Asian Snack Review: Marble Pocky

A few evenings ago, I found myself in my friendly neighborhood Japanese supermarket. I’d assigned myself the vague mission of finding interesting J-snacks to review. I was having difficulty narrowing my selection, though, and found it far easier to lose myself in the barrage of sights, sounds and smells not often encountered at typical American markets.

Halfway through the cookie aisle, I was struck by a sight so familiar and so obvious that I nearly slapped myself for not already having reviewed it. At once, a slew of happy memories of teenage Otakudom washed over me, resulting in what can only be described as a full-body smile. I can’t say for certain, constrained as I was to my own body, but I’ve little doubt that onlookers witnessed my temporary transformation into a bouncing “chibi” caricature. Ah, but what snack could inspire such an intense reaction in a normally polite and unremarkable 24-year-old woman? None other than Pocky.

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Snack Review: Whole Foods Gigantic Cookie Sandwiches

Those of you who, like me, are ancient kids of the early ’90s, may remember a toy called the Dr. Dreadful Laboratory. The commercial featured a wild-haired scientist-type touting goodies that “look gross but taste great!” Why anyone would take slimy, cockroach-shaped gummis from a mad scientist is beyond me – yet, I ended up begging my mom for one of the good doctor’s gummi labs. While concocting the candy was fun enough, I found most of it tasted only marginally better than it looked.

What dredged this memory from the annals of my subconscious was my discovery a few days ago of a sort of reverse-Dr. Dreadful Laboratory. At Whole Foods, undoubted champion in the battle of the overpriced grocery stores, I came across a slew of gigantic store-made cookie sandwiches. They looked great, but tasted gross!

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Snack Review: Bentley’s Premier Popcorn

Think of the tastiest kettle corn you’ve ever eaten in your life. Got it? Now take that, increase the deliciousness by ten to the power of yum, put it in a single-serving fresh-lock bag with a label featuring a full-color illustration of Bentley, a cute little Wire-haired Fox Terrier, and you have the eponymous Bentley’s Premier Popcorn.

The fresh-lock bags (in 3 and 4 ounce sizes) are no gimmicky ruse — this is some über-fresh popcorn. The Butter Pecan sample featured six large pecan halves tossed in with the lightly coated popcorn. Bentley’s is kettle roasted using only natural ingredients, and it shows: the result is a subtle yet satisfyingly sweet and buttery mixture, not overpowering or artificial.

The two available flavors, Toffee Caramel and Butter Pecan, feature the same secret recipe, but with the deceptively simple addition of roasted pecans to the latter. A new Cinnamon Almond flavor is expected soon.

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