08.16.08
Dessert Pocky (chocolate orange)
Reader Bailey asked me a long time ago if I had reviewed “Dessert Pocky”. Reviewed? I’d never even heard of Dessert Pocky…until my most recent trip to My Second Favorite Asian grocery store. I, of course, went to the gaijin wall of snacks looking for Pocky and/or Pretz to see what new flavors had come out and lo! What should I find but a package of Dessert Pocky! Score.
Apparently Bailey lives in a more culturally hip Japanese Snack Food place than I do, but eventually things trickle down to the bland ol’ Midwest. Enter: Dessert Pocky.
I have to say, I do not see much difference between Dessert Pocky and the formerly ubiquitous Decorer Pocky. Both have a chocolate goo dip with some sort of fancy overlaid icing swirls. This makes for a robust, goo heavy Pocky which I am all for. Thicker chocolate coat? Yes please! However, I can no longer find Decorer Pocky (haven’t seen it in quite a while actually) while Dessert Pocky has suddenly shown up on the shelves. Is Decorer Pocky so ’04 now? Is Dessert Pocky the Pocky that rose out of the ashes of Decorer Pocky? I’m leaning towards ‘yes’ on that one, given Glico’s propensity to market the beegeebus out of Pocky and Pretz.
I am not exactly sure what makes a Pocky ‘dessert’ Pocky verses regular old sweet Pocky. Frankly, I liked the ‘decorer’ tag better because it made me giggle.
So! Dessert Pocky – Chocolate Orange. Indeed, it is orangy so plus points there for an orangy-orange smell as well a definite orange taste. It isn’t quite fruit orange flavor but rather orange-cream orange flavor. If you’ve ever had a Whitman chocolate sampler or a Russell Stover chocolate sampler and picked up one of the orange-cream chocolates, these are exactly that but with a stick. To tell the truth, I hate the fruit cream chocolates but if they added a cookie layer to them, I might actually enjoy getting the surprise fruit cream.
The Pocky stick adds a nice grahamesque crunch to a delicious orange chocolate treat, plus the orange holds its own against the chocolate flavor. One of my Guinea Pigs thought that these tasted like those chocolate fruit things you have to bang against the table to crack open, but I think the Pocky orange is even more orange than that. The Pigs and I waffled back and forth between a 3.5 pea rating and a 4, and looking at the other 3.5 and 4 JSFs, I’m still not sure where to put these. I think they are better than a lot of the 3.5 snacks but not nearly as good at a handful of the 4 snacks. I think a 3.75 pea rating would fit these nicely but again with the fractional peas. So, when I
Rate these 3.5 wasabi peas out of a possible 5 wasabi peas, think of that 3.5 as a really, really orangy-robust 3.5.
