Aimee’s already written our Toppo review, but I saw these at the convenience store, and had to throw in my two cents. Just like Pocky, Bitter Toppo are apparently ‘for men,’ as in the view of candy manufacturers, Japanese women just lack the constition for reduced sugar content.

Really, though, these are quite similar to regular Toppo. There’s two foil bags, each with twelve sticks. You’ve got chocolate inside pretzel sticks, only this time the pretzel is a little darker, and the chocolate is, to my mouth, tastier.

Our other reviewer actually went so far as to declare regular Toppo better—better!—than Pocky. You’ll notice that our site has yet to change its name (Toppo Watch sounds rediculous anyway), but I won’t say there wasn’t a fair bit of arguing over the heresy here at the PW offices. Let me be clear: I don’t prefer Toppo to Pocky. It’s good, it’s fun, it’s a fantastic snack for on-the-go, but—like a matinee Vegas Elvis impersonator—it just kinda feels like a knockoff on the real thing.

This dark chocolate Toppo, though, is something else. The genius touch, in my opinion, is the bitter pretzel that Lotte makes these with. While the regular Toppo feels a bit like a low-rent coffee stirring biscuit, the combination of bitter chocolate and bitter pretzel, with just a touch of salt, turn this from an OK candy into a great one.

No, we’re still not changing the name of the site, but if Lotte can hit a few more home runs like this, they’ll be giving Glico a run for its money.

4/5

This is Pocky Watch, and we do love Pocky, but I think we should also give some credit to our favorite stick snack’s competitors. A lot of the appeal of pretzel stick chocolate seems to be its displayability during parties or when sharing with friends. Pocky sitting in a cup (flickr) has a way of looking like a delicious bouquet. Lotte’s Toppo, has a similar affect, and my first encounter with it was at a party sitting in a cup.

Toppo is basically inside out Pocky. The exterior is a thin pretzel-like shell that has a nice baked sheen. The core is a fairly generous stick of milk chocolate. Since the entire stick is pretzel on the outside, there is no “handle” at the end of the stick and the chocolate fills the whole pretzel. The box is almost identical in size to other similar products, and doesn’t really stray from the usual white, brown/black, red color scheme that most of these cookies have. Each box has two foil plastic packages, with about 12 sticks in each (24 total).

Here comes the blasphemy. I like these more then Pocky—a lot more than Pocky—possibly to the point where original Pocky has been ruined for me. Toppo has a higher chocolate to pretzel ratio then original Pocky, which I love. The exterior pretzel is extremely crisp and less breadsticky then Pocky. I also think there is more salt involved in Toppo. Pocky has a way of being kind of bland, while Toppo has a nice kick. Now I just need to worry about eating too much of it.

5/5

I love crunchy candy. Crunky, Macademia, and even Pocky; crunchy food fills a certain segment of my sweet tooth. Now, I hardly ever prefer Lotte’s chocolate to other brands, but I thought I would give some of their new, crunchy, offerings a try: あられ (arare) and パン (pan) Ghana.

Arare, as I was not aware before trying it, is roasted mochi. If you’re not familiar with that, I’ll share my first reaction when I saw these: they look (and taste) like Cap’n Crunch dipped in chocolate. They’re light and fluffy, and primarily chocolatey. Mixed in is a touch of soy sauce, which tastes better than you might assume. Unlike some candies like this, Lotte doesn’t skimp too much on the quantity. While there’s only 42g of array chocolates, that’s something like 25 pieces, and a pretty filling snack.

Pan, being French for ‘bread,’ is exactly that. This candy is essentially the same as the first, only with sweet salad croutons. While the arare promised to be both サクサク (sakusaku), crispy, and フワフワ (fuwafuwa), fluffy, these crouton Ghana only promise to be crispy, which is understandable, because these are a little heavier than the Cap’n Crunch Ghana.

While both of these crispy chocolate snacks were a fun experience, neither really rose above the pack. As I mentioned in the beginning, Lotte chocolate really doesn’t do anything for me, and as a filling, I much prefer nuts or the mochi puffs from Crunky. They’re both pretty unique, though, and if you’re looking for a taste you can’t find outside of Asia, you could certainly do worse.

2/5

We couldn’t find these for sale in the usual places, so let us know in the comments if you know where to buy あられ (arare) and パン (pan) Ghana.

When I was a kid I did not like pie, and similar to many things related to my childhood I have no explanation of why I refused to eat it. I remember when I branched out and had some chocolate pie, it was ok, but it didn’t convince me that pie was anything to be missed. I continued to branch out (and got over my additional dislike of baked fruit) and tried more and more pies, but they still didn’t do it for me. Really guys, what is the big deal about pie? What I didn’t realize is that my life, like many American lives, was saturated with pie and I did like it. Pie is real Americana and now that I live in Japan, I miss pie. It’s not that you can’t find it, and of course you can make it (if you have an oven), but like Japanese pizza, it’s just not the same.

I bought the chocolate パイの実 (painomi) in a fit of nostalgia and delirium, because the picture on the box basically screamed “I’m flakey and filled with chocolate, eat me and be a better person. I’ll also cure cancer, but only if you eat me.” The strawberry version was purchased with a level head, and came out for Japanese strawberry season in November. Both boxes are cute and remind me of vintage printed fabric, but the box is a little large for the number of cookies you actually get.

The chocolate and strawberry cookies look identical and are about an inch across. They are not made out of pie crust, unless you make your pie crust out of puff pastry. Each cookie is flakey and has a little hole where I’m guessing the filling was injected. The flavor of the cookie is the same as puff pastry; buttery, slightly sweet, and simple. I don’t think it’s anything special, but I also don’t think puff pastry by itself is anything noteworthy. The cookie does go stale in about a day if left to the elements, so keep extras sealed. I can only describe both fillings as blah. The chocolate tastes like chocolate, but it’s not rich, it’s not sweet and it’s not creamy. The strawberry was the same waxy consistency but tastes like fake strawberry.

Overall these cookies had nothing to do with pie, and were unremarkable. I did eventually finish both boxes. 2/5

The newest craze in combini-land these days seems to be something called ‘Sparkling.’ You can get Sparkling Tea, Apple Sparkling, and now even Sparkling Strawberry Kit Kat. I haven’t quite figured out what it means, although there always seems to be an over-exuberance of bubbles, so the derivation may be similar to that of sparkling wine. Across the divide from Nestlé’s multiplying Kit Kat brand is Lotte’s fantastic line of Crunky malt puff-infused chocolate, which now comes in 苺のチーズタルト, or Strawberry Cheese Tart. Both have bright pink packaging and juicy-looking stock photography of strawberries, and both are being reviewed today on Pocky Watch.

スパークリングストロベリー [Sparkling Strawberry] Kit Kats come in the same mini-box as many of the other Kit Kat brands I’ve reviewed, containing two packs each holding two long Kit Kat fingers. The packs themselves are Cute with a capital C: pink and red with understated gold rings indicating the bubbly confection inside. It’s worth noting that each pack contains only 99 calories, like the other similarly-sized Kit Kats, making this a mostly guilt-free mid-afternoon snack. The Crunky, meanwhile, comes in a slightly harder to slowly parcel 271 calorie bar, which, after being removed from its sealed foil wrapper, snaps into two squarish pieces of reasonable size. This treat is in the 食後のシアワセ series, which roughly translated means ‘post-meal good fortune;’ a worthy description for any dessert.

The Kit Kats have a strong fake-strawberry smell that really isn’t off-putting, but isn’t terribly appetizing, either. The cookie itself is very much a let-down. The promise of Sparkling is not delivered on except for a very slight bit of fizzing. But after my amazing experience with Meiji’s strawberry chocolate bar, nothing really saves this. If you really, really love strawberry candy, and think the idea of it fizzing on your tongue sounds fun, go for it. Otherwise, I’d steer clear until Nestlé goes back to the drawing board. 2/5

Glico has shown us how it’s done with cheese with their recent release of Chocolat Fromage Dessert Pocky, and Lotte seems to be going in a similar direction, flavoring this bar with cream cheese powder, imitating one of my favorite non-chocolate desserts, the strawberry cheese tart. Where this bar falls down is that tarts rely heavily on the ingredients, and Lotte has (necessarily) cut corners here. The bar is actually not bad, and actually manages to taste quite similar to its real life sister, but I fear the aim may have been a little high. Lotte simply left me wanting the real thing. 3/5

Buy Sparkling Strawberry Kit Kats from napaJapan.

Buy Strawberry Cheese Tart Crunky from napaJapan.