Chocoball – Mogumogu Time Strawberry
I sometimes wonder what the snacking culture is over in Japan. From what I’ve observed, the snacking culture over there is much more focused on novelty and the general portion sizes of snack is much smaller than here in the west. I could go on a tirade about how it’s keeping everyone fat and unhealthy over here, but that’s for another time. The bottom line is, big popular brands of candy bars, as well as chips tend to be of much smaller packages and quantity over there. It got me wondering if in addition to preferring smaller portions, they also just snack less overall.
These thoughts flooded into my head (yet again) as I held this tiny pouch in my hands. Mogumogu is supposedly an onomatopoeia for chewing. I suspect that means these will work the jaw a bit more than the usual chocoballs. What I can gleam from the packaging is that this is comprised of not only strawberry, but bits of almond and three other grains to give it a chewy texture.
Not only do these come in the premium pouch format, each ball is quite sizeable by Chocoball standards. Not quite as big as the other one’s I’ve had, but definitely bigger than the normal mini ones. The smell is of a very fragrant strawberry chocolate, almost like a strawberry milkshake. The pieces are less the usual spherical shape, and more like a lumpy dough ball. Like someone rolled it up in an attempt to make it round but for whatever reason got distracted.
The texture is best described as lumpy. It sort of reminds me of a granola bar, where you have dried fruit, some nuts and grains. It definitely gives off some “this is trying to be healthy” vibe, but it honestly tastes quite nice. It is however, verging more into the realm of cereal and yogurt snack then the standard chocoball affair.
The flavour is what I think of when I have a strawberry yogurt. It has the vibrant, floral sweetness of strawberry while having a little bit of that dairy chasing it. I say strawberry yogurt but realistically it’s more of a kid’s yogurt, by which I mean it’s mostly just sweet and not much tang. The almond and grains don’t add much flavour and are mostly for texture, but I can’t help but be reminded of a parfait.
While I do enjoy these, I can’t help but wonder if there are similar enough products out there that you can find something very similar, but for a better quantity and price, though maybe in a not-as-fun shape.
