Delicious Sticks from Japan taste test

While visiting Japan, I loved looking through the shops and grocery stores for all the different treats! 

I'm relying on Google Translate to help me with the name on the package. Near as I an tell, it's something like Delicious Stick. 

These snacks are like giant puffy Cheetos! Except there's only one giant one in the package. The other thing I thought that was wild was the price! It was something like 18 Japanese Yen for one package, which is equivalent to about $0.12 each. There were four different flavors I found while I was looking. Corn Potage, Cheese, Mentai, and Vegetable Salad. 

I'm amazed that all four of these made it all the way home from Japan intact! 

There's a giant hole going through the center of each of these. 

With 5 people here testing these out, I'll need to cut them into pieces. 

Let's get started! 

My translation says that this is Corn Potage flavor, or Japanese Corn Soup flavor. 

Alli - I'll take a small piece. It's very corny. 

Jacob - Yes, that's very corny. It's like a corn powder. 

Theresa - Mmm. Corn powder. Sounds so good...

Joe - It does remind me of corn soup. 

Jacob - Like chowder type. It's good!
Alli - It's not bad. 

Next up, Cheese! 

Translation, yep, just Cheese. 

Jacob - Everybody loves cheese! 

Alli - Half piece please. 

Ian - Uhh. 

Theresa - You can spit it out. The trash can is right there. 

Joe - Really? It's not bad. It's like a sweet cheese. 

Jacob - That's not bad either.

Theresa - Ugh. Sweet Cheetos. No. Those are nasty.  

Alli - I'd say it's terrible. 

Ian - I'd say it's horrific. 

Jacob - For 10 cents, I'd eat them. 

Our next Delicious Stick is Mentai flavor.

But what is Mentai flavor. I had no idea. Better turn to google. 

Mentai - Spicy Cod Roe. 

Uh huh. So it's fish eggs then. (keeping this a secret for now)

Alli - What's Mentai? 

Joe - Uh... It's Mentai flavor!

Alli - But what is Mentai? 

Joe - Maybe it's Japanese for "Tasty Snack" flavor. 

Joe - Does it taste like Mentai? 

Alli - It's a weird flavor. What is mentai? 

Joe - Okay... It's fish eggs. Does that make you like it more? I wouldn't say it tastes fishy at all. 

Theresa - What does it taste like? 

Jacob - Maybe like Harvest Chips. Salsa Verde flavor. It's like no caviar I've ever tried. 

Theresa - I can smell fish in it. 

Alli - It tastes better than it smells. 

And for the last one, hopefully something tasty. 

We have Vegetable Salad flavor. What could this one be? Maybe a ranch of some sort? 

Theresa - Tomatoes and lettuce. Here we go.

Joe - Enjoy your vegetable salad flavor. Whoa, Alli. Where are you going? 

Alli - To spit it out. 

Joe - But you love vegetables!

Joe - (tries it) Oh! Yuck! This tastes like fish...

Theresa - Did you get them mixed up? 

Joe - No! (I also went online to verify the color of them and confirmed this was not mixed up with the fish egg one)

Jacob - I liked the Mentai flavor WAY better than this one. 

Alli - Bleh. That other one was better. 

Jacob - (Smelling it) Yeah, that smells like fish. (Smells the wrapper) Even the package smells like fish. 

Theresa - That just smells bad. There is no way I'd waste calories on that. That's horrible. 

Joe - Okay... That was weird. 

Jacob - Well we pretty much tried them in the order that I like them in. Corn, Cheese, Mentai, and Vegetable. I would definitely eat the corn again. 

Alli - I liked the Corn, Mentai, Cheese, and the Vegetable was the bad one. I spat out the cheese and vegetable. 

Joe - My favorite was the corn. It tasted like corn. The cheese was sweet, which was fine. I didn't have feelings one way or the other for the Mentai. But that Vegetable Salad was BAD!

Gotta love the Google Lens for translations! 

Well, it was an interesting taste test. As I'm writing this up, I see that there's dozens of different flavors to find and try. 

It seems that savory flavors dominate the product line, including unique offerings like Salted Beef Tongue, Okonomiyaki (cabbage and octopus pancake), Shrimp & Mayonnaise, and Mozzarella & Camembert. There's also a couple sweet flavors in there like Apple Pie, Sugar Rusk, and Strawberry Milk that'd I'd like to sample too. 

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