09.17.05

Cheese Cake Pocky

Posted in 5.0 Wasabi Pea Rating, Pocky, Sweet at 4:50 pm by Boo

Look! A new flavor of Pocky! There are so many different types of Pocky out there that I could probably do an exclusive JSFR: Pocky and never run out of stuff to review. These particular Pocky are part of my backlog stockpile of JSF which I need to get done before starting in on my currentlog of stock piling snacks but I’ll let you in on a little secret: The little Asian grocery store has at least three other Pocky that I have yet to review. I tell you, this hobby of mine is going to either make me broke, make my house a haven for ants or possibly both because So. Many. Things. To. Buy!! However, how can you walk out of a Japanese Snack Food store and not have a package of Cheese Cake Pocky under your arm? Can’t be done.

Ergo, Review. I have a couple of first impressions (well, after the initial amusing thought of whether I should review this in the nude or at least scantily clad) that I want to relate before getting in to the review. Number one is that I really like the packaging. The background blue and the buttery cream of the Pocky really work well together and then the dark blue POCKY nicely sets itself apart while also playing along with the color theme. Nicely done there with the colors. Also, the Pocky fan out thing going on is pretty eye catchingly cool too. The inner packaging is a little different from past Pockies (Heh, that looks weird) in that there are only two giant stuffed to the gills packages of Pocky. The last time I had only two packages of Pocky it was the Pumpkin Pocky and each package had about 10 sticks. I think there is double that in this one so hooray.

The next first impression was that the base grahamesque sticks are the lightest colored grahamesque sticks I have ever seen. They look like bread before it becomes toast, or maybe toast on the lowest setting where it basically pops up warm bread. I thought they might taste less wheaty or oaty or grahamy (or whatever the grainy taste in a pocky is that isn’t quite graham but not quite Ritz either) and I almost had myself convinced that they might indeed taste less so. However, upon reflection I’m not too sure, perhaps it was just my mind trying to find a difference when in reality these sticks are simply not toasted as long. The lack of toastation doesn’t seem to hinder the Pocky stick experience which is pretty much the same experience it always is. If you really want to know, take a browse through the Pocky archives because there are now officially enough Pocky reviewed that I’m not going to go over the stick again.

First impression number three (or perhaps third impression) is that there is not a lot of coating on these sticks. Hmmmm. Boo likes her some Pocky coating and plus you can see the little toast marks through the coating and that just looks weird.

When I read “cheese cake” pocky I thought to myself that this was going to be a tasty baked cheesecake type Pocky, totally forgetting that there are two kinds of cheesecake out there. When I opened the pocky package, I got a weird whiff of…cheese? Lemony? I couldn’t’ really tell but it wasn’t jiving with my mental image of cheesecake. Then I bit into one and it was very lemony and I thought “Meh, THAT’s not cheesecake, that’s…ahhh….errrr….well lemony”. It wasn’t until my third or fourth stick (hey, I gotta get a good sense for the review right?) that I realized that I was totally thinking the wrong cheesecake. These sticks are New York cheesecake sticks and not the other baked kind of cheesecake which is the kind I have most of the time.

Ohhhhhhhhh! Well then, that puts a whole different spin on the review because if we’re talking New York cheesecake than we’re talking lemony with a bit of cream cheesy. What do these pocky taste like? Lemony with a bite of cream cheesy. In fact, they are really good. Really really good (once you get your cheesecake vernacular straightened out). Ummm, I’m not going to say how many of these critters I actually ate but I will say the other package hasn’t been touched. Yet. I give Cheese Cake Pocky many pea points despite the light stick or thin coating because they do indeed taste exactly like a stick of New York cheesecake. Frighteningly so. I can’t even taste any chemical flavoring and that’s fine by me.

Lastly, I wanted to note that the coating is really smooth texturally and very melty in the mouth as well. For being so thin that you can see the toast marks, it certainly manages packs a delicious flavor punch as well. Yum! You know, I liked this Pocky so much, I gave it a
Rating
of 5 Wasabi Peas out of a possible 5.

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