Wee Pocky

Product: Pocky Squeeze (mango flavor)
Origin: Japan

First looks

Nick:
I'm not really sure what makes this "squeeze"; just looks like shorter, slightly thicker Pocky. I tend to like nice chocolate flavors of Pocky, so I'm a little skeptical here; it does at least smell very mango-y, almost unpleasently so. Hmm. Let's see what Katie makes of these.

Katie:
I don't mind non-chocolate flavors of Pocky. I swear I've had banana but that could just be wishful thinking. The Japan pavilion at Epcot has a lot of Pocky flavors in the back (if you enter through the Hello Kitty/Anime section and work your way through. You can, of course, enter through the 'exit' in the snacks section but what weirdo would enter the exit. The Japan pavilion is one of my favorites--great food, good shopping, and the Taiko show is awesome). 

As Nick mentioned, these are very mango-scented. They're also quite orange but that's because mangoes are orange. Orange-yellow? I honestly don't know. I've always thought of them as orange but I've barely even seen the fruit...it's usually just mango juice or mango-flavored whatnot.

Post-bite thoughts

Nick:
One thing Katie forgot to mention - don't let the friendlier people in your group near the cosplayers in Japan or you might end up getting a far longer rundown of Gundam's Original Century timeline than you really need. As for this Pocky... uh, it's real bad. The taste is "mango" more than mango, and I'm afraid it really just tastes like bad, fake mango. Do not slam this taste in your face. I do like the shorter, thicker sticks with more flavoring on them, if only the flavoring was, you know, good. Also, Katie got mad when I pointed out that the mango pictures printed on the sleeve looks more like an exposed brain. Uh oh!

Katie:
I think our readers are in for a rare treat...a Ham-disagreement.  A dis-Ham-ment?  Someone come up with something cool sounding for when we disagree.

These are delicious! They may not be fully real mango-flavored, but then again a lot of things usually aren't (e.g. Strawberry Starbursts don't really taste exactly like strawberries). We all kind of agree to ignore the fact that Watermelon candy tastes nothing like real watermelon but it's somehow still reminiscent of it enough that we can pretend.

I'm going to eat all of these wee mango Pocky sticks now and spoil my lunch. That's how they get you!

More chocolate wafers!

Product: Lusette smak Mleczny
Origin: Slovakia

First looks

Nick:
Well, I'm afraid I don't really have much material here; Munchpak sent us a bunch of nice chocolate wafer cookies that I'm sure I'm going to enjoy, but they're not exactly a gold mine for comedic material. Pretty thin on the ol' chocolate wafer cookie jokes. I guess I'm just going to try and enjoy this; it looks like a nice chocolate wafer cookie and it smells like nice chocolate. Here's to another twenty years of reliable chocolate wafer cookie competence.

Katie:
I think this is our first food foray from Slovakia. It certainly smells delicious. And it's not too expired either!  We have a bit of a backlog so the chocolate wafers are only a few weeks out of date. Everyone keeps telling me that the dates don't really mean much on packaging, which I guess I'll concede but only if you all concede that if something is literally a year expired...it shouldn't go in your mouth.

Anyway. Looking forward to chocolate wafers!

Post-bite thoughts

Nick:
This from the lady who eats 200 year old apples and deviled eggs in Fallout. "YOU MISSED THE FOOD," she'll yell when we're really early level and using crappy pipe pistols and don't have any healing items yet. I'll leave out the part where we turn into a stealth sniper and have over 100 stimpacks because that doesn't help my point which I kind of forgot what it was anyway.
As for this wafer cookie, guess what? It's good; nice and milk chocolately. I ate my half real fast. Nice job, Slovakia. Ya nailed it. Shoot, I thought I had a closing joke, but it's escaped my mind. Well, if it comes to me, I can use it on one of the other 12 nice-looking chocolate sandwich wafer cookies we have.

Katie:
Yeah, you're not helping. "Oh man, why are we so weighed down?" He'll complain, completely neglecting to use any of the 20 pounds of Nuka-Colas in various flavors we have in our inventory. "Better start dumping our loot and not eat any healing items with weight costs even though we're missing 40% of our health!" It gets even worse in Skyrim where we can literally GROW OUR OWN INGREDIENTS FOR HEALTH POTIONS. Harrumph. Just saying 50% of my Skyrim job is alchemy and y'alls making me redundant.

But back to the chocolate. Very tasty!  The wafers were very good, unlike a lot of the wafer cookies over here which tend to taste very cheap (albeit quite sugary and good). Definitely pick these up if you ever seen them. Good job, Slovakia!

PS from Nick: You have to save those Nuka-Colas for when you need AP!!! Also, does anyone have any of that Target Nuka-Cola that sold out in like five seconds we can review? Although I think it's just like Jones Soda Blue Blarzberry they slapped a Nuka-Cola label on. Kinda cheating on that one, guys. Does anywhere around here even still sell Jones Soda? I miss that cream soda that's like 100% sugar.

Finally, a drink to match the color of my hair

Pictured: Wilson's first blog
appearance...also some grape
juice

Product: Kirin soft drink/grape
Origin: Japan

First looks

Katie:
I'm very curious about this one. I remember white grape juice being somewhat of a staple of my childhood but I haven't had it since. Isn't it amazing how much of the food we ate daily or weekly as kids becomes something we never even consider consuming as adults? Is it because we can pick our own food now?

I still eat spaghetti-Os and Kraft Mac and Cheese. You can't deny me my Kraft m&c, dude.

Nick:
Gosh, I'm not sure my experience matches up with yours; I still eat tons of Kraft Mac and Cheese (any flavor but original and Spirals) along with Spahgetti-O's, and I can't really think of a childhood thing I don't have much of. Maybe Yoo-Hoo. Not sure I miss that very much. Anyway, as for this drink, it seems like, uh, grape juice; the ingredients are water, grape juice and sugar. Also, the label shows a bear either dancing with a kid, picking grapes with him, or preparing to eat him. Maybe all three of those in a row. Kid 'n grapes souffle or something.

Post-sip thoughts

Katie:
Yoo-Hoo! I always thought that was the best drink because I only had it maybe a few times at Disney as a kid (I got super hyper from sugar, still kinda do).

I thought the grape drink was good. Sweet without being cloying. It managed to taste pretty much like all fake grape stuff does except not over-sugared. I'm not sure I would want to drink the whole thing, but I could go for sharing this. If you don't like grapes, this isn't going to magically change your mind though. If you do like grapes, then...yay?

Nick:
Still "kinda" get hyper from sugar? I'd hate to see what really getting hyper from sugar is. I'm glad Katie went down memory lane because I don't really have much to say about this grape juice; it's good grape juice. I feel kind of silly importing this grape juice from Japan when it's good grape juice you can just go to the store and buy, except without the whimsical bear who may or may not be about to eat that kid on the label. I'd definitely drink more, but again, I can just go to Price Chopper or Market 32 or whatever they're calling themselves to get some more of this, and honestly, they have Kool-Aid in the same aisle, so I'd probably end up getting some of those cherry Kool-Aid Jammers where it tastes like all of the sugar in the universe is exploding in your mouth when you take a sip.

I liked Abba before they were cool

Product: mamma Mia coco wafer with dark chocolate
Origin: Poland

First looks

Nick:
Mamma Mia - here we go again! My, my, hope this GMO-free chocolate isn't gross! Poland hasn't let us down yet, but I'm very skepitimical of this - between the no-GMO (which has in the past meant no sugar and some kind of disgusting frankenchocolate), one of the first ingredients being "Cocoa Mass", and the suspicious coconut odor, I'm real leery of these. No sir, I don't trust this in the least.

Katie:
As Nick mentioned, our track record with Poland is pretty good. I'm going to be optimistic like in Winner Takes it All when she thinks he's going to get back with her (and hopefully not get crushed later when I realize that the chocolate is only here to shake my hand and wish me well).

Post-bite thoughts

Nick:
Gimmie gimmie gimmie some more of this snack now, something something something, I forgot the wo-rds already! This is pretty good; it's a nice medium dark chocolate wafer cookie, so apparently it is indeed possible to make edible non-GMO chocolate, which only makes all the other non-GMO crap we've had even more inexcusable. The aftertaste is a bit odd, but I like this quite a bit; nice job, Poland. Nice job, Cocoa Mass. After eating this, uh, shoot, what's another Abba line? I'm feelin' like a number one! (Not like I have to take a tinkle)

Katie:
I never understood Super Trooper. Was she in love with a storm trooper? I'm going to say yes. She has a thing for Captain Phasma and not even death will stop their love.

Okay so we looked it up and it's apparently Super Trouper and it's a brand of spotlights. So...nevermind.

The chocolate was good. I'd say it's a share snack so find a buddy and split it over some hot cocoa on a really cold, snowy day as a reward for shoveling the driveway like good little doobers.

It's like a giant Pocky

Product: Big Crunch Pepero by Lotte
Origin: South Korea

First looks

Katie:
Picture a stick of Pocky. Now picture it hit with a giganto ray and you have the Pepero. I'm really, really looking forward to this. It smells delicious...like kind of vanilla-ish? Or like very subtle birthday cake?  As of this writing--and you shouldn't have your immersion broken by this revelation since we've said it before--my mouth is still on fire from the spicy potato sticks. Heal my mouth, giant chocolaty stick!

Nick:
This looks like a huge almond Pocky, and I love almond Pocky, so I have high hopes for this. The only thing I'm worried about is when you eat almond Pocky the little almond chunks embedded in the chocolate can hurt the roof of your mouth, and whatever's embedded in the chocolate here is huge, so I guess I'll have to eat this kind of carefully. You know, I guess you could also use these as a drumstick, if you don't mind them breaking immediately. Or maybe huge chopsticks? I guess the chocolate would melt and make a mess, though. Hmm.

Post-bite thoughts

Katie:
You could have extremely temporary fondue sticks? I mean you'd have to use them chopstick style but it might still be good.
Okay so...the giant stick. The knobby bits are cookies, I think. On the box, there are these oreo-looking cookies so I think they're smooshed up into the chocolate in a delicious manner. These are yummy! (fun fact--I typed rummy twice in trying to type yummy. Why's the rum gone??) I really hope these are imported here at one of the local Asian markets. This is right up there with Pocky and Melty Kiss for me.

Nick:
Pretty good! I do think it could stand to be a little sweeter, but that's my only quibble; the big central core the chocolate and cookie chunks are wrapped around is pretty thick, and it's not very sweet - I found myself eating just a little too much of this for me as it should only be there to deliver chocolate. A solid OKAY from me.