12.26.09

Petit Pastel

Posted in 2.5 Wasabi Pea Rating, Sweet at 12:58 am by Boo

PetitPastel

Welcome to the penultimate Snack Food Review of 2009 and for your horror and/or enjoyment I’ve saved up these two special snacks to end out the year. First, Kabaya Petit Pastel which may remind you a lot of Puchi Pasuteru from way back in ought four (April if you want to go looking). (We’ve been calling Petit Pastels “Puchi Pseudoru” actually, which is a lot tougher to say than it is to write out.) Puchi Pasuteru was the first JSFR to get a 0 on taste, although it wound up with a 1 overall because of the packaging and construction. I still have the box displayed in the window of my office because of the enormous kawaii that thing possesses. Dang but those penguins are cute.

When I went to photograph Petit Pastels I pulled up the old Puchi Pasuteru page and lo! I discovered that Petit Pastel and Puchi Pasuteru are made by the same company: Kabaya. Upon further inspection, the Japanese under “Petit Pastel” and the Japanese along the top of Puchi Pasuteru are the same. The second smaller line of Japanese is similar for the last few characters (The 7 kanji (?) below the large colorful Puchi Pasuteru kanji are mostly the same as the last 7 kanji in the long string of kanji under Petit Pastel. The only difference I can find is the second to last character). The description of the malt ball cones are the same too except for the line pointing to the coating of the ‘ice cream’ ball. There’s nothing in Petit Pastel which was fine by us as the ball flavor is what killed Puchi Pasuteru.

My guess is that Kabaya revamped Puchi Pasuteru and made them better, stronger, faster and changed the name. That too is OK by us because we can actually taste the malt and the chocolate of the Petit Pastel rather than having it drowned with the pervasive flavor of melon ass. As it turns out, the balls aren’t flavored with anything but a mild white chocolate like coating. Plain and simple and more delicious than the flavor of bad melon. You can even taste the malt ball, which tastes like generic malt ball. The chocolate, which does not taste like melon ass, isn’t the best chocolate sadly. It’s got a hint of that weird low end fruity chocolate taste, but it’s a far cry above melon ass tainted chocolate.

Mind you, these aren’t great but wow are they way above and beyond their (perhaps) predecessor. I do miss the cute packaging though; ice cream polar bear isn’t going to net Petit Pastels any pea points for cute. Plus there is no little polar bear ice cream diorama on the back which makes me sad indeed. On the other hand, Petit Pastels are more or less palatable which is what food is all about.

Rating of 2.5 Wasabi Pea out of a possible 5.

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