Posts Tagged ‘Reviews’

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American “street” Pringles

July 28, 2009

The East Coast vs West Coast rivalry finally spills over into the snack world:

Los Angeles BBQ Chicken Pringles

Los Angeles BBQ Chicken Pringles

I’ve never been to LA, so I can’t comment on whether or not they actually sell BBQ chicken wrappen in a tortilla that you are supposed to eat while walking. Do these taste like BBQ chicken? Kind of.  It tastes like sweet BBQ sauce, and like the standard BBQ flavor you can get back in America only, again, sweeter. There wasn’t anything tasting like chicken here, which is pretty par for the course for Pringles. They’ve never had a chicken-themed flavor that tasted like actualy chicken.

And in this corner…

New York Cheese Dog Pringles

New York Cheese Dog Pringles

I’m not sure if that is some kind of typo or if the street in question here belongs to the people of New Yorker. Either way, when I think “New York”, cheese dogs certainly aren’t the first thing that come to mind, and I don’t know how qualified they are to represent New York, but none of that matters, I suppose.

Again, the first thing I thought of is that these taste initially like BBQ sauce, althought it’s a very weak and subtle version. When compared to the the BBQ Chicken chips, these do taste kind of “cheesy” in comparison, but not so much when tasted by themselves. They don’t come off as really cheesy, but they do have kind of a smoked flavor that is more similar in taste to a hot dog than the chicken ones were to BBQ chicken.

So, in terms of being accurate, the Cheese Dog ones are better, and I have to admit that I like them better than the chicken ones when it comes to just tasting good as well. Here’s hoping nobody gets shot over this review.

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It’s Mango Mania in Japan.

July 23, 2009

Summer is in full swing, and that means it’s time for all of the tasty tropical flavored things to go on sale. This year, the flavor of the year is mango. Here’s a quick rundown of a few things you can now find:

Peach and Mango drink

Peach and Mango drink

Here’s a drink that’s a combination of peach and mango with an overall yogurt flavor to it. This “World’s Kitchen” brand often releases different kinds of drinks supposedly inspired by various countries, and this time around, they say that they got the idea from Hungary.

Dessert Mango Milk Tea

Dessert Mango Milk Tea

The Kocha Kaden Desserts line also brings out many different kinds of really sweet kinds of milk tea. They’ve done caramel, strawberry, and this time around, they’re doing mango. This really tastes like mango and milk tea separately, but at the same time (if that makes any sense). You can taste the mango, and you can taste milk tea, but for some reason, it doesn’t come off as tasting like “mango milk tea”. The previous varieties got a little too sweet about halfway through the bottle, but I’ve had no problem finishing off many of these.

Mango Pudding Country Ma'am cookies

Mango Pudding Country Ma'am cookies

Country Ma’am is a brand that I’ve, unfortunately, been neglecting since I started reporting on flavors. They always are coming out with new flavors of cookies every season, and have been doing so as far back as I can remember. Well the neglect ends now!

They certainly look the part.

They certainly look the part.

For a cookie, these taste surprisingly accurate. There is a lot of mango flavor in these tiny little cookies. The while chocolate chips get completely overshadowed by the mango flavor of the cookie, but they still had that nice texture that comes with chewing on a chocolate chip cookie.

They normally reccommend that you microwave them for 20 seconds or so to make them hot and moist, and normally, this is a good idea.  I thought that they flavor was more pronounced when eaten “cold”, but what it lacks in flavor, it makes up for in being realy moist and warm (although doing so always makes them kind of oily).

Mango Pudding KitKat

Mango Pudding KitKat

Of course there’s a new KitKat flavor as well. Unfortunately, those ripoff “combo packs” are back in Pog form once again. At least this time around, the chocolate to mango ratio is a lot better than with previous flavors. In this particular bag, you get 7 pairs of milk chocolate and 6 pairs of mango pudding. Still a long way to go, but things are getting better (I gueeessss).

An individual mango pudding KitKat.

An individual mango pudding KitKat.

Unfortunately for the KitKat, there’s a lot of competition in the mango flavor department, and these don’t really stand up to the others, specifically the Country Ma’am cookies. There’s a nice mango smell to them, and there’s a decent initial mango flavor, but it doesn’t really last. As you keep eating them, the flavor kind of fades into more of a generic white chocolate wafer with a hint of mango. If these were the only snacks in town, I might have given them a more favorable review, because they are pretty tasty, but unfortunately, there are others who can do mango better.

Coconut Mango Cocktail

Coconut Mango Cocktail

Even the alcohol gets frutier in the summertime, much to my delight. This “coconut mango” flavor sounded like it would be right up my alley, but by trying to pull off three flavors at once, they end up lacking with each one. They mix all of this with vodka, but these things never really taste like alcohol, so that’s never a problem. The mango doesn’t taste as good when compared to the peach and milk tea drink mentioned earlier, and the little bit of grapefruit that they decided to add in just detracts from the mango and makes it more sour than I felt it should be. That might just be to cover up the alcohol taste. In a time like this, I would expect the sweetness of the coconut flavor to come in and make everything better, but there was barely any coconut flavor to be had, which is what attracted me to this in the first place. If they had axed the grapfruit in favor of making the coconut flavor stronger, I could see myself enjoying this a lot more, but alas.

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Afternoon Tea: Straight Tea Cookies

June 29, 2009

I tried out the Straight Tea Cookies as well as the accompanying Straight Tea itself.

Straight Tea cookies and Straight Tea...tea.

Straight Tea cookies and Straight Tea...tea.

In the original post, I wondered if these were made to be eaten alongside the tea in order to be able to truly appreciate the flavor, or if was simply trying to taste like the tea itself. I’m going to have to conclude that this was made to try and taste like the original straight tea.

The cookie. Oh so straight.

The cookie. Oh so straight.

I took a bite before taking a drink, and I could kind of taste the tea flavor. Kiiiiiind of. I’m not sure what those black things are, but I’m pretty sure that theyr’e responsible for any similarities this cookie has with tea. Aside from the slight hint of tea, it was a pretty standard sugar cookie.

After that, I tried the cookie with the tea itself, which led me to believe that these were meant to be eaten separately. The flavor of the tea totally overpowers that of the cookie. Once you get that flavor in your mouth, you can’t even taste taste anything in the cookie, and it becomes just a sugar cookie that’s not impressing anyone.

By itself, the cookie will probably get a, “Yeah, it does kind of taste like the tea, I suppose” reaction, but it definately won’t have anybody thinking that it tastes exactly like the drink itself.

I’ll be doing either the lemon or milk tea ones tomorrow. *Gasp* Maybe I’ll do both!

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Sakana-kun chips

June 28, 2009

I was surprised to see that Sakana-kun got his very own brand of snack chips. If you don’t know who Sakana-kun is, watch this clip first. It’s how I first came to know of him. So yeah, anyways, onto the chips!

Sakana-kun Chips

Sakana-kun Chips

The official flavor is “Salted Seaweed”, but it also contains bits of Shrimp and Cod as you can see from Sakana-kun’s fine drawings on the bag.

When I first opened the bag, I got a large whiff of fish smells, but that was only at first. The chips themselves don’t really smell “fishy”, but rather, they just smell like salted chips.

The chips

The chips

These are also put out by “Baby Star”, so they are made of the same stuff that the Gyouza Chips were. They didn’t really taste anything like fish, which is good or bad depending on your preferences. It tasted exactly how they advertised it: Salty seaweed. The flavor was simple that of a lightly salted chip with a hint of seaweed, which taste kind of salty themselves. So, if you don’t like your snacks smelling and tasting like the sea, you have nothing to fear here. These chips are about as safe and delightful as Saka-kun himself.

I still really want his hat.

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Uji Green Tea Video Review

June 25, 2009
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Like herbs? Pepsi Shiso is for you!

June 23, 2009

Pepsi Shiso is the newest flavor of Pepsi in Japan, and it went on sale June 23rd, 2009.

Pepsi Shiso

Pepsi Shiso

I had never heard of Shiso before hearing about this, so I have no idea what real Shiso tastes like. The Wikipedia article states that while it’s a member of the mint family, it is not, in fact, a mint. Therefore, it came as no surprise to me that this was not simply mint Pepsi. Pepsi Shiso doesn’t taste like mint at all.

The first thing that came to mind is “herbs”. At certain points while drinking, I could imagine the taste being that of simply grass or leaves, but there was always a little bit extra flavor in there to bring it above such generalizations. It doesn’t taste like tea. It tastes like you walked into the herbal section of a health foods store, so if you like that herbal taste, than you might enjoy this.

My only problem with Pepsi Shiso is that they’re calling it Pepsi, and this isn’t the first time that I’ve made this complaint. With a lot of the other brands such as Coke, Dr Pepper, or Mountain Dew, their flavor variations still retain certain characteristic of the original flavor, but these Pepsi ones always seem to just go off in some random direction. I can’t really say that this tastes like “Pepsi and herbs”, because there’s not really any “Pepsi” in here. It tastes like a carbonated herb drink, yes, but no Pepsi, so I find it odd that they are calling it that. Perhaps they felt like the drink couldn’t stand on its own without relying on some Pepsi brand recognition with a dash of novelty, and I must admit, that I would not just up and buy some other herb flavored drinks if they were sitting right there in shelves next to the other drinks.

Pepsi or not, this is still an interesting drink to try out, but I wonder how much of that interest is simply because of the Pepsi logo on the bottle and not the “Shiso” itself.

2006-2009 Limited Edition Pepsi flavors

2006-2009 Limited Edition Pepsi flavors

It looks like this will be the last Pepsi flavor that I can personally try in Japan without having to get someone to send me a bottle (and paying dearly for it). Whether or not they can be called “Pepsi” is up for debate, but I’ve enjoyed pretty much all of them. Also, yes, my favorite out all of them is the 2008 Pepsi Ice Cucumber. I’m still hoarding a bunch.

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New “XTREME” Pringles are anything but.

June 23, 2009

On sale this week, XTREME Extra Pepper Pringles.

XTREEEEEEEEEEEEEME

XTREEEEEEEEEEEEEME

Holy crap, look at that Pepper machine gun beating the hell out of that dumb old bowl! These just HAVE to be awesome, right? Right?

Not at all.

I was suspicious of these as soon as I saw that they were “pepper” flavored. There have been at least three various of pepper Pringles within the last year or so, and they have basically all been just regular Pringles with some pepper sprinkled on. These are no exception. I thought the chips would be blackened by the Xtreme amount of pepper added, but alas, I had to actually look very closely in order to see that there was, in fact, pepper on these chips.

To make matter worse, these aren’t even the most “peppery” Pringles I’ve had, and they certainly aren’t “Xtreme”. I forget which of the two pepper Pringles won in this review, but they had much more flavor than these failures do.

It seems that “pepper” Pringles are the very definition of lazy when it comes to snacks. At this point, from my Xperiences, I’ve comes to Xpect little out of these sad Xperiments in marketing, because, not once, have they Xceeded my Xpectations, or even met them, which is  actually an Xceptionally easy thing to do. InXcusable.

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Three new flavors of Pretz

June 23, 2009

Within the last couple of days, I’ve run across three new Pretz flavors.

Apple and Cheese Pretz

Apple and Cheese Pretz

The cheese ones taste just like many of the cheese-flavored crackers back in North America like Goldfish and Cheez-Its.

The apple ones are very sweet, but taste strikingly accurate. I was pleasantly surprised. They mimic the tart yet sweet aspects of an apple’s flavor.

LEE Curry Pretz

LEE Curry Pretz

These ones are inspired by LEE brand instant curry that advertises itself as being “10 times spicier” than regular spicy curry. These taste a LOT like curry and are very addicting if you like curry-flavored things. They’re not as spicy as they’d like you to believe. In fact, they’re not spicy at all, but they are very delicious.

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Cayenne Pepper KitKat Video Review

June 21, 2009
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More “drink” snacks: Ramune KitKats

June 17, 2009

It looks like KitKats are also getting in on the “snacks that taste like popular drinks” bandwagon. Their drink of choice? Ramune.

Ramune KitKat

Ramune KitKat

The artwork on the bag suggests that these are the special flavor for Tanabata, but I don’t really see the connection. If memory serves me correctly, the Tanabata flavors for last year and the year before that were both banana, so yeah, I have no idea. I’m guess that it’s just because it’s being released around the same time.

As shown on the bag, the KitKats themselves are light blue. They have kind of a strange smell to them. A friend of mine said that they smelled like “erasers”. Luckily, they don’t taste like erasers, but pretty much like Ramune. Unfortunately, they taste more like Ramune candy than they do the actual drink. The chocolate itself tastes a little bit like Ramune, but it’s not very pronounced. They unfortunately didn’t mimic the carbonation effects from the cola caramel corn snacks.

The real flavor comes from a powder that they mixed in with the cream that’s inside of each stick. They mention that it’s supposed to be “bubbly” and taste carbonated, but it really just tastes like they crushed up the Ramune candies and mix those in with whatever cream they put inside. It doesn’t really mix well with the rest of the KitKat. That’s not to say that it’s bad, but you just end up noticing the two flavors separate from each other. At first, you taste the outer chocolate, and then, after chewing for a while, you taste the candy/powder but it’s as if you just put some of the candy in your mouth and not like a “ramune KitKat”.

If the cola Caramel Corn hadn’t beaten them to the punch, I might have been more impressed with these. I don’t feel that the powder was necessary, because it just tastes like you’re eating two separate things rather than one well put together one.

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