TokyoTreat is a monthly box of Japanese candies and snacks from Tokyo. It is part of the TokyoTreat subscription box group which also includes YumeTwins and nomakenolife.
There are three monthly subscription levels:
Small: $14.99 (£11.20) 8 full-size snacks
Regular: $24.99 (£18.67) 13 full-size snacks plus 1 Wagashi
Premium: $34.99 (£26.14) 18 full-size snacks, 1 DIY candy kit, 1 drink, 1 item, and 1 Wagashi.
There are also three, six, and 12 month subscriptions, which work out more cheaply per month.
Well, it’s nearly November! TokyoTreat are incredibly efficient, and my box usually arrives before the end of the previous month. But we’re definitely well into Fall/Autumn, and there are a whole bunch of seasonal treats coming up.
This month’s theme is Flavorful Thanksgiving Feast. Now, I know Thanksgiving is an American holiday, but most people are at least vaguely aware of it, and having an American family I’ve always celebrated it!
It’s one of the holidays that is devoted almost totally to food (and thankfulness of course!) and so it’s entirely appropriate that this month’s haul of delicious goodies has this theme.
Their orange box is the perfect Fall colour.
Right on top is their excellent menu booklet.
It’s got a ton of stuff in it.
Including…
The menu!
This month’s featured snack, which also happens to be this month’s drink.
The DIY Candy instructions, which are super-useful as I can’t read the packaging!
Some info about the current season in Japan. Doesn’t that look gorgeous? I want to go there.
And some information about Japanese culture.
Fantastic.
Anyway, enough of all this informative educational stuff, let’s look at the snacks!
Those are some generously-sized packages on top!
Chocolate is a good place to start. These are Choco Flakes Crisp Balls – Kinako, which are chocolate-covered corn puffs. This special edition version also contains kinako, which is roasted soy flour. This adds a lovely nutty flavour to something which is already pretty damn delicious.
This month’s wagashi (traditional Japanese snack or confection) are these Super Light Rice Cakes. Made from Niigata white rice, they are light and delicate and melt in your mouth. They are flavoured with dashi soy sauce and ginger for a little extra tasty kick.
Sapporo Multi-Veggie Sticks contain vegetables, so they’re healthy, right? These crunchy potato sticks contain seven different kinds of vegetables (though if you’re pedantic you could argue a tomato is a fruit).
Sweet potatoes are a seasonal item in Japan, and Calbee Osatsu Snack are made from roast and steamed sweet potatoes. They’re only available during the colder months of the year, so this item is perfectly timed as it’s getting rather cold now!
Those four were the bog bags on top, so next up are the goodies hidden underneath.
Each TokyoTreat contains five dagashi items. Dagashi are like pocket money snacks or penny sweets. They used to be a random selection (with a guaranteed Umaibo) but now they select and name each one in the menu. That is fab, because before it took an awful lot of image Googling to discover what they were, as you can’t find these outside Japan.
Starting with the top left:
Umaibo Cheese: Umaibo means ‘delicious stick’ and this snack is a corn puff tube. They are indeed delicious, one of my favourites.
Sobameshi Yakisoba Sauce Snack: Yakisoba Sauce is a savory flavour, similar to Worcestershire sauce. This snack is a mixture of crunchy noodles and rice puffs.
Twisted Marshmallow: pretty obvious!
Baked Sweet Potato Yokan: yokan is a Japanese confection made from red bean paste. This version is made with sweet potato.
Cola Gummy: again, self-explanatory!
I instantly guessed these were something to do with squid. See the little green thing on the package? That’s a squid. Anyway, these Squid Crackers are probably delicious, but I’ll never know because I’m allergic.
The name of this makes me laugh: Giant Chocolate Snack. At around a foot long, it is indeed giant! It’s very light though, a bar of corn puff and peanuts and covered with milk chocolate.
Oooh Pocky! Yummy coated biscuit sticks. This is a luxury edition, Pocky Double Fromage. And when they say fromage, they’re not talking about cheddar. These have a double layer of white chocolate mixed with cream cheese, for a gorgeous creamy tangy taste.
Think of Pretz as naked Pocky. The are Pretz Mild Roast Flavour, with a very slight sweet taste. This variety contains no artificial colours or flavours, and contains extra calcium to boot.
You might know Japan is famous for its vending machines. You can get almost anything in a vending machine. These candies are called Vending Machine Cola Gummies, because they come in a tray shaped like a vending machine!
Ramune is Japanese soda, and there is also a popular candy version. Morinaga Strawberry Ramune are a new flavour, but are still packaged in the traditional ramune bottle-shaped tub.
This month’s DIY Candy Kit is this Pokemon Sun and Moon Soft Candy Kit. You can see the instructions above. It looks like one of the simpler versions, where you put pieces of soft candy paste into little moulds to make candy lollies.
Every Premium box contains a drink. This month we have Kirin Chocolate Mint Milk Tea. Japanese milk tea sounds very strange but it actually delicious. It’s a bit like a milkshake with black tea.
I suspect a tea traditionalist might frown upon the weird and wonderful milk tea flavours of Japan, but I think they’re marvellous.
Finally, the non-food item, a Gudetama Rubber Magnet! Gudetama the Lazy Egg is my absolute favourite character, so I’m so happy this was this month’s bonus!
Look at him with his little bacon blanket. Good enough to eat. (Bacon and eggs is also one of my favourite things!)
OK, well this is a fantastic box of goodies this month!
I have to say that last month’s Halloween-themed box was an awful lot to live up to. But they’ve done a sterling job here.
I’m really glad the dagashi are being named in the menu, because seriously, you have no idea the trouble involved in doing individual Google image searches and wading through acres of interestingly-translated Japanese webpages.
I’m massively happy there is only one item that I can’t eat (squid crackers). There is a good amount of savory snacks this month, seven in all, which I do appreciate as I love savory.
Seasonal items are always fun to have, especially the sweet potato crunchies!
I love milk tea, it’s such a completely unBritish and delicious thing to have. I really hope they put more of these in the boxes.
And luxury Pocky, damn those are good. Very sensibly they come in two packets so you can (just about) resist eating the entire box in one go.
Value-wise, you’re always going to get the most bang for your buck with the Premium box, especially with the drink and bonus item. Everything in the boxes comes straight from Japan, and is manufactured for the Japanese market. You also get limited and special edition items that will never be imported into the UK.
This month’s theme, a Flavorful Thanksgiving Feast, may not be Japanese, but it’s certainly flavourful, and I’m feeling extremely thankful for a box of such delicious goodies!
Happy Thanksgiving snacking!
A different version of this review first appeared on www.allsubscriptionboxes.co.uk.
