Cream Collon – Double Berry
When your brand has a long, seasoned history of cranking out successful products for years upon decades, I feel you deserve my respect, and the benefit of the doubt when it comes to other products. Even if they have a somewhat strange name, and are far less commonly known by the North American market. It’s not a huge risk to try these out though, since they are made by Glico, the same company that makes Pretz, Pocky and Cratz. Based on that alone, I’m already painting an impression on my mind’s tongue.
This particular variety is known as the adult, or mature flavour. I’m not too clear on what it means, but from what I gather, it supposed to be a more sophisticated and complex flavour. My guess is that the focus is more on the flavour being close to actual berries, as opposed to simply tasting good and sweet. Since I am supposed to be doing mature things like enjoying wine and talking about pension plans, I figure this would be a good way to dip my toe into the snack.
Going by the appearance on the box, I imagine the texture will be a somewhat soft pretzel on the outside, and a soft cream filling on the inside. The box has a nice design on the inside, and looks to be made for multiple snacking sessions, as the box can fold back in on itself to try and preserve some freshness.
The smell is very nice, and very fragrant. It smells like fresh blueberries and strawberries were put through a blender, and the resulting smoothie has been poured out into a cup. I could smell this all day. Hell, if they sold air fresheners of this scent, I would totally buy a box of them. I’m trying to level expectations though, since many things that smell very fragrant (especially berries) tend to not taste as good as it smells. If that makes sense.
Each of these pieces is about the size of Combo. For those who don’t know, Combos are a pretzel snack that is similar in concept; small pretzels with a cream filling. You may also know them as the official snack of NASCAR, for those North American readers. Picking these up though, they feel as thought they are softer. In fact, picking one up, I can easily crush these in between my two fingers, a feat that is not so easily done with Combos. The other shell appears to be more of a wafer texture, and not nearly as tough as a pretzel. This would also explain why quite a few of them were crushed into oblivion in the corner of the pack.
In terms of flavour, they are very light and unoffensive berry flavour. Double berry indeed tastes like blueberry and strawberry. The flavour is indeed as advertised – it is fragrant, but not overly sweet or artificial. In fact, it kind of reminds me of a berry flavoured wafer. Which brings me to the texture – I was fully expecting a crunchier shell, even if it felt softer than a pretzel. In fact though, it is much softer, and I would compare it to a thin waffle cone. But not the hard kind that can cut your mouth. This one kind of melts away quickly, so the risk of choking or hurting yourself by biting it the wrong way seems minimal. My personal preference would be if these were a bit crunchier and had a harder shell, but these are great if you treat them more as wafers in a different shape.
I can see why they advertise it as for adults though, since I’m not sure the subtle but natural flavour would appeal to kids. If I were a kid, I would probably prefer something a bit sweeter. That being said, I enjoyed these quite a bit, and I loved the flavour. The biggest downside is that these are very easy to eat, so much so that you can easily finish the box in a single sitting. I happen to like wafers, but find some of them a bit too dry. Not a problem with these, so I would absolutely give these a second go. I’d probably one to try one of their other flavours though, since they seem to crank out quite a wide variety.
