03.26.11
Fuyu no Kuchidoke White Pocky
Sean Whose Name is Nate picked up a package of Pocky while we were out at Smith College this past weekend so of course we sat down as immediately as we could to review it. There was also the added bonus of a whole new and diverse pool of Guinea Pigs to inflict JSF on so I gleefully foisted Pocky upon unsuspecting people. Then again we were reviewing Pocky so there wasn’t much risk in this particular tasting.
I did some jiggery-web-pokery and was hard pressed to find anything on fuyu no Kuchidoke (white Pocky) although I found plenty on Fuyu Kuchidoke dark chocolate pocky. It looks suspiciously like Winter Pocky. There also seems to be a Fuyu no Kuchidoke chocolate covered cocoa or powdered almond dusted almond thing by Glico which comes in white or dark varieties. My quick Google Fu tells me that Fuyu is “winter” while Kuchidoke is “melt-in-your-mouth” (thank you Tangorin dot com!) “No” is one of those function words which makes one of those two words (or word phrases…whatever) possessive. How? Well not knowing any more Japanese than what teh interwebs tells me I can say with absolutely no authority that either it is talking about Winter’s mouth or Mouth’s winter. Point being is that this seems to be some sort of white variety of Winter Pocky.
It looks suspiciously like Mousse Pocky of yore. It has the same chocolate Pocky stick (which does not lose the quintessential Pocky fab crunchity by being chocolateized; but it does gain a tasty cocoa element) and a layering of thick white goo. Can I pause for a moment and admire the nice contrast of the dark delicious stick and the tasty white chocolate coating? I think I shall.
OK done. So how is this different from Mousse Pocky? Stretching my memory back 7 years (or really, reading the review) I see that the Mousse Pocky tasted of white chocolate yogurt (as you might see on yogurt covered raisins) with a chocolaty grahammy stick. Fuyu no Kuchidoke is much more buttery tasting, rich and respectably vanilla. From what I wrote all those years ago, Mousse Pocky might seem like Pocky light compared to Fuyu no Kuchidoke because this newer Pocky is quite tasty and definitely very roundly buttery vanilla. Also from what I wrote all those years ago Mousse Pocky came in at a highly ranked 4.5 peas. The trouble with that is I really think the White Winter Pocky is better than Mousse Pocky but not as good as the chocolate Winter Pocky (5 peas). Which leaves me in a pickle as I do not quarter pea points. I think I will give Winter Pocky the same 4.5 pea rating but when you read 4.5 peas, mentally add just a titch more fractional pea points until you are about halfway to perfect.
Rating of 4.5 Wasabi Peas out of a possible 5.
