Toppo – Salty Vanilla Ice Cream

When I think of all the snacks that have salt front and centre in their marketing and packaging, I think back to the first time I learned of the power of salt. By this I mean salt being used in traditional sweet snacks, and chocolate. I was watching a show (one which escapes my mind now) and one of the characters said the special ingredient that makes her hot chocolate taste so good is a dash of salt to bring out the flavour of the chocolate. At the time I thought it was kind of crazy, but soon after I noticed it more and more around me. I couldn’t really tell if it was just a cognitive bias but I started to notice the salt seemed to bring out another dimension to the flavour, and I started to naturally accept that salt was a good flavour enhancer.

This plays in to the narrative that salt became a sort of selling point for a lot of somewhat mundane snacks. Things like caramel that were once considered somewhat one note in that it was only sweet, started getting a revitalization after salt was added to it. Next thing you know, salt is everywhere in the sweets world. I guess there was some truth to the whole, sugar, spice and everything nice rhyme eh?

I’d say that Toppo is one of those brands that I would get most of their flavours even if they look mildly interesting, mostly because I love their texture and the format – easy to eat sticks that come in convenient pouches. It’s hard not to love them.

Vanilla has always been kinda boring as a flavour to me, so I’m mostly trying this out of curiosity sake. The flavour is kind of like an ice cream in that it’s got a very light dairy flavour, with the vanilla and what I guess is butter hitting in the tail end. You end up with something that is very smooth. The salty aspect of this flavour is pretty mild and I almost didn’t notice it at first. I had to do a double take the sure I didn’t eat the wrong thing.

The texture is as usual, the biscuit stick has a nice snap and it’s solid without being brittle. It’s got just the right amount of thickness to deliver a decent amount of chocolate centre, and still hold up in your hands without cracking under the pressure like a first year law student.

There’s nothing particularly special about this flavour. In fact, about a minute after eating this I started to notice a weird aftertaste in my mouth which I’m not sure how to describe. I’m guessing it’s from some artificial flavour to emulate that butter taste. It’s kind of weird and a bit off putting for me, but everyone’s mileage may vary. As it stands, I’m not that sad that this is seasonal and may not have to deal with it again. The texture will keep me coming back to Toppo, but maybe not vanilla flavours.