Japan Snack Reviews #2

 ... And we're back!!!

This is part of a Special Blog Series where we review random Korean and Japanese snacks. This one's Japanese so let's go.

1.

Translated Name: Tasty - Walleye

Review:

This is a continuation of the "Tasty" series. You can see the previous flavors here. So this one is "Walleye" which is apparently a type of fish. Well, I don't know what walleye tastes like so I'm none the wiser. In case you've forgotten from previous "Tastys" they look like this:

So I don't know what walleye tastes like but that's perhaps appropriate because I don't know how to describe this flavor - it's still 90% like the others, it's still very much just a cheese puff - but there's a hint of another taste. The best I can describe it is, it's a barbeque flavor. I wouldn't say it's bad but can't recommend it, especially since other Tasty flavors are available.

2.

Translated Name: Tasty - Vegetable Salad

Review:

Continuing the Tasty series and I believe this will be the last one ever. Again, it's 90% cheese puff flavor. The "vegetable salad" kind of makes sense, I suppose. It has an indistinct onioney or chivey flavor. Not bad.

3.

Translated Name: Roasted/Grilled Fish Strips (Type of Fish Unknown)

Review:

Here we go. This is the most "Japan" Japan snack. Fish strips!

Opening up the package, the first thing I did, perhaps instinctively, is smell the package. The first smell is of wet paint. So now the first taste.... oh no, no, no, no! It does taste like fish but it's the worst thing in the entire collection so far. Full marks for accuracy: it's like dried tuna in a brown rectangle but it's like eating an aquarium. No, it's like eating a fish store. It might taste like fish food, itself. Horror.

4.

Translated Name: Black Devil Beer

Additional Text: The bottom mentions "the child says nothing" or "is quiet". I think I'm missing something in translation here.

Review:

This is the first "do it yourself" candy - the first candy with instructions. It's powder that you have to dissolve in water to make some sort of candy beer(?) I'm not including a picture of the instructions here but they were basically "add water". They were actually more specific... it has to be COLD water. That makes sense, you want to make candy beer but you don't want warm candy beer. In the end it looked like this:

The picture is actually pretty impressive how much it resembles beer. It was actually pretty reddish and so not completely accurate.

Tasting it, I don't think it tastes like beer. I'm not a big beer drinker so I'm not an authority. Pros: it's not too sweet, it's got a hint of bitterness to it but Cons: I think the thing it most resembles is... a cola flavor. 

I'll be honest here, I don’t know how candy beer flavor could be accomplished or even if it's desirable. But even so, I don’t think this is it. It’s possible I added too much water and watered down the taste. However, in my defense, the “instructions” don't say how much water and the picture shows a full stein meanwhile I only made half a glass so I hardly think I'm at fault here. I wouldn’t recommend it but then again I don’t like real beer anyway.

5.

Translated Name: The big text may be a play on words that's unclear. The second half (the red/green/blue triplet) is "soft", as in "soft serve". 

Additional Text: The left side is "strawberry flavor". The bottom right says it's "tasty". The second line I can't fully read but it's referring to the (ice cream) cone.

Review:

Before we move on, let me just say that, as packaging goes, that is the happiest, most childlike packaging I've ever seen on anything. It's Strawberry Shortcake meets Care Bears or what not. This is 10/10 for packaging.

So we just had the first snack with instructions and here we are with the second! There's a powder (again) that you have to mix with water (again) and then you put it on a cone. It looks like this:

Once again, I think I added too much water but, also again, the instructions didn't say how much water to add so I'm blaming Japan (again).

So the interesting thing here is the water mixture is like soda - it seems to be slightly carbonated so that it's a foam. The cone is a genuine sugar cone, nothing surprising here. It's sweet and candy-ey but I don't particularly like it. The "strawberry" flavor isn't the best. It's kind of fun if you want a fun do-it-yourself Japanese candy and the packaging is the absolute best, as I said, but it's nothing special in my view.

Incidentally, I made these "ice cream cones" on a teleconference - at each stage I showed the ingredients and what I was doing and at no point did anyone ask "What are you doing?" or "What is that?" or even "What is wrong with you?" Perhaps ice cream candy from Japan is more common than I know.

So that's it. See you next time with another batch of Korean Snacks.