Pocky Watch

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