Japanese Snacks – Part Two - It's Crunktastic!

No introduction needed. It’s Halloween. I’m in Japan. We’re talking about Japanese candy and snacks and this is part two. You may want to check out part one only because the waffle ice cream is there. Mmmm, waffle ice cream.


Kit Kat Koncoctions
The Japanese are the guinea pigs of the Kit Kat corporation. Here the fine folks at Kit Kat churn out new flavors of bar, some, as we will see, completely odd concoctions, and the adoring Kit Kat loving Japanese continue to make Kit Kat the number one chocolate bar in the country. This candy bar that began in the UK circa 1935 is considered cool in Japan. Think of what Coke was in the 1950s or what 7-up was during those annoying Fido Dido campaigns (before the Spot which made 7-up even cooler). And there are enough types of Kit Kats here to express individualism despite the same shape of the bar you are eating. Some equate the popularity of the bar over, say, Snickers or Aero to the name of the bar sounding like “kitto katsu”. This translates into meaning “I hope you succeed” and thus Kit Kats have become popular snack gifts from parents to kids about to enter into an exam or for business folk. The superstitious Japanese could very consider munching down on a Kit Kat bar to be the equivalent to carrying about a rabbits foot.


Kit Kats claim on the top spot may not only be due to the name but a very clever, albeit slow, marketing campaign. Kit Kats started to first appear in Japan as gifts from Hotels to students traveling to take university exams. The bars were said to be a good luck charm what with there name and all and the students started to adopt the bar as such. A good luck piece of chocolate. It helped that the bar was also pretty damn tasty. A year later Kit Kat would send in the second strike by tripping off the press about the hotel giveaways. The press started covering the story thus spreading the name of the bar and elevating its popularity. In the third year small ads started popping up in larger cities only the ads were not your typical happy, white teethed smiling girl holding up her Kit Kat. These ads were basically stories about people who had had great success with their “lucky charm”. The stories, of course, were all made up but the hook worked. People started to think of Kit Kat being lucky and the bars started to fly off the shelves as folks tried to obtain the luck they read about in the stories. Shelves could actually be found devoid of Kit Kat bars around exam time. Finally, in the final year, more ads began to be shown this time showcasing real people who believed they’d found success with Kit Kat.


It took four years and lots of subtle advertising prodding but Kit Kat climbed to the top of the candy bar mountain and now as a reward for the Japanese loyalty to the bar Kit Kat rolls out new Japan only flavors every year. Some of these have carried over to the western world (coffee comes to mind) but most will only appear here or on Ebay. My first step into the world of new Kit Kat flavors was with Cherry Kit Kat released to correspond to the Sakura blooming in April. It was similar in taste to cherry ice cream and was better then expected. Next up was lemon and this taste was an explosion. It was like biting into soft lemon candy chocolafied! Orange Kit Kat and Banana Kit Kat soon became favorites where Green Tea Kit Kat was one I would avoid as it was a little bitter in flavor. The flavors only get stranger, folks. Pumpkin Kit Kat, Mango Kit Kat, Melon Kit Kat, Almond Kit Kat, Azuki Bean Kit Kat, Apple Kit Kat and Wine Kit Kat have all been Japanese versions of the bar that have been met with varying degrees of popularity. Some have vanished from shelves within weeks and others, like Green Tea, have remained just as popular as the regular chocolate version.



Yesterday I believe I’ve found the oddest of Kit Kat inventions. It was sitting there next to Caramel. I’ve tried Caramel in Ontario so I started to reach, instead, for one of those tasty banana bars when my eye caught a glimpse of the red maple leaf and then the Kit Kat logo. Wait? Was there such thing as Canadian Kit Kat? What could possibly be within? Maple? Moose Meat? Mark Messier Sweat? Closer inspection revealed that it wasn’t Canadian Kit Kat after all. Damn, once again fly away the dreams of tasting Messier sweat. The leaf was just the sign of the season and indicated that this bar was another limited edition. Leaf Kit Kat didn’t sound very tasty. Wait, there’s more. Chestnuts? Could this bar take weird chocolate blends one step farther and actually be roasted chestnut flavored. Banana could wait. I had to try this. I snatched up the bar, hurried over to the counter and dropped a yen coin into the clerks hand. Pealing back the wrapper insider the box (Kit Kats, like most everything in Japan, are over packaged and the bar is split in two wrapped in two wrappers housing two pieces of chocolate over wafer each). It didn’t smell like chestnut and I have had some experience smelling roast chestnut. My mother’s old boyfriend used to make some up annually. It tasted more like a mild coffee with lots of sugar. It was very sweet and though I wouldn’t describe the taste as being remotely close to roast chestnut the bar was very good and I believe it has become my favorite. Another try or ten will decide that before it exits the shelves making way for Koala Kit Kit, Sun-dried Tomato Kit Kat and Broken Wrist Watch Kit Kat.



Pocky
Pocky might be holding the silver when it comes to popular Japanese snacks. Take a long, thin cookie and dip it in chocolate, strawberry and other coatings and you have Pocky. The product was introduced in the mid-1960s and became such a sensation that sales records of the first two years show that Pocky raked in over 30 billion in yen. The name comes from the Japanese word “pokkin” which is basically “snap”. Like Kit Kat, Pocky keeps popping out new flavors every now and then with Almond Pocky being the first and most recently Men’s Pocky. This one would raise a few brows in the West, I’m sure, as Feminists could start raging over chocolate. Men’s Pocky is a darker version of the original milk chocolate and is labeled as a more “mature” chocolate. Out of the Pocky flavors I am going to have to say that Sweet Potato sound the strangest. You can also find Pizza Pocky which probably the most enjoyable treat phonetically. Some Pocky pieces can only be procured in certain regions of the country. You can only get Grape Pocky in Nagano and Wine Pocky is found only in Kobe for example.


The snack is popular with the comic reading crowd as it is often parodied or marketed in Manga. I first tried Pocky in a comic shop in downtown Ottawa. I was attending a game of Heroclix (think of it as a less nerdier version of Dungeons and Dragons) when an old friend purchased me a box sighting his motivation being my impending trip to Japan. I’ve never seen Pocky anywhere but comic shops back home and in chatting with a few clerks it seems to be just as big a snack to the comic and role playing crowd as it is to the Japanese as a whole. Personally, unlike the excellent Kit Kats, I can’t say Pocky is any spectacular when it comes to junk food. It does make a nifty decoration, though, for ice cream sundaes and can be a sweet stir stick for your coffee blends.


Pretz
Anybody want to venture a guess as to what this could possible be? If you said Peanut Butter Coated Gerbils you’d be a sick freak. If you said a type of pretzel snack then you’d be right although I bet now you are thinking about what Peanut Butter Coated Gerbils must taste like, huh thus it also makes you a sick freak. It is very similar to Pocky and I often confuse the two. If Pretz were just long, thin pretzel sticks there wouldn’t be a problem but, like Pocky, some types of Pretz are coated in strawberry or chocolate. Both taste differently, though. Pretz isn’t a pretzel, though, despite the name. It is not salty and really doesn’t taste like a pretzel at all. It is not bent and misshapen. The only thing that has it resembling a pretzel is the texture. Unlike Pocky it is generally not coated plugging itself as a healthier snack food. You can find salad, tomato and corn flavored. Though I’ve not been able to find it I hear honey mustard Pretz is pretty tasty. There is a Canadian variety of this snack back home as a maple flavor but I’ve never seen it.

Pretz has the distinguished accolade as being marketed in maybe the most maddening and sexy commercials I have ever seen. Sure, we’ve all had jingles in our head from television advertising. I remember driving people nuts singing the old Mac Tonight tune and who hasn’t hummed the catchy Meow Mix ditty. You have been warned. Watching the Pretz commercial will leave you with a burned imprint on your brain that can only be removed after multiple lobotomies.


To aid in the cleansing I suggest watching the obvious marketing via sex ad where scantly clad Japanese girls dance about singing about their love of all things Pretz.


Of course, if those bouncing breasts don’t do it for you there’s always the gal in the Kill Bill custom stomping about with jiggling sumos. Pretz may not be very tasty but having the strangest advertising spots sends me sheep like to the shelves! (This reminds me to eventually do a post about wacky commercials I’ve seen and found)


Collon
I didn’t believe my fellow teacher when he told me about this. Surly even the Japanese wouldn’t name a snack food with something sounding so similar to such a disgusting part of human anatomy. He had no proof that day and I had never seen the product so I deduced it to be a gag playing on my joyous love of Engrish. It wasn’t until a few months ago while seeking out some curry noodles that I passed a candy aisle and saw it there in all its comical glory. Yes, my friends, it’s out there. Collon! Share it with your friends. I guess things wouldn’t be as funny if the product didn’t actually resemble in some fashion the actually part of the body its name resembles in translation. Though the images that might be stirred up while devouring such a product I could not pass up the chance to chomp down on some Collon. The product resembles a similar product back home that saw popularity in the early 90s. I can’t remember the name to it now but they were circular bite sized snacks with various fillings. I remember one being a pretzel coating with peanut butter stuffed inside the circle. There was a pizza flavor as well as a cookies and cream. Whatever that was and Collon is identical in design although Collon, at the touch, was softer. There were two types of Collon on the shelf. Creamy Collon and Chcolate Collon. Both sounded sickening so I opted for the most disgusting of the two. Hey, if you are going to mow down on some Collon best to go to the extremes, I say. Despite the name, Collon doesn't taste like ass. It’s actually not bad. It is a circular wafer stuffed with creamy filling. It comes in vanilla, chocolate, strawberry and I’m sure a bunch of other strange types. Once you get by the name Collon is damn fine eating!


Pucca
Chocolate filled wafer shaped like fish and dipped in rich Meiji chocolate creates Pucca. Not to be confused with the Korean cartoon character of the same name, Pucca is another bite sized treat that is similar to Chocolate Pillows only smaller and fish shaped. Not much to tell of them, really. They are crunch and might be good in milk. Will have to get around to that experiment one of these days. Like everything else Pucca comes in many different flavors but none of them matter after tasting Pucca Banana Cream! Seriously, there are some things on earth worthy of giving up intercourse!


Takenokonosato Kuri
Pine cones, wizard hats or strange sexual probes? Who knows?! It’s all Takenokonosato Kuri to me. I am unsure about the longer of the two words but kuri means chestnut in Japanese. I only found this out but asking the clerk about the Chestnut Kit Kat the other day. Like the Kit Kat, not much Chestnut like in flavor. The snack is a crumbly cookie that tastes more like maple. Man, ripped off again. Not that I wanted to eat chestnuts, mind you, but I really had a hankering for pinecones. You ever lick a pinecone? Once you get around the cutting sensation on the roof of your mouth, pinecones make fine snacks. I suppose Takenokonosato Kuri isn’t bad but if you are looking for that pinecone flavor you should best avoid. The chocolate coated type of Takenokonosato looks like something that might come out of a small dog colon. When you are thinking of candy in terms of body parts and feces you have to much time on your hands.


Crunky
When the Crunchy brand name is already taken might as well turn to the silly side of things and thus brings us to the final item on the snack list. Crunky is the “walking bar”. What that means outside of it being possessed by Satan, sprouting legs and heading out the door I don’t know but that is what’s written on some of the packages. Walking bar. Got ya’. I guess one could assume that a Crunky could be some type of energy bar but it doesn’t look very healthy and, honestly, any type of chocolate is going to give you a jolt. If somebody were to tip off the Nestle Crunch folks about Crunky I think the news would have them pretty cranky. Cranky over Crunky…I kill me! They two are fairly interchangeable as both are chocolate bars with bits of crunchy rice. Where the Nestle Crunch bar is flat the Crunky is elevated in pieces, like a Caramilk, thus making it look as though a Nestle Crunch bar decided to hit the gym. Cunky is made by Lotte, the other chocolate giant in Japan and comes in a few flavors. I’ve only tried two. Crunk chocolate, the regular version of the bar, was not what I expected. The chocolate was very bitter and left a bad after taste. I choose the white chocolate next that had a picture of some caramel pieces on the box. I wondered if it would be filled with caramel so that the Caramilk folks could then have their own lawsuit to doll out but the chocolate was caramel flavored. It tasted a little like butterscotch, actually, and was much better then the chocolate. In fact, it was so good I snagged another one on the spot and would return the next day for a third. When it comes to Japanese chocolate, in most cases, one is just never enough. Crunky, like Pizza Pretz, is just fun to say. I’d say the bar was Crunkalicious! Did the Walking Bar make me want to walk, though? No, sir. It made me want to gain 100lbs while sitting on the couch watching M*A*S*H reruns as wrappers and boxes buried me. Everything, especially Crunky, in moderation.

And so ends our tour of some of the interesting snacks found here in Japan. This post has me wanting a cart of candy and so I am off to do the adult version of trick or treating as I raid the candy aisle of the nearing grocery store.