03.15.09
Mikan Pocky
Sorry about the shift in date for today’s post; yesterday was Pi day so I preempted the Review for Shoo Fly Pie. I’m a lazy blogger and two blog posts in one day is a lot of work, plus I figured I’m post dating anyway, who’s going to notice? So for those of you who are all “Whut?” never mind, you can just read on. For you OCD Junkies that’s the scoop for the date shifting.
Today I bring you more Pocky because (everybody chime in) there’s always more Pocky. I swear one day the JSFR is going to up and succumb to the giant of snacks if Glico doesn’t cut it out. Crimony! I should see if I can make it the whole month of April without any Pockying but not today. Today I have Mikan (according to Godzilla) Pocky which is more or less Mandarin-like Orange Pocky. If you can believe Godzilla today, Mikans (?) are like Mandarin Oranges but with saggy skin that hides the bruises of the fragile (but tasty) fruit.
In case you are curious, this is the first solo Orange Pocky we’ve had at the Review, although when Koeda chocolate showed up for the first time it was orange flavored. It was not a particularly natural orange and thus I come back to the post at hand. Mikan Pocky isn’t fresh fruit orange. Even though I’ve never had a Mikan (I have had Mandarin oranges) I can tell you that the fruit won’t taste like this. At best, Mikan Pocky smells strongly of Orange Creamsicles or perhaps baby aspirin and I can’t see anything in nature actually smelling like either. Mind you, I love creamsicles and baby aspirin is…well…just don’t ask my mom about the baby aspirin incident (I was 6!!!). But natural? No.
I kinda want to give Mikan Pocky points for smelling so creamsicleish, but I will refrain since they clearly aren’t Creamsicle Pocky. They also don’t taste like creamsicles either so there is that. The orange is…odd. My Guinea Pigs all agree that this is not a fruit orange taste but they are undecided as to what sort of orange taste Mikan Pocky comes up with. One said that the baby aspirin taste carries through (don’t judge!) while another mentioned Tang and the third said sugar free orange Tums. Two out of three are medicinal flavors which can’t bode well. On the other hand in the medicinal flavoring world, you can’t go wrong with the orange Tums or the baby aspirin. But do you want it on your Pocky? Four Pigs taste tested and two don’t mind the baby aspirin/Tums/Tang thing going on while two think you should just move along to the next Pocky.
One of them (hi!) really likes the inner packaging and will give fractional pea points for pretty.
What Mikan Pocky has going for it is the usual Pocky crunch and the right amount of sweet to compliment the stick. Perhaps the fact that the goo isn’t so sweety sweet is letting the more manufactured orange taste shine through? (If you are wondering about the dark orange inclusions, they are just tart flavored sugar bits as best as I can tell).
And then there is this. 20% fruit maybe? Although mathematically speaking, each of the four packs has 5 sticks so if you ate all but one of the sticks in a pack you would have eaten 20% of the box. Somehow I’m not sure that’s where they were going with the 20%.
One thing for certain, Mikan Pocky has a manufactured taste; be it Tums, Tang, or baby aspirin it certainly isn’t fresh fruit orange. I’m going to have to knock pea points off for that. Given the clear divide between “DO NOT WANT” and “It’s not bad” from the Pigs, I’m not sure I can go over 3 peas for a final rating. If you kinda like the Tums/Tang thing and don’t mind your Pocky tasting that way either, give this a 3 and perhaps an eighth more of a pea for the pretty inner packaging. If not, Mikan Pocky is probably a 2 to 2.5 pea-er and you might want to skip it.
Rating of 3 wasabi peas out of a possible 5 wasabi peas.
Kevin said,
March 17, 2009 at 6:25 pm
I’d go 3.5, but I loves me the flavor.
Bailey said,
March 18, 2009 at 7:24 am
I found the chocolate had an odd texture to it… perhaps that was crystallized fruit bits? I would prefer the plain old orange chocolate Pocky any day…
Boo said,
March 18, 2009 at 5:27 pm
Kevin: LG brought the dislike down even further than TheMan so I figured a 3.5 was probably a touch too high. I kinda liked them too, like 3.25ish but those two were way down in the 2s.
Bailey: I didn’t notice the odd chocolate texture, sadly. It seemed fairly standard white chocolate with little bits stuck in it. Maybe I got a smoother batch? But yeah, Orange Chocolate Pocky FTW!