Toppo – Hokkaido Milk Cream Cheese

Some companies like to bring back seasonal flavours back once a year. A great example is the McRib that comes back briefly each year. It builds expectations and not much changes, which is both good and bad depending how you look at it. But then you have companies that rehash an old flavour under a different label or packaging when it’s really basically the same thing. I suspect something similar is happening here, but I need to try it out to be 100% certain.

This was clearly meant to be a winter release. I guess I just got to this one a little late. Just a little. This particular flavour is a winter flavour similar to the Hokkori White Milk one that was released the year before. Just based on the packaging and colour of the product, it seems eerily similar so I’m going into this thinking it’s just a relabel of the same flavour.

Another flavour of the slim stick variety. The flavour is supposed to be cream cheese, but it reminds me too much of the Hokkori White Milk flavour that I reviewed last year. While not exactly the same, it is so very similar in packaging and style as well, it’s hard for me to separate them. This one has an equally dairy, light creamy flavour to it. This one reminds me a little bit more of a cheesecake, but just barely. It’s been quite a bit of time since I had the previous flavour, but I feel like this one is just slightly tangier and has a cheese quality to it, which I almost always appreciate.

The texture is is basically the same – it’s got a nice biscuit stick snap to the outside and keeps all the delicate, potentially melty chocolate on the inside so snacking on these is what I like to consider no fuss. It would have to be really hot, and I mean really, really hot for the chocolate inside these sticks to melt or leave a mess. At that point why are you even eating chocolate?!

I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that these two flavours are basically the same. Given that they were the same price, and released around the same time, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit. What I am disappointed in though, is the fact that this one doesn’t have the same cute Koala’s March packaging.

Packaging aside, I did enjoy this one a little more cause it taste more like cheese than just plain white chocolate. Not a super noticeable cheese, but a cheese nonetheless. Then again, I wouldn’t mind the old Koala packaging one too since the flavour itself isn’t all that different.