Wednesday, August 27, 2003
HOW TO RUIN YOUR TEETH IN 10 DAYS OR LESS: If you've been in a Suncoast store in the past few months, you migh've noticed they started stocking the holy grail of J-snacks (POCKY~~~~~!!!!) and its weird cousin Yan-Yan. Apparently that went over so well, they decided to broaden the scope of this section, which means you can load up on this stuff for the first time in many parts of the country instead of going the mail order route. I'm going down the island and trying the stuff I'm not familiar with to see what develops.
You all know my relationship with Pocky, the most addictive of Japanese snack foods. I'm a bit bummed out that they don't carry the Vanilla Mousse, my favorite of the non-standard flavors, but ya takes what you gets sometimes. Strawberry will do, though. Yan-Yan, on the other hand, is basically a Pock-alike biscuit dippable into frosting; as much as I hate to say it, it doesn't do anything for me. While I didn't find it as bad as the X-E guy did, I wasn't able to make it through the full package either. I do agree with them that any candy proudly stating it does not contain pigfat is a bit spooky (to my eyes, anyway).
The Kasugai gummy candies are excellent, thankfully not in cutesy shapes, and presumably made with real fruit, to boot. I sampled the kiwi version, and not only dug the taste, but was stupified that each individual gummy was individually wrapped. That's something you don't usually get from US off-the-rack gummies, where you're most likely to have to chisel your sweets out of a huge block of huddled and afraid bears, trying to fend off death by clinging to their futile numbers. The Kasugai gummies dodge this troubling scene by not only wrapping each gummy, but making a standard oval candy instead of pressing them into bears, worms, etc. That does kind of mitigate the fun factor (i.e. biting the heads off your screaming imaginary victim, or just eating something that's shaped like a worm) but you also get a higher quality product, too. Being a grownup is filled with tradeoffs like that.
That brings us to the latest sample, something called MILKY. Since I was raised on Milk Duds and the like, I was expecting a standard-issue brown sugar caramel, but what I got was a caramel that really tasted like sweetened milk. What a concept, a food name that's actually descriptive of the taste! If the Japanese ran the American food industry, would Apple Jacks really taste like apples? Or would they rename them "Cinnamon Jacks?" A warning to the uninitiated, though: this stuff will stick to your teeth hardcore, and some pieces have hard centers.
Among the unsampled goodies include Pucca, which are basically goldfish-shaped pretzels with chocolate or strawberry filling, a few soda bottle shaped candies, and something I didn't recognize in the wild but know now is Meiji Takenoko-no Sato (another chocolate snack from the Japanese company who do chocolate the best). There's also candy from the ubiquitous Hello Kitty cabal, still taking over the world one little girl at a time. Conspicuous by its absence is the unique Botan Rice Candy, which, you may know, is the only candy in an edible wrapper. The international market in our area is full to bursting with these, so it's not as big a loss as it could be.
Anyway, good on ya, Suncoast. Set our local branch up with some Meiji Karl and ramune soda and we'll be friends for life.
You all know my relationship with Pocky, the most addictive of Japanese snack foods. I'm a bit bummed out that they don't carry the Vanilla Mousse, my favorite of the non-standard flavors, but ya takes what you gets sometimes. Strawberry will do, though. Yan-Yan, on the other hand, is basically a Pock-alike biscuit dippable into frosting; as much as I hate to say it, it doesn't do anything for me. While I didn't find it as bad as the X-E guy did, I wasn't able to make it through the full package either. I do agree with them that any candy proudly stating it does not contain pigfat is a bit spooky (to my eyes, anyway).
The Kasugai gummy candies are excellent, thankfully not in cutesy shapes, and presumably made with real fruit, to boot. I sampled the kiwi version, and not only dug the taste, but was stupified that each individual gummy was individually wrapped. That's something you don't usually get from US off-the-rack gummies, where you're most likely to have to chisel your sweets out of a huge block of huddled and afraid bears, trying to fend off death by clinging to their futile numbers. The Kasugai gummies dodge this troubling scene by not only wrapping each gummy, but making a standard oval candy instead of pressing them into bears, worms, etc. That does kind of mitigate the fun factor (i.e. biting the heads off your screaming imaginary victim, or just eating something that's shaped like a worm) but you also get a higher quality product, too. Being a grownup is filled with tradeoffs like that.
That brings us to the latest sample, something called MILKY. Since I was raised on Milk Duds and the like, I was expecting a standard-issue brown sugar caramel, but what I got was a caramel that really tasted like sweetened milk. What a concept, a food name that's actually descriptive of the taste! If the Japanese ran the American food industry, would Apple Jacks really taste like apples? Or would they rename them "Cinnamon Jacks?" A warning to the uninitiated, though: this stuff will stick to your teeth hardcore, and some pieces have hard centers.
Among the unsampled goodies include Pucca, which are basically goldfish-shaped pretzels with chocolate or strawberry filling, a few soda bottle shaped candies, and something I didn't recognize in the wild but know now is Meiji Takenoko-no Sato (another chocolate snack from the Japanese company who do chocolate the best). There's also candy from the ubiquitous Hello Kitty cabal, still taking over the world one little girl at a time. Conspicuous by its absence is the unique Botan Rice Candy, which, you may know, is the only candy in an edible wrapper. The international market in our area is full to bursting with these, so it's not as big a loss as it could be.
Anyway, good on ya, Suncoast. Set our local branch up with some Meiji Karl and ramune soda and we'll be friends for life.
|| Eric 1:14 AM#
