Puppy's first umaibo? Puppy's first umaibo. I had heard of these when I was looking up what dagashi was. Dagashi is essentially the Japanese version of penny candy, probably not a penny because inflation but the low cost snacks of the Japanese world. So I'm about to discover how well-off those Japanese kids are when they have a low amount of money but need a bite to savor. Umaibo is essentially a crispy, crunchy bar of some sort. And considering there's also a chocolate one in this pack as well, there seems to be no flavor limitation. Savory snacks like these have not always tasted the best to me, but let's see what we've got.
As expected from a corn umaibo, it's a crispy yellow stick. What I didn't expect is a hole in the middle. Huh, that's interesting. I wonder what that's for. To be used as a straw? Heh, I may try it one day, a curious pup I am. Also unexpected is the sweet smell coming from the snack. Now corn potage is a soup and one I know nothing about, so I'm not sure what the expected taste is here. But when I was writing this I thought I smelled chocolate and I was so confused. What wrapper did I leave open now? But nope, this is in fact the smell coming from this corn flavored stick itself. It barely even smells like corn.
When I took a bite it was reaffirmed that this is in fact a corn flavored snack. I get the savory kick at first, then this nice sweet corn flavor. It's really easy to imagine the apparently sweet corn soup that this snack was flavored after. Definitely salty first, then sweet. I don't know how they pulled this off, but I really like it. And the flavor doesn't feel tacked on in the slightest like it might with the cheese dust that is prevalent in American chips (actually, it isn't messy at all!). It genuinely feels like someone took sweet corn soup and added a bunch of flour to it and baked it into this crispy log, with a salty outer shell. Color me impressed.
One thing that Japanese snacks seem to nail time and time again is the balance of sweet and salty, and while this is supposed to be a savory snack on the surface, I still get that balance. It tastes like the natural sweetness of the corn too, nothing tacked on. Impressive showing from a snack I was worried about, I'd absolutely eat this again.
Rating: 8 - Rowf!
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