Tirol Chocolate – Hokkaido Soft Serve

It’s not often I find Tirol chocolates in my neck of the woods, much less a big bag of them that isn’t the usual suspects. This one has my quite excited, mostly because it has a cow on the packaging so you know it’s got some Hokkaido shenanigans going on.

So this is a bit of a departure for me in terms of Tirol’s standard affair. First off, this is a big pouch – I counted a total of 25, 13 chocolate and 12 vanilla. That’s quite a lot in one bag. Second off, these come in a foil wrap, something I’m not accustomed to because it usually comes in a two layer wrap that unfolds like a square. These are more the standard individually sealed and wrapped kind. I guess that really only affects long time fans like me. Third is that these have a different shape than the usual standard sized pieces. These one’s have various characters for the Japanese name of Tirol printed on the top, instead of the classic pattern on top.

Something that became abundantly clear to me, very quickly, is that these are also made in a slightly different way than other version of Tirol that I’ve had. Let me explain – normally for Tirol when they do flavours that have a filling or bits of cookie or biscuit in the centre, it’s a solid block of chocolate with the bits included on the inside.

This one is more like a bunch of crushed bits of waffle cone encased in a block of chocolate. What this ends up creating is a bit of a messy chocolate if you do it in more than a single bite, as there’s a lot of air and slack in the middle. My first bite resulted in a lot of crumbs getting all over the place.

The flavour is about on par for what I expect a classic Tirol vanilla and chocolate flavour to be like. The waffle cone filling also has the classic sweet sugar cone flavour to it, and overall the piece reminds me a bit of biting into the very ends of the waffle cone, once all the ice cream is gone.

Overall, while I somewhat enjoyed the experience, I don’t know that I would do it again. Something about the way that there’s nothing keeping everything in the middle together makes it feel a bit too airy and messy, and leaves me wishing they went with a solid block filled with waffle cone bits. I know they can do it because they’ve done it before, so not sure why they went with this format, but I would be unlikely to get this again.