You can find Part 1 of the chocolate and mochi themed snacks from the Japanese Snack Box here, and all the other reviews from that box here.
Just a quick foreword, I have no clue of any of the finer details of these products – Google Translate does not like Japanese characters in anything other than standard PC font… If you do happen to know anything about any of the snacks please drop me a comment or email!
Another ??
I thought this was going to be a Chocolate Umaibo (read about those here) thanks to my internet skills, it was a lot smaller than the other Umaibo and even up to the point where I put the thing actually in my mouth I was sure it was a chocolate covered corn stick.
The weirdest thing was the smell, it didn’t smell like chocolate or any of the other corn or potato based snacks. It smelt just like chocolate ice cream!
Unfortunately this didn’t make for a very tasty chocolate.
It only has a very thin chocolate coating but it’s bland with not much flavor. The chocolate ice cream scent soon made sense as it reminded me a lot of the cheap waxy sugar based stuff some of the crapper companies like to pretend is chocolate in their ice cream tubs.
The “mockolate” flavor didn’t last long though. I can’t translate the ingredients but this didn’t taste of corn at all, the middle tasted like soggy cardboard and seemed much more like a round wafer.
It soon came to me exactly what this tasted like. Imagine someone giving you the soggy wafers of a Kit Kat that they’ve already sucked most of the chocolate off. Yeah… I won’t bother with this one again!
Ginbis Shimi Choco Bar (???)
The photos are deceiving but this stick(?) is a lot bigger than the one beforehand. I had an idea what to expect thanks to the photo on the front of the wrapper but once again I expected a corn based Umaibo type snack.
I’ve since learnt it’s fortified with calcium, so that’s something!
I said I had an idea what it’d look like but I didn’t expect it to be that ugly! Apologies if you’re eating, but this looks like something my dogs have left in the garden…
It smelt a lot better thankfully, not like chocolate but of cocoa powder. And not in a cheap nasty “isn’t this supposed to be chocolate?” way but like a sweet rich inviting cup of hot chocolate. I shut my eyes and dug in.
And was very pleased with what I found! It’s not corn based at all but instead is a star shaped wafer. It’s light and airy but with a decent crunch, and a crisp but ever so slightly chewy texture. The chocolate flavor is subtle but noticeable both in taste and texture. The coating is only thin but I felt the difference between smooth almost liquid feeling chocolate and the wafer immediately.
This ugly little star shaped stick tasted just like a chocolate flavor Pink Panther wafer and gets a big thumbs up from me!
???
This little one treat looked like a soft, wobbly pudding style bite but I soon realised while trying to remove it that it was actually rock solid!
It had a strong, strong coffee scent – completely throwing any guesses I had to what it might be out of the window!
That was rectified as soon as I tasted it – I tried my hardest to make this last three bites but two was pushing it – and I was met with a sweet white chocolate and a gorgeous strong coffee.
The two work as well together as ever and I was gutted this was so small! I could eat boxes and boxes of the stuff, if anyone has a name so I can order more please let me know in the comments!
Cherry Mochi
Finally! One of the few I was fairly sure I’d identified.
Tasting it, I’m not so sure!
The Black Kinako Mochi I reviewed before was very soft and jelly-like, wheras these where much more like a harder gummy or jelly sweet.
Even though they were much firmer than the Mochi previously they were still fairly soft and chewy and the teeny tiny pack took a while to work through – especially using the tiny tooth pick provided!
The flavor was O.K, it was perfectly tasty and nice and sweet, but for something I’m presuming (thanks to the illustration) to be cherry flavoured it had more of a vague berry flavor. You know the kind I mean, “red/pink” flavoured.
I did enjoy them but there was nothing about the flavor or texture to make them particularly memorable and something I’d go out of my way for.
Well, 3/4 aint bad! Japanese chocolate and mochi products get a thumbs up from me!