Lotte Koala’s March – Cheesecake
Nostalgia is such a fickle beast. It’s rare you’d ever view it without rose tinted glasses. Almost like it hides in plain sight, but you can’t find it unless you wear said glasses, like those optical illusions where you have to change the colour of which you perceive the world to nail it down. Like the little trickster spirit that evades capture every time you try to hold on to it. But unlike an actual imaginary spirit, nostalgia permeates every aspect of our lives. When we experience things at certain points in our life, we come to associate them to certain products or places. Very rarely do we experience something in isolation of outside factors. When you think back fondly to a snack or toy you had as a kid, you might think, “yea I bet it would be great to try that again!” But nostalgia is a tricky fae spirit, and just when you thought you could recapture it and experience what you did as a child, you quickly realize it’s not….the same for some reason.
If you’ve ever felt that, then congratulations! You’ve been a victim of nostalgia. It’s okay, it happens to the best of us, nay, ALL of us. Everyone last one of us. Don’t act like you haven’t. We’re in this together. Companies realize this and they prey on the experiences and emotions we attached to something from our past and try to capitalize it. It’s why remakes, reissues and “classic” products always make a recurrence. Because they know it works, and it sells.
The reason I bring all this up is because Koala’s March is something I have very fond nostalgia for. As a kid who grew up in a fairly simple, basic household, there wasn’t much budget for snacks. Koala’s March was always a great pick because they were fairly inexpensive for a large box that had multiple, smaller pouches. Bang for buck, as they say. They were also pretty tasty to me as a kid, so they were always a safe choice when they went on sale. For whatever reason, I kind of grew out of them, but not for any specific reason. Sometimes people fall out of your life, and it’s no ones fault. One person stop responding, and the other stops putting in effort, and the next thing you know it’s 10 years later and you wonder randomly how the other person is doing, but you can’t bring yourself to check on them because of ego and pride. Anyways.
In my search for new snacks, the latest iteration of limited run flavours for Koala’s March caught my eye. This particular flavour is some sort of winter-ish limited flavour. I’m not sure on the specifics, other than the brand is celebrating 35 years, and it’s supposed to be a cheesecake flavour. As someone who once loved Koala’s March, and still loves cheesecake, this just makes sense to me.
For those unaware of what exactly Koala’s March is, they are tiny koala shaped cookies that have a chocolate filling. They have adorable little koala characters printed on one side of the cookie, and part of the fun is seeing which ones you get. I’m not sure how many different varieties they have, but I’m guessing they keep cranking out new templates to print on the cookies. It seems like a small thing, but as a kid, it really makes your mind wander on the possibilities. Plus, the way the cookies are, they aren’t too fragile that you could technically play with your food before you eat it. I may or may not be speaking from personal experience.
While this particular pack is the small standard size one, it still has that same iconic package – the tall hexagon cardboard box. It makes stacking these together really fun. Again, may or may not be speaking from personal experience. Opening up the pack reveals the iconic foil pouch, with even more koala faces.
As expected, there’s a slew of little koala cookies. These smell like the standard baked cheesecake. There’s the smell of dairy along with the sweet smell of sugar and that hint of lemon juice you get from a plain cheesecake. My biggest concern was that I wouldn’t enjoy the koalas as much as I did as a kid. Well I’m happy to say that’s not the case. Turns out my love for Koala’s March goes beyond nostalgia, which is more than I can say for a lot of other things.
The koalas are less of a cookie, and more of a light biscuit. They aren’t particularly thick or hard, and honestly if you left it on your tongue the biscuit would melt away to expose the chocolate filling pretty quickly. They tend to have a light dusting of powder of flour on them, which I guess is to keep them from sticking together or maintain dryness. They have a nice crispness to them if you decide to bite into them right away. They are typically pretty hollow, and the chocolate filling inside isn’t particularly thick, but it’s enough to coat your mouth with whatever flavour they’re going for. It’s a good balance to keep the cookies nice and light.
As for the flavour, the outer biscuit itself doesn’t have much flavour, and most of the flavour is going to be from the chocolate filling. The chocolate itself is semi-soft, in that it doesn’t take much to have it melt and have the flavour release into your mouth. The flavour is a nice tangy cheese like flavour. It has a sweetness that mostly cancels out any tangy or citrus to it. While the flavour is fairly standard, simply cheesecake like taste, it’s a perfect fit here and compliments the light texture very well. The big downside being that because the flavour and texture are both so light, you could probably finish off the whole pouch and not notice. Which I guess in a way, is exactly like how I remembered it in childhood.
As I mentioned before, these are great because they are nice and light, and you could probably finish the whole pack without feeling disgusting or full. I guess that could go either way depending on what you’re looking for, but I like snacks to be light in general. Eating this, I can’t really remember why I fell out with Koala’s March, but after this experience maybe I’ve learned something. Maybe it’s time I put aside my pride and ego and try to reconnect with people. It could net me some rewarding results, as reconnecting with Koala’s March has.
