10.30.04
Koikeya Stick Karamucho (potato snack)
Shoestring Potato Stix and funny looking guys. Heh. Heh, heh. Hee! I love the little dudes on the package. HEE! Can you guess why these were purchased? Strange little t- breathing dudes rock!
Oh, and the snackage was mighty tasty too, but let me wax poetic on the dudes. Take a look.
I admit, this fella had me really creeped out at first because I was just not getting the sort of 45 tilt thing that was happening to his head. I kept looking at him and wondering what the heck was up with his head and the lumpy Elephant man deformity he had going on. It’s sort of like when you look at a moon picture and instead of seeing craters you see bumps and you look and look but no, still bumps and then all of the sudden BAMN craters. That was me for the first day trying to figure the fella out, then I realized he was tilted all crazy like and we could see both his eyes and both his nostrils and that lumpy growth was a nose. Weirdly, the body isn’t really supporting the bizarro perspective but never mind that, look at the shirt!
This is a cartoon after my own heart. Both he and his friend have the Hawaiian thing going on in spades. Hee! And the t- t-. I can only assume that means “Hot! Hot!” or at least that’s how it translates in my head. Here you have two little chillin Hawaiian shirt wearing dudes sitting there on the beach eating spicy potato stix and all of the sudden their hippy calm is shattered by SPICY! So they run around going “t-! t-!” because SPICY! Plus peas for the packaging!
Alright, then. Let’s get on with the eats, shall we? I’ve mentioned shoestring potato stix several time because these things were exactly potato stix with a nice spicy kick and a tiny hint of BBQ flavor. Or, if you prefer, thin cut nicely crunchy BBQ tasting pokey looking spicy potato chips but I like potato stix so I’m sticking with that thought and moving on. I’ll move right on to the SPICY. I’m not talking your flaming mouth hot Hot HOT! spicy but rather a satisfying mouth warming SPICY (t-! t-! t-!) which was The Tasty. They had the crunch, they had the salt in good proper potato stix salt form and they had a nice spicy warm that was subtle the first bite, kicky the second bite and then Whoooooo, the SPICE. t-! t-! They never got too spicy but they did get spicy enough that I had to pause in my munching to reflect on the SPICY. Then again, the bag does have a pepper right on it so it shouldn’t have come as too much of a surprise then, right? t-! t-!
TheMan was all about giving these a 5 pea rating but lately he’s been my binary Guinea Pig. They were the good, but not the end all of snack food so I’ll go with a good solid
Rating of 4.5 Wasabi Peas out of a possible 5.
TheMan said,
October 31, 2004 at 12:30 pm
Mmmm…. Love the hot spicy things…
Tina said,
September 5, 2007 at 6:26 pm
Where can you buy them in America? I’ve been searching all over.
Boo said,
September 5, 2007 at 6:57 pm
Hi Tina! We found these at our favorite little Asian Grocery Store (Tsai Grocery if you are local) and recently I found other products from the same company at another Asian grocery store we haunt (Kana is the name I think…they are more a Korean store than the Japanese based Tsai). If you’ve exhausted all your Asian grocery haunts, ask around and see if there isn’t another tiny Asian store you might have missed (seriously, there is one on the west side of town I’d have never found if a friend hadn’t pointed it out to me). Alternately, J-list has food you can order online (a couple snack foods have come from there and although I haven’t personally ordered from them, several of my friends have).
Good luck in your potato snack stix hunt!
Sharleen said,
January 22, 2009 at 2:19 pm
These are my all time favorite chips. I love these things so much. I can only buy them on Guam (which is where I’m from). I now live in the mainland and everytimg I go to Guam or I have family or friends coming to visit…I always get 5 or more bags or I ask my family/friends to bring some over or send them to me in the mail. I can’t get enough. I just finished my last bag and I’ve saved all the packages. I’m going to take it to the Asian stores to tell them to start ordering them. My mouth still has the after taste. It’s like once you open the bag…you just can’t stop eating them until they’re all gone. Anyway, great info on the chips!
Kate said,
June 3, 2010 at 11:11 pm
I need to find some of these for my little brother– he’s a spicy food junkie like you wouldn’t believe!! ^_^
Oh, also, the little Hawaiian shirt dude on the back is saying “Hii! Hii!” (Imagine exhaling after eating something really, really hot.) The “t-!” is actually the Japanese symbol ヒ, which is pronounced “hi”; the dash following it indicates that the vowel sound should be held longer.
Sorry to geek out about the Japanese lettering. ^_^ You got the point of the picture exactly, anyway, which is neat.
Barry said,
August 18, 2010 at 11:14 am
My girlfriend is gonna kill me, I ate all of the kara mucho and now they are no where to be found! Please somebody help me!!!
Isabel said,
March 15, 2011 at 2:13 am
I’m from Guam too, i finally found them at this asian food store in concord and in japan town SF. Even though it was way overpriced, I bought a ton and gave some away too… thinking I could always get more, but now, they’re nowhere to be found… I’m scared they discontinued it… how is it possible? I want my kara mucho! 🙂 I’ve been searching online and can’t find it either… does anyone know where the company website is and how to contact them? I’m serious I’m that addicted.