Calbee Jaga Rico German Potato

Prior to coming to Japan, I never thought much about the private lives of cartoon mascots. Most of them really didn't require a back story. They just appeared on the front of the product package and looked deliriously happy at the prospect of consuming whatever was tucked inside. Of course, Cap'n Crunch is the exception. Back in his younger days, he was the surliest swab who ever scrubbed a poop deck. It was only after Prozac became a big part of his life that he became the jovial spokesperson that we know and love. That being said, the propensity of his cereal to cut up the roof of your mouth is no coincidence. No amount of Prozac can annihilate the need to inflict a little buccaneer mayhem.

Getting back to cartoon mascots and Japan, Jaga Rico's mascot is apparently quite the world traveler and has a wide and diverse family. Calbee's site includes information on job, family status, and geographic location. This is one cosmopolitan family of cartoon giraffes. Who wouldn't want to partake of their rich salted snack food heritage? Well, actually, in general, me. I've reviewed two types of Jaga Rico before and was less than impressed. It's not that I don't like these salted potato straws. They are crispy and have a good potato flavor. The issue for me has been the flavor depth, which has left me wishing for something more potent.

I came by these in an unusual way. My husband and I were out for a night-time walk and he felt like playing a UFO Catcher game and there was one which looked interesting and it had Jaga Rico as a prize. To be precise, there were plastic bags with three containers in it and one of the flavors was German potato. According to the family history pages of the cartoon giraffes, this flavor has returned by popular demand and should impart the flavor of onion and bacon as well as, of course, potato.

The first bite is, indeed, a bit on the hammy side. The "bacon" element is definitely the strongest flavor. The onion is quite subdued, though it tends to add to a savory backdrop along with various extracts and powders such as cheese, chicken, and garlic. The first two straws are pretty good, but the problem is that the flavor seems to vanish quickly. It's as if the tongue acclimates so rapidly to the subtle nature of the flavorings that they fade away. This is not necessarily a bad thing. They are crunchy and salty in a satisfying way, but the aspect which is German potato quickly becomes almost irrelevant.

My husband won 12 containers of Jaga Rico, and I will eat most of them, slowly. Fortunately, one of my students told me that this is her favorite snack so I'll give some of them to her and I'm sure she'll be appreciative. I think that most people would be happier with these than me. I'll admit that I like strongly flavored salted snacks and being a snack reviewer makes me extra fussy. My review is indifferent, but I think that these might have better appeal to people of different tastes.

Viva Buono Bacon Pizza

When my friend April Marie mentioned having a personal pizza for under 600 calories, I developed a craving for pizza. She was kind enough to share her information about the pizza she had bought on her blog, but I couldn't find the Nippon Ham pizza that she was eating at my local market. Once one gets a craving though, it's hard to escape it. I picked up a similar looking pizza from Marudai, maker of a good many prepared foods including various meats, yogurt, and, of course pizzas.



My Marudai bacon pizza had one virtue that April Marie's didn't and lacked one that hers had. This pizza was only 505 calories, but she said hers was "delish" and mine certainly was not. The size of the pizza is quite generous at about 8 inches (20 cm.) in diameter. In fact, I could only eat half of it at once.


The page for this pizza claims it has "plenty of shredded bacon", but it doesn't have plenty of anything except sauce and crust. There's also supposed to be wine and clam in the sauce, but I couldn't really detect anything. The sauce was fine though. It has a pretty strong flavor, but the problem is that the sauce is almost all that can be tasted. The cheese is flavorless and after the pizza cools off, it's like a plastic layer on top. The bacon is so sparse as to present a simple ham aftertaste. The crust is soft, but inoffensive.

This pizza wasn't terrible, and I will eat the other half of it. That being said, it wasn't even as good as the 100 yen tuna mayo pizza that I got from Lawson's. I certainly wouldn't buy it again because I like my pizza to have more than a smattering of cheese on it.

Glico Bacon Pretz

One of the lessons I teach my students is about the environment and food. It explains that many forest are cut down to create pastures for cattle so that we can have cheap burgers at places like MacDonald's. At the end of that lesson, there's a list of foods and students are asked if they are willing to sacrifice eating those foods in order to reduce the damage done to the environment. Bacon or ham is listed, and my students say they would never give it up. That being said, they say they don't eat a lot of it, but they do like to add small amounts of bacon to various dishes to enhance flavor.


Bacon is such an intensely flavorful food that it lends itself well to being a seasoning rather than a main dish, and it can be a truly wonderful flavoring in salted snack foods when used properly. I've had some good and not so good experiences with bacon-flavored salted snacks in Japan, and I'm pleased to say that these Pretz pretzels sticks fall into the "good" category.

I picked up this 48 gram (1.7 oz.) bag at a local market for 98 yen ($1.09) where it was on sale with another "new" flavor which didn't really light my fire, tomato. It's not that I don't like tomato, but rather that I'd rather get my tomato flavor from, well, tomatoes. I also think there's a chance tomato will be "ketchup" when it comes to salted snack seasoning. There are a plethora of delicate 10 cm. (about 4 in.) long sticks in the bag and it conveniently has a Ziploc-style top to allow you to reseal it.

When you open the bag, it smells rather "hammy" inside. The sticks are so thin and delicate that it's easy to break them. They have a very "fresh" yeast-like flavor and are just salty enough. The bacon flavor is very present, but not overbearing and the finish is of black pepper. They're not hot at all though and there's no cumulative heat effect. The ingredients include pork extract, soy sauce seasoning, onion powder, and bacon extract.

These were really good pretzels. They're not sublime or "to die for", but if I were in the market for a salted snack, I'd definitely add these to my basket again. The seasoning is really well-balanced and there are a lot of sticks for the 229 calories in the entire bag.

Kameda Seika Yakibuta (Roast Pork) Snack

I've been having problems finding new and interesting sembei at the market. There's a ton of new stuff around, but none of it really seems truly new. There's still the remaining dribble of the wasabi-flavored sembei fad. There are also nori and soy flavors, and black bean varieties. I've had the last two before, and they were fine, but I was looking for something new and more interesting.

I figured that Family Mart convenience store always has something interesting on hand, and the two appealing options (both from Kameda Seika) were umeboshi (sour pickled plum) and roast pork. I was in the mood for something more savory and less likely to make me pucker, so I bought the pork sembei snack for 105 yen (about a dollar).


These smell like a mixture of pork and soy sauce and a sweet smell which is difficult to pin down. Each component carries a different element of the roast pork. The puffs taste like Kix cereal, if Kix puffs were sweeter, tasted nutty, and carried a hint of bacon. The flat chips resemble spicy, very well-cooked bacon with added soy sauce. In fact, the flat chips by themselves are great and I could have done without the sweet puffs. That being said, when you eat them together, you do have an approximation of a glazed roast pork with a bit of hot red pepper tossed in.

These were on the borderline between indifferent and happy ratings. It's not that I didn't like them or happily consume all 178 calories of the 42 gram (1.5 oz.) bag all at one time. I just found the sweetness too much. If Kameda Seika sold a bag of only the spicy, flat bacon-flavored chips, I'd likely have given this a very happy rating rather than a grudging "happy" rating.

Bacon Pepper Cratz

Glico's Cratz site has a big glass of beer on it next to the three flavors of Cratz that are currently available. However, if you click through, you'll see that they're not fussy about what you drink with their "otsumami" (snacks to be enjoyed with alcohol). You can also eat your Cratz with wine, sake, liquer, brandy or "spirits". They fill you in on all of the options that might go hand and hand with getting loaded and filling up on spicy pretzels.

One thing they don't include on the site is soft drinks. I guess that Cratz, with it's strong flavors, manly chunks of pretzel, high protein nuts and bold logo, is not designed for sissies who can't knock back some booze. I may be a sissy who doesn't drink alcohol, but I do enjoy Cratz with Diet Coke on occasion. At 220 calories for 44 grams (1.5 oz.), they're pretty fattening though so I don't tend to have a bag more than once every month or so.


The bacon pepper pretzels smell like bacon and ham and, like the other varieties of Cratz, are super crunchy and dense, but easy to bite into. The flavor is salty and they have the flavor of lightly cured bacon (more ham than bacon) with a mild peppery finish. The spiciness is very mixed due to the various added flavors. The ingredients include chicken powder, tomato paste, vegetable paste, pork extract powder, and bacon extract.

There seem to be no failures in the Cratz flavor line. Among all three of the current flavors, I'd say that Spicy Cheese is my favorite, but I'd happily take any of them if I was in the mood for pretzels. I'll definitely buy these again some time.

Zakkuru Bacon Pepper

In the salted snacks section of the local 99 yen shop, I found this pepper and bacon flavored specimen. As you can see, little simple cartoon characters are cavorting happily and gnawing on some sort of substance that resembles a pretzel. After looking at the cover, I looked no further and tossed them in my shopping basket.

One of the cool but sometimes scary things about living in Japan is that you sometimes buy something with one expectation and get something entirely different. This was one of those times. This is not a packet of pretzels. It's actually a bag of fried, flavored croutons. If these were intended to garnish a salad, that'd be just fine, but these are meant to be consumed as a snack with beer or soft drinks. I'm not sure who sits around thinking they'd like to consume stale bits of deep fried bread with their beer, but I don't think I'd want to attend a party hosted by such a person.

To be honest, I'm a huge fan of croutons and have been known to snack on the yummy salted Ceasar Cardini croutons that can be purchased in industrial-sized bags at Costco. Therefore, I approached these at least somewhat open-minded.


When you open the bag, you smell ham, not bacon. The flavor is essentially a mixture of ham and oil. They are exceptionally meaty tasting and acceptably salty, though the ham flavor tends to saturate your tongue and die off after a few croutons. Mainly, you start to sense the bread and the oil. The texture is very crunchy and pretty much as you'd expect from a crouton. They tend to crumble rather more easily than usual salad croutons because they've been fried. In fact, if you bite into them and look at the unflavored interior, you can see where the oil has penetrated the bread.

Though these are called "bacon pepper", they don't have much of a pepper flavor at all. The ingredients include pork extract powder, chicken extract powder, and, very oddly, peanut butter. There are 291 calories in one 55 gram (1.9 oz.) bag. This makes them densely caloric for essentially a snack of ham-flavored dried bread bits. While these weren't awful, they weren't great, and I won't be revisiting them again. Note that Tohato also offers a caramel flavored crouton snack, but I think I'll give that a miss.