Bireley's Orange

Bireley's Orange

(Japan Crate: October 2015)

[Japan Crate description: This orange drink actually originated in California back in the 1920's, but was discontinued. Asahi, one of Japan's largest drink manufacturers, was able to begin manufacturing Bireley's and is now only available in Japan.]

Kimberly Says:

This was...neither terrible nor wonderful. Honestly, it just tastes like slightly tangier Sunny D. I chugged the rest of it after we both had our samples (and let my sister finish off the caramel puffs), but really it was just...not memorable? Drinkable, but not exciting.

Melissa Says:

This drink doesn’t lie – it’s basically orange juice. In fact, it tastes and smells similar to Sunny D! It’s just a bit tangier. It was kind of fun to drink. While I’d probably not get it again, it was pretty good once.

Tohato Caramel Corn

Tohato Caramel Corn

(Japan Crate: October 2015)

[Japan Crate description: A caramel corn snack that's just in time for Halloween! The texture is more like Cheetos than popcorn, with a subtle, salty caramel flavor. Just like Umaibo sticks, you can find this snack in an array of yummy flavors.]

Melissa Says:

This was…unique. The taste of these little Cheeto-styled caramel corn bites was actually fairly good. It’s a subtle caramel flavor paired with a slight salty taste and something more I can’t quite identify. Actually rather good! 

The downside to this snack is that it looks outright vile when you pull it out. It’s like little, short, fat Cheetos that appear to be like insects. It’s rather odd. But really, they’re quite nice. In fact, I’m snacking on them while I write this. If we found them again, I’d consider getting them.

[Edit] I remember! The caramel thingies remind me of corn puffs!

Kimberly Says:

After the absolutely awful long puff sticks in the last review, I was wary of trying another puffed snack.

However, these ended up being surprisingly good. Maybe it was just in comparison, and it was a little weird to have what looked like small cheese puffs (or, what I first pictured, maggots. >.> ) that tasted sweet, but overall I actually enjoyed these.

The bag was cute, too. x3

Gyutan Umaibo Stick

Gyutan Umaibo Stick

(Japan Crate: October 2015)

[Japan Crate description: These airy corn sticks come in a huge variety of flavors. This one is Gyutan - a grilled cow tongue dish in Japan. Don't let the flavor discourage you, this salty snack is a tasty flavor experience.]

Kimberly Says:

It's not often anymore I try something that I outright dislike to the point of wanting to spit it out.

This was one of those.

I can't even really tell you much about what it actually TASTED like, because my brain immediately decided to forget everything about it except that it was absolutely disgusting.

We each had one bite, then threw away the rest of it, and will be finding somewhere to get rid of the rest.

Melissa Says:

We had three of this little stick things, which are flavored like grilled cow tongue. That would’ve been alright, except this is one of the few things I’ve eaten out of these crates that I downright did not like. It’s not the flavor, per se. I mean, it wasn’t a great flavor. But actually, it’s overwhelmingly salty with a really weird texture. The flavor was just the cherry on top. Er, cow tongue? 

Anyways, we ate half a stick and decided enough was enough. I’ll not be having any more of it!

Meiji Fran - Chocolate Cream

Meiji Fran - Chocolate Cream

(Japan Crate: September 2015)

[Japan crate description: Meiji's take on Pocky. Each thick cookie stick is made with real butter & covered in a generous layer of whipped chocolate cream.]

Melissa Says:

This was amazing chocolate! It was smooth and yummy. The stick was fairly flavorless, but it provided a good crunch in the chocolate. I definitely will eat more of these. It was really good!

Kimberly Says:

After the bleh and meh of the previous candies, we decided to go for some chocolate. xD

It was really good! Thicker than a pocky stick, and with MUCH nicer chocolate, it was delicious. I don't think my tongue totally forgave me for the spicy sticks, but this candy certainly made it happier with me. x3

Purple Sweet Potato Sticks

Purple Sweet Potato Sticks

(Japan Crate: November 2015)

[Japan Crate description: Here's a flavor that's just as seasonal as Pumpkin Pie, but a little less common. Purple sweet potatoes are a fall/winter treat in Japan. These light, crispy sticks taste perfectly like a sweet potato!]

Melissa Says:

These were really flavorless at the start, another flavorless stick of nothingness. Then, out of nowhere, sweetness jumps out. Not sugar-sweetness, but some really odd relative that happens to also be bland. Somehow this stick was simultaneously really sweet and really savory. I can’t really wrap my head around it. The stick itself seemed slightly bitter, too. I won’t eat any more of them, but it was quite the sensation!

Kimberly Says:

These were...very strange. I don't know that they were bland, just...really, really strange. Somehow it was simultaneously flavorless and...had an odd flavor. It was weird that it was so sweet, because it also...wasn't.

At least it wasn't as spicy as the last snack. xD

Hot Chili Salad Pretz

Hot Chili Salad Pretz

(Japan Crate: November 2015)

[Japan Crate description: A Japanese take on a tasty Thai dish, these crispy sticks are packed with flavors ranging from chili spice to basil and spring onion. Which flavor sticks out the most to you?]

Kimberly Says:

This was a strange mixture of bland and spicy. At first there...really wasn't any flavor. As I continued to eat, though, the spiciness came through at the back of my tongue and moved forward, until my whole mouth was hot...but still no real flavor.

It's not often I outright don't like something...but I didn't like this one. >.<

Melissa Says:

They were really kind of just flavorless when first eaten – a mushy stick of nothingness. But then, it begins to burn at the back of the mouth. It moved forward as I ate the rest of the stick, burning up and down my tongue.

It wasn’t bad, all considered, but I definitely wouldn’t be eating more of them. I’m rather fond of my taste buds as they are!

Hia Shuwa Cola

Hia Shuwa Cola

(Japan Crate: December 2015)

[Japan Crate description: A cola flavored adventure with 3 different levels: Fizzy, soothing, and gummy. Each bag also includes one big tropical flavored hard candy.]

Kimberly Says:

I got one of the fizzy candies. It...wasn't bad. I actually kind of liked it and the way it popped against my tongue. I don't understand why so many things in the Japan crates are soda flavored, though. xD

It wasn't...bad, but it wasn't thrilling.

Melissa Says:

While one of them was fizzy, I had the “soothing” candy. It had a covering of sugar over a normal, cola-flavored candy. It was as it said – oddly very soothing! I wouldn’t mind having it again. I didn’t have all of it, though, since it gets boring after a while. Tasted exactly like cola, too.

Konpeito

Konpeito

(Japan Crate: September 2015)

[Japan crate description: A very traditional Japanese candy from the 16th century!]

Melissa Says:

These are super cute little sugar balls. They're fairly bright, looking like a little raspberry type of shape. They taste like straight sugar, which they are. They're really yummy tasting, but definitely one to refrain from snacking on. Almost a bit too sweet, but one or two are pretty good. 

Will definitely be eating more of these.

Kimberly Says:

Okay, so I was fairly excited about these. They are adorable and I remembered them from Spirited Away and the soot sprites.

They're really pretty simple - sugar. Straight sugar. Crunchy little sugar bits. Delicious, cute, but very sugary. xD

I enjoyed them, will happily finish off the bag, and might buy them if I see them again.

Sweet Corn Pretz

Sweet Corn Pretz

(Japan Crate: September 2015)

[Japan crate description: Enjoy the taste of summer with these Pretz. They taste just like the buttered, salted sweet corn you enjoy at a barbecue.]

Kimberly Says:

Japan is really good at making corn flavored snacks that really, really smell and taste like corn. xD

This was surprisingly good, though. I really enjoyed it, and will happily finish off the box and maybe look at getting more in the future. The Pretz snacks have been pretty good so far.

Melissa Says:

When you open them up, they smell like corn. Lift it up and look at it, and it's really corn-colored. Eat it, and you're eating sweet corn. Japanese confectioners are really good at corn flavoring. It's actually really yummy, and I'd definitely eat more of them.

FullGurt Candy

FullGurt Candy

(Japan Crate: September 2015)

[Japan crate description: This fruity, crunchy candy comes in to flavors - blueberry yogurt and mango yogurt. Which is your favorite?]

Kimberly Says:

We tried one of each of the flavors (blueberry and mango). I was expecting something...softer. Not quite gummies, but more like a yogurt snack and not a sort of...soft hard candy. It was just hard enough to hurt to chew, but too soft to sit and suck on.

The mango tasted like real mango, but the blueberry tasted like blueberry flavoring. Neither flavor was really very good, I don't think I'll be eating any more of these.

Melissa Says:

These are like an odd mixture of hard candy and crisp candy. They have the look of a hard candy when you get it out of the packaging (perhaps a bit harder than intended with short fingernails). They taste like hard candy that has been sucked just long enough to get it soft. They coat your teeth like them too. 

The mango one tastes pretty spot-on to mango, but the blueberry one tastes a bit like fake blueberry. All in all, not bad. Just not one I'd choose to eat again.

Chocoroom DIY

Chocoroom DIY

(Japan Crate: August 2015)

[Japan crate description: A popular snack turned DIY kit.]

Melissa Says:

Tastes like chocolate! Surprise, surprise. The fun part is making the chocolates. After warming the chocolate in hot water, you can squeeze them into the little supplied mold. There are little round candies to put in them, too. We just liberally sprinkled candies into the chocolates. Tasted like the pink color was strawberry. The little round things were sugar candies. They tasted really good because of how hard we worked on those buggers. I'd definitely make these again! It was a ton of fun.

Kimberly Says:

Okay, this was fun to make. You ended up with fairly bland chocolate, but the process of doing it was fun. xD

The candy bits are yummy, but they make the rest of it look weird, as you can see in the last picture in the bottom left.

But tasty. xD

Pulling everything out.

Getting it all ready to go!

In progress shot.

Getting ready to put in the freezer.

Mmm, all done! Some worked better than others. xD

Adzuki Mizu Yokan

Adzuki Mizu Yokan

(Japan Crate: July 2015)

[Japan crate description: A more traditional Japanese dessert, this red bean snack is sweet with a gel-like texture.]

Kimberly Says:

All right, I'd been putting this off for a while. I had doubts and concerns.

When we finally got around to trying it, though, it was...not terrible. 
We started out just eating it plain by the spoonful. If it had been more...well, every time I hit a big chunk of bean it put me off. It if had been more like jelly than jam, more of a puree, without chunks of bean, I think I would have loved it.

Or if we had had something other than italian herb ritz crackers, because the next thing we tried was spreading it on crackers. Plain Ritz, or maybe a sweet rather than savory cracker, would have been delicious.

Blurry, but tasty. x3

Melissa Says:

It looks like the cranberry stuff served at Thanksgiving, but tastes like beans. It's a tad odd. It's incredibly sweet-tasting, with the texture of pureed beans. That is, until you hit a whole bean. Then it's more unique. It's pretty good spread on a cracker. I probably wouldn't eat it again, but it wasn't bad once.

Crayon Shin-Chan Candy

Crayon Shin-Chan Candy

(Japan Crate: August 2015)

[Japan crate description: Crayon colored, ramune flavored hard candies. Shin-Chan has his own anime & manga!]

Kimberly Says:

All right, the box is adorable, I loved it, and I played with it for far too long.

Unfortunately, the candy itself was a mixture of gross and utterly underwhelming.

When I first started sucking on it I taste...not much of anything. It had no flavor. As I continued, it still didn't really have flavor, but it somehow started tasting...gross. The texture was odd, and I did NOT want to continue...but I am stubborn, so I did.

Fortunately it didn't get worse. It got...neutral. Once you get past the coating, you basically just have a round Smartie - kind of powdery and sour.

Not going to be finishing this one, for sure.

Melissa Says:

The outer coating either has no taste or a nasty taste, and I can't decide which it is. When you reach the center, the flavor comes out (in my case, orange), and starts to become powder. It was the weirdest sensation. 

I probably wouldn't choose to eat this again, mainly due to the coating, but also the powdery end.

Soda Mixing Jelly Beans

Soda Mixing Jelly Beans

(Japan Crate: August 2015)

[Japan crate description: 5 flavors of soda in tasty jelly bean form. Mix & match flavors to create your own flavor!]

Melissa Says:

Exactly as the name says. Much like the hard candy, gum, and various other food items with this style, there are a variety of flavors you can mix. Grape, white grape, cola, lemon, and soda flavoring, which you can mix and match however you want. 

They have reasonably good flavor and taste pretty good. They have the consistency of gum, which slowly disappears as you chew. Though the soda one didn't do a whole lot that I could tell, the lemon one tasted lemony. Probably will eat more later.

Kimberly Says:

Looking at these, I was reminded of the Kirby gum from a couple of boxes ago.

When I opened the package, there was a fairly intense scent coming from them, but other than 'sweet', I couldn't really tell what it was.

The flavor is pretty strong, but the unusual thing about these is the texture. At first bite it feels more like a gumball, and it has a sort of grainy texture after you chew on it for a while.

It's not bad, but it's somehow different from any jelly bean I've had before.

I would say it's decent. Not great, but not terrible.

Pokemon Puzzle Gum

Pokemon Puzzle Gum

(Japan Crate: August 2015)

[Japan crate description: Enjoy some gum while you piece together your Pokemon sticker puzzle.]

Kimberly Says:

This was...underwhelming. Big giant package for two sheets of stickers - one a large single one, the other one the 'puzzle', and a square piece of gum maybe an inch by inch in size.

The stickers are unique, I don't know what I'll do with them. I'll hold onto them, I suppose. (These ones had Yvetal and Xerneas on them)

The gum was...soooooo sweet. It was like I had dumped a spoonful of sugar into my mouth and started chewing. After the sourness of the cotton candy we'd just had, it was almost painfully sweet. There was no other real flavor, though. Just bland and sugar.

Melissa Says:

It's mainly just sugar-flavored gum, with a Pokemon card puzzle with it. The gum was pretty bland, almost as if you ate straight sugar out of the package. The card has Yveltal and Xerneas on it. 

Probably would not choose to eat again.

Crackling Cotton

Crackling Cotton

(Japan Crate: August 2015)

[Japan crate description: Fluffy grape cotton candy with an explosive pop rocks kick. A truly unique candy.]

Melissa Says:

Feels like cotton candy. Looks like cotton candy. Tastes like cotton candy on steroids. It smells like grape, and it tastes intensely like grape. You put this on your tongue, and it immediately starts crackling and tastes like concentrated grape flavoring. Not just that, but this is sour grape flavoring. It's grape death. 

This is no ordinary cotton candy. It was very intense, very flavorful. Would probably eat more if it were not grape flavored…or sour. Or both, preferably. It was quite an experience! Not bad, though, all considered.

Kimberly Says:

Grape. Why did it have to be grape? EVERYTHING is grape lately - it's proving to be the only downside to getting these boxes, the tendency of so many things to be flavored GRAPE.

I'm not fond of grape flavoring, if you didn't notice. xD

All right.

So opening this package you are greeted with an intense grape scent and...a...block of cotton candy. A brick. I've never seen such solid cotton candy before.

I broke off a piece and put it in my mouth...and instantly was suffering from the MOST INTENSE SOUR GRAPE TASTE EVER. I didn't even notice the Pop Rocks style candy inside it because I was chewing it and trying to get that OUT of my mouth as fast as possible.

However, I wouldn't say that it's bad. If it wasn't sour grape, or was any flavor but grape and sour, then I think I could almost like it. The intense sour and even more intense grape flavor, though, was too much for me.

Shuwa Shuwa Soda Candy

Shuwa Shuwa Soda Candy

(Japan Crate: August 2015)

[Japan crate description: Shuwa Shuwa is the sound of fizz in a soda. Wait for the center to find out how this candy got its name.]

Kimberly Says:

I was pleasantly surprised to find the candies individually wrapped - that'll make it easy to share with people at work. xD

Looks like there's three flavor, grape strawberry and orange. I had the orange, which is very intensely orange flavored.

My sister kept talking about the fizz she kept tasting, but I never really tasted it.

It was very tasty, though, and I will be eating more of them. Most likely the orange ones, because orange is my favorite. x3

Melissa Says:

These came in nice, separately packaged packets, which clearly named the flavors. They look a bit like stickless Dum-Dum suckers. And for a little bit, they taste like Dum-Dums. 

Then you get down far enough to realize why it's soda candy, and not just strawberry candy. The crackling starts out small, but by the end your mouth is itching, your cheeks are itching, your eyes are burning a little bit…but it tastes exactly like soda. You usually don't have to hold it in your mouth that long, though. 

It's pretty flavorful, if a bit overpoweringly…bubbly. I'll probably have another later on.

Puzzle & Dragons x Bikkuman Wafer

Puzzle & Dragons x Bikkuman Wafer

(Japan Crate: August 2015)

[Japan crate description: Fans of P&D or Bikkuriman will recognize some of these characters. A tasty chocolate water w/collectible playing card.]

Melissa Says:

Though the show…movie…book? whatever! characters were completely unrecognizable to we Americans, the wafer was pretty good. It tastes like those waffle cookies, with a very thick layer of chocolate in the middle. Actually pretty close to badly melted s'more taste, actually. The card we got in it looks cool, and that's about all I can say about it. 

All in all, I'd probably eat another of the wafers, recognizable characters or no.

Kimberly Says:

This was a messy one. When I opened the package I was showered in wafer cookie dust. xD

It's pretty good. Like an American wafer cookie, but with a thicker, almost crunchy chocolate filling. It doesn't melt in the mouth as much as crunch into a paste.

But it was tasty. I enjoyed eating it, and we ate it all before I remembered that I needed to take pictures. xD

Mario Kart Gum

Mario Kart Gum

(Japan Crate: August 2015)

[Japan crate description: Put on your driving gloves and grab a few of these. 10 individual gums with a different character & kart on each one!]

Kimberly Says:

So I kind of ripped my gum into tiny chunks when I opened the package. Oops. xD

The texture is kind of weird at first. It's very stiff, almost crunchy, and at first it seemed to break into shards, but as it softened it became...perfectly average gum. It's fine. It has a mild flavor that lasts longer than most of the gums we've had from these boxes, but it's still just gum.

Melissa Says:

The packaging is exciting, portraying various members of the Mario Kart gang. When you open the package, you get this little white square of gum, which happened to break for both of us. 

Then, as you chew, it's pretty unremarkable, slightly sweet, slightly sour gum. It wasn't bad; it wasn't necessarily great; it was mainly…gum. But hey, pretty packaging! 

It was fun to eat, even if I forgot Yoshi's name…anyways, I'll probably snag another piece or two of the gum. It's pretty good, so far as gum goes.