businesses on the side. They sell a fruit candy which has a pretty cool name called "Crundy". It's not quite as awesome as Crunky (which sounds like a synthesis of "crunchy" and "funky"), but it's still pretty good. This sounds like the shotgun wedding between "cruddy" and "candy". If I ever find any "Crundy", I'm absolutely going to review it. 

I found these on sale at Han Kook Korean market for the bargain price of $2.49 for a packet with 10 individually wrapped cakes about the size and appearance of a small hockey puck. They're about 3/4 of the size of my dainty lady palms. Each cake is 87 calories in Japanese, and apparently 90 calories in English (there are slightly different details in the nutrition information based on which you read). Based on the ingredients, most of those calories are coming from the "tiramisu cream" and the fat included in it. The major ingredient of it is "margarine", so there's some trans-fat goodness in there as well as palm oil and a host of chemicals. Yum, yum.

The cake is rather dry, but ever so slightly oily. It has a strange flavor I associate with shelf-stable cakes in Japan, but don't really connect with similar offerings in the U.S. There is a nice, modest coffee flavor to the cake and that's the dominating feature. The cream filling adds moisture and textural contrast, but doesn't have a very strong flavor. It's like a dollop of softish butter in the center of a dry muffin-like cake, which makes sense considering it's most margarine in there.

As you can see by the cutaway above, the cream is not exactly dominating the cake and the first one I ate actually had about half the cream you see in this one. I think it wasn't that it wasn't properly filled, but rather that some of it was absorbed into the cake through time. These were probably on the cheap side because they were closer to their expiration date than most customers might be comfortable with. One interesting aside about such dates in the U.S. for Asian products. In Japan, no one will touch such products and they aren't even sold in most shops. In the U.S., I regularly see expired or nearly expired products on sale. There's a whole section of Daiso Japan which always carries items past their sell-by dates. Instead of the usual $1.50 each, they're a dollar.

Getting back to this cake, however... This isn't a bad bit of shelf-stable cake at all. It's just not especially good either. If the filling were creamier and had more of a flavor profile, it might even be worth a semi-happy sumo rating despite the dry coffee-flavored cake. I'll finish the package very slowly over time, but it'll be the sort of thing that I eat when I have a craving for cake and there's nothing else in the house or when I have a feeling of wanting to eat some "bad" junk food. That means it'll probably take awhile to finish off 10 cakes.