Dagashi Kashi was one of the tastiest anime of the Winter 2016 season, but are the snacks featured any good? Lets find out! I’ve got 13 of them lined up for this week, some amazing, some absolutely horrible. Want to try them out yourself? Luckily for you, you can buy these and many other awesome Japanese treats at J-List.
If you missed part two you can find it here, and if you missed part one it’s over here.
Fugashi
Fugashi is a traditional dagashi, and consists of a fluffy, baked dough slab coated with brown sugar. It’s rather simple, and yet there are a ton of brands all claiming to be unique. I would have loved to have a whole bunch of them to try, but sadly I only had one.
The sugar coating is hard and crunchy, hiding the firm but soft inside that quickly turns soggy in your mouth. The insides taste rather bland, and mainly provides texture, with the sugar taking the reigns when it comes to flavour. If only I had more.
8 Sugary Coatings out of 10.
Baby Star Ramen
Continuing the trend Yatta!Men set last week, Baby Star Ramen are small seasoned noodle bits, although this time the portion is quite a lot bigger. Baby Star Ramen have a coating instead of powdered spices, which sets it apart from Yatta!Men.
As expected it tastes like dry noodles, probably beef flavour. The bits themselves are a bit small, but grabbing a bunch at a time does seem to work fine. Pretty decent snack for when you crave noodles but can’t be bothered to boil some water.
7 Cup Noodles Out Of 11.
Ninjin
Ninjin means carrot in Japanese, and that clearly shows, with the color of the package clearly resembling a carrot. I was expecting some sort of carrot flavored or inspired candy.
But it was just some bland puffy rice pellets coated in some sugary syrup. Quite like certain brands of breakfast cereal. Quite disappointing really.
2 Rice Grains Out Of 5.
Yoguret
What happens when you make candy look like medicine? Yoguret apparently. This dagashi comes in blister packs, and even the candy itself looks like a white pill, only larger.
One upside of this kind of packaging is that it’s easier to store, although the foil was a bit too easy to pierce. The taste is fairly sweet and dairy-like, although if I didn’t know the name I would think it was milk-flavoured. The tablet itself takes a bit to dissolve, leaving you to enjoy the flavour for a little bit.
5 Milk Bags Out Of 7.
Maken Gummi
A hand shaped gummy, with a suspiciously long rope at the end. The anime suggests that these can be used for nefarious skirt lifting shenanigans, but I’m above that, so I didn’t test it.
The gummy itself is a little gooey and sticky compared to your average gummy bear, with a citrusy flavour. It’s quite okay, although a bit too much gummy for one sitting.
4 XL Gummy Bears Out Of 8.
Tsukuru Gaburichuu
Some more DIY candy. This one has you make aquatic creatures and plants using the provided mold. Unlike the one last week, this one is a bit more difficult for a non Japanese reader like me to make.
The candy itself tastes like grape no matter the colour, and is fairly hard but pliable. The making of the shapes proved quite difficult, as due to the kneading of different colours into each other it became super sticky and didn’t want to get out of the mold properly. I was unable to make the alligator I so dearly wanted, and rage quit as a result.
1 Sharknado Out Of 4.
Ume Jam
A jam, made from ume plums, that comes in a ketchup packet.Well, that certainly is something I didn’t think I’d ever eat. And with the clearly artificial red colouring it looks good as well. Too bad the looks is all it has going for it. This stuff is horrible, even worse than the sakura daikon. It’s extremely salty, and that’s all I can taste. Nothing else, no plum taste or anything.
2 Burned Pieces Of Toast Out Of 9.
Anzu Bo
Anzu bo, or Apricot bo. I was genuinely worried about the taste after the Ume Jam, as it looks similar, but with bits inside as well. Luckily this actually tastes like apricots! I’m not the biggest fan of apricots, but it was anything but unpleasant. After opening and tasting, I decided to get a little weird, and put it in the freezer as it looked a bit like those cheapo ice lollies. This made it a bit better for me, but as the flavour didn’t change that much, I didn’t finish it.
3 Frozen Apricots Out Of 6.
Glico Caramel
Caramels that contain enough energy to run 300 meters, and are shaped like a heart. Sounds healthy, but then you remember it’s caramel. And not only did this contain Caramels,
but it even came with some wooden building blocks. Perfect as a small gift for a kid I’d say. The caramels themselves are quite nice, but in the end they are just your basic caramels, so nothing special.
8 Candy Hearts Out Of 12.
Sakama-shiki Drops
This dagashi looked really cool, coming in a rather old-looking can with a design that has barely changed in decades. The can itself looks to be brass, which you rarely see these days, but was a bit of a pain to open.
Once you do get inside, you find a bunch of flavored hard candies, with flavors ranging from mint and chocolate, to strawberry and lemon. I quite enjoyed the amount of flavors, and how tasty they all were. Even the chocolate one, which was a bit weird at first, turned out pretty nice. And with the can being resealable it can be enjoyed for a good while.
2 Kimono Out Of 3.
Cola Gum
The name says it all really, this dagashi is just cola flavoured gum. A rather large portion in fact, I got my gag reflexes going for a bit when I tried my first piece, so I recommend eating it in two bites.
The flavor itself is exactly like the name describes, cola. It takes a fair bit for the flavor to disappear, but it was still gone too fast. I’m not a gum guy so I probably liked it less than most others, but it was okay.
6 Candy Cola Bottles Out Of 13.
Un Choco
Choco drops coming from the butt of an animal. Yup. It’s actually quite a nifty way of packaging, too bad you need to open it up completely, remove the dagashi from a plastic bag, then fold it back into shape.
This makes the butt opening far less practical, and takes away from it all a bit. The chocolate itself was okay, with the sugar coating taking front row, making the chocolate itself barely noticeable.
4 Half-melted Chocolate Bars Out Of 7.
Myako Konbu
Finally, Myako Konbo, or as I like to call it now: the saltiest seaweed. The packaging looks nice, and it looked okay, but the minute I tried a strip it just overpowered my taste buds with the salty flavor.
It’s also very chewy, forcing to you experience the flavor for a while until you either chew it enough to swallow or when you spit it out.
1 Seaweed Salad Out Of 9.
That’s it for part three of this tasty review of the Dagashi Kashi sampler from Jlist.com. Stay tuned for the fourth and final part next week, where I shall talk about, amongst others: Morinaga Ramune, Mini Cola, Pineapple Ame, and Sakuranbo no Uta. If you want to get your own sampler you can right over here: J-List.
Disclaimer: For the J-List Links, Yatta-Tachi may get a small commission.
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