Toppo – Butter Caramel

Butter is one of those products where you can add it to almost anything and it makes things just a little bit better. Within reason, I find this to be true – popcorn, steak, bread, rum, so many things are enhanced by a nice warm stick of butter. Companies know this, so they will attempt to add butter flavouring to anything they can to try and get us to consume new product. And it usually works – though if I’m being honest, adding it to caramel seems a bit excessive. But hey, if it works, it works. Let’s see whether that’s the case here.

Toppo has become my Asian snack stick of choice these days. Don’t get me wrong, I love me a good Pocky like anyone else, but something about Toppo is just an easier sell to me. I like their biscuit more, and the general experience seems to be easier and cleaner in general.

Texture is standard for the 12 stick packs. Crunchy and buttery biscuit on the outside, soft chocolate on the inside. I’ve had enough Toppo at this point that there isn’t much more I can add about the texture. It’s basically a no-mess version of chocolate coated biscuit sticks. I mean sure, it’s probably a lot more work to get the chocolate on the inside in a clean uniform way and making a biscuit with a giant hole in the middle. But once you have one in your hand and you are eating these, you quickly realize the snacking convenience and cleanliness of the format, and it’s true superiority. It also helps to keep the chocolate insulated so it doesn’t melt all over the place as easily, which is something I didn’t appreciate until I became an adult and realized laundry was such a hassle.

Flavour is very buttery, which makes sense since these are made with real butter. The flavour of the caramel is like a slightly burnt, darker caramel. The butter flavour cuts any potential bitterness that darker caramels have, so you end up with a smooth, rich caramel flavour that reminds me of coffee caramel ice cream. There’s an almost coffee like quality to it, but not in an overpowering way. I also taste a hint of salt in the aftertaste, which makes sense given that salt and caramel are like bed fellow at this point.

I’m not a huge fan of caramel, but this is a light and unobtrusive enough that I could see myself doing a pack of these with no problem. Sort of like a chain smoker in the 70s with absolutely no regard for potential dangers. These are just tasty enough that you wouldn’t mind putting them back slowly (or quickly) while watching a movie, only to find that you’ve finished about 1500 calories in a sitting. But also not tasty enough that you’ll gorge yourself all at once in an uncontrollable fashion that you might with a really tasty box of fries or chips. Or maybe that’s just me.