What the Hell is This?, round 4
Nov. 15th, 2002 02:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynGood afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the latest installment of What the Hell is This? Today's competitors in the Scary Asian Snack Food competition are, as usual, from the aisles of Top Quality Foods Market in U.S. Highway 46. Surprisingly, given prior trends in WtHiT?, not one of our entrants is from Team Japan today. In fact, two are from rookie nations entirely! Let's give a big round of applause to:
Team China: Want-Want Crunchy Stick "It Tastes Really Good" Vegetable Flavour
Team Vietnam: Keo Me Trang White Sesame Crisp
Team Malaysia: Lagenda brand Mini Sagun Bakar - mini Sago cookies
Right. Let's begin, shall we? Team Vietnam. The white sesame crisps are disks of sesame seeds held together by, er, sugar. That's pretty much it. The ingredients list reads 'white sesame, sugar, water', but I have to dispute this; the damn things contain a fourth ingredient, Styrofoam, which should at the very LEAST be in the second slot on the ingredients list. See, they used these round plastic foam disks of the same diameter as the crisps, and 2/3 as thick as the crisps, to separate each crisp from the next. This is because the sugar/water substance has approximately the sticking power of cyanofluoroacrylate or whatever the real name of Krazy Glue is. It was easier to get the paper off the White Rabbit candy from last week - and easier to swallow the paper on the White Rabbit candy without worrying when I was going to see it next. I could not get all the plastic foam off even one crisp, despite my trying, and frankly I feel that I should not have to work that hard to get at my junk food. If I'm going to spend that long removing the protective material from around something I intend to eat, it'll be an egg or lobster or something. Sorry, guys. For what it's worth the sesame/sugar part of the crisps tasted pretty good. Stuck to the teeth even worse than White Rabbit, though. Third place.
Team China: I have to admit I bought this because of the packaging. Crunchy Stick is just an entertaining name - it's hard to get more honest about the item in question. "What're you eating?" "Crunchy sticks. Want one?" "Sure." The company name, Want Want (well, that's how it's translated on the back) was also something to provoke a smile, and the slogan reminded me too much of The Muppets Take Manhattan to pass up. ("Ocean Breeze Soap will get you clean! And Want Want Crunchy Stick tastes really good!") Unfortunately, once you open the package, then open one of the interior packages, you get... well, crunchy sticks. They're basically marginally herby-tasting breadsticks with a little salt to the flavour. They were cheap and the package was moderately funny, but there wasn't much else to recommend them. However, I did not have to worry that I was swallowing non-biodegradable petroleum products when I ate them, so - second place.
Which leaves us with the first place winner, Team Malaysia. The cookies came in a clear container with a bright pink plastic top. I freely admit that they got into the competition as the only item this week that sent the words 'what the hell are these?' through my mind. They're little white tubes the size of the pretzel part of Combos - or the size of Team Japan's prior winner, Vanilla Collon. Unlike either, they're only open on one end, the end facing the outside of the package. Team Vietnam could've taken a lesson from these guys; when I got the lid off, the top cookies were padded with not one, not two, but three disks of bubble-wrap. That's just inherently cool right there. The cookies didn't taste half bad, either, although they leave an odd chalky sort of feeling in the mouth and have a tendency to deposit tiny bits of coconut where you least expect them. I suppose the mouthfeel is the tapioca's fault - the ingredients listed are wheat flour, coconut, tapioca starch, sugar, and yeast dan salt. No, I don't know what 'yeast dan salt' means. For those of you who speak Malay, the list in that language reads 'Tepung Gandum, Kelapa, Tepung Ubi, Gula, Ragi dan Garam.'. These come from Perusahaan Makanan Nasarudin Sdn. Bhd. in, um... shoot, I don't recognize any of the locales in the company address. Johor Darul Takzim ring any bells? I dunno... anyway. Good cookie, weird at first sight, doesn't contain recognizable pieces of sea life, innovative eating experience. It's no Lion Ramune Hard Candy, but it's sufficiently different from things American that it's worth a go if you find it ($1.59 for a 180 gram container), and this week it definitely deserves first place.
Oh, and the reason Team Japan didn't compete this week is because all the Japanese snack food is starting to look pretty normal to me. I imagine I'll be over it by next week and there'll be marshmallow candy with blueberry bits in, but the only Japanese snack food I bought this week was a bar of Meiji Black Chocolate. They do good chocolate, but there's really only so much you can do with chocolate if you're not going to stuff it full of chewy bits, so it didn't qualify.
Team China: Want-Want Crunchy Stick "It Tastes Really Good" Vegetable Flavour
Team Vietnam: Keo Me Trang White Sesame Crisp
Team Malaysia: Lagenda brand Mini Sagun Bakar - mini Sago cookies
Right. Let's begin, shall we? Team Vietnam. The white sesame crisps are disks of sesame seeds held together by, er, sugar. That's pretty much it. The ingredients list reads 'white sesame, sugar, water', but I have to dispute this; the damn things contain a fourth ingredient, Styrofoam, which should at the very LEAST be in the second slot on the ingredients list. See, they used these round plastic foam disks of the same diameter as the crisps, and 2/3 as thick as the crisps, to separate each crisp from the next. This is because the sugar/water substance has approximately the sticking power of cyanofluoroacrylate or whatever the real name of Krazy Glue is. It was easier to get the paper off the White Rabbit candy from last week - and easier to swallow the paper on the White Rabbit candy without worrying when I was going to see it next. I could not get all the plastic foam off even one crisp, despite my trying, and frankly I feel that I should not have to work that hard to get at my junk food. If I'm going to spend that long removing the protective material from around something I intend to eat, it'll be an egg or lobster or something. Sorry, guys. For what it's worth the sesame/sugar part of the crisps tasted pretty good. Stuck to the teeth even worse than White Rabbit, though. Third place.
Team China: I have to admit I bought this because of the packaging. Crunchy Stick is just an entertaining name - it's hard to get more honest about the item in question. "What're you eating?" "Crunchy sticks. Want one?" "Sure." The company name, Want Want (well, that's how it's translated on the back) was also something to provoke a smile, and the slogan reminded me too much of The Muppets Take Manhattan to pass up. ("Ocean Breeze Soap will get you clean! And Want Want Crunchy Stick tastes really good!") Unfortunately, once you open the package, then open one of the interior packages, you get... well, crunchy sticks. They're basically marginally herby-tasting breadsticks with a little salt to the flavour. They were cheap and the package was moderately funny, but there wasn't much else to recommend them. However, I did not have to worry that I was swallowing non-biodegradable petroleum products when I ate them, so - second place.
Which leaves us with the first place winner, Team Malaysia. The cookies came in a clear container with a bright pink plastic top. I freely admit that they got into the competition as the only item this week that sent the words 'what the hell are these?' through my mind. They're little white tubes the size of the pretzel part of Combos - or the size of Team Japan's prior winner, Vanilla Collon. Unlike either, they're only open on one end, the end facing the outside of the package. Team Vietnam could've taken a lesson from these guys; when I got the lid off, the top cookies were padded with not one, not two, but three disks of bubble-wrap. That's just inherently cool right there. The cookies didn't taste half bad, either, although they leave an odd chalky sort of feeling in the mouth and have a tendency to deposit tiny bits of coconut where you least expect them. I suppose the mouthfeel is the tapioca's fault - the ingredients listed are wheat flour, coconut, tapioca starch, sugar, and yeast dan salt. No, I don't know what 'yeast dan salt' means. For those of you who speak Malay, the list in that language reads 'Tepung Gandum, Kelapa, Tepung Ubi, Gula, Ragi dan Garam.'. These come from Perusahaan Makanan Nasarudin Sdn. Bhd. in, um... shoot, I don't recognize any of the locales in the company address. Johor Darul Takzim ring any bells? I dunno... anyway. Good cookie, weird at first sight, doesn't contain recognizable pieces of sea life, innovative eating experience. It's no Lion Ramune Hard Candy, but it's sufficiently different from things American that it's worth a go if you find it ($1.59 for a 180 gram container), and this week it definitely deserves first place.
Oh, and the reason Team Japan didn't compete this week is because all the Japanese snack food is starting to look pretty normal to me. I imagine I'll be over it by next week and there'll be marshmallow candy with blueberry bits in, but the only Japanese snack food I bought this week was a bar of Meiji Black Chocolate. They do good chocolate, but there's really only so much you can do with chocolate if you're not going to stuff it full of chewy bits, so it didn't qualify.
