March Skoshbox

March's Skoshbox was a little skimpier than usual, because several of the snacks were larger. The box included: 1 resealable bag of High-Chew Premium: Japanese Grape (premium candy coated hichew); 1 package of Yogurt-Sour Tabs (tangy yogurt candy); 1 tray of Puchi Ichigo Cookie (mini strawberry chookies with chocolate chips); 1 Doraemon Monaka (Doraemon shaped chocolate monaka); and 1 bag of Yuki No Yado Senbei (lightly frosted senbei (Hokkaido milk)).

Hi-Chew Premium: Japanese Grape:

These were like grape-flavored Ao-Be Soda Gum in terms of taste and texture - chewy and a little bit fizzy (but not tongue-staining) - so I thought they might be gum. However, they were more like Starburst candies, because they did eventually dissolve.

Like I mentioned in my post for the February Skoshbox, I'm not a fan of grape-flavored things. Still, this wasn't bad, and I liked that the package was resealable.

Yogurt-Sour Tabs:

These were chalky, slightly sour-sweet candies. Not bad, although not my favorite thing in the box. I could probably find an American equivalent (similar to SweeTarts, but not as sour, or maybe Smarties?), but it would comes in a variety of flavors, while this candy package only contained one. I wouldn't have guessed that the flavor was yogurt if the name of the candy hadn't said so.

Puchi Ichigo Cookie:

These were very similar to chocolate chip cookies, except they were slightly pink and tasted a little like strawberries. They were very crunchy.

These weren't bad, but given a choice between strawberry-flavored chocolate chip cookies and regular ones, I'd choose regular ones.

Doraemon Monaka:

This was yummy, and gone too quickly. It was basically aerated chocolate sandwiched in a Doraemon-shaped sugar cone-like shell. A little googling tells me that the stuff I thought was sugar cone might have actually been made from mochi. It's not specifically mentioned in the ingredients, so I'm not sure.

Whatever it was, it was good. Taste and texture-wise, it was basically like eating one of the Mini Caplico Cones from the December 2015 Skoshbox.

Yuki No Yado Senbei:

These were very crunchy, with an overall flavor like toasted rice and sugar. Their flavor was layered, salty at first, and then sweeter milk-and-sugar.

February Skoshbox

February's Skoshbox was overwhelmingly fantastic. My only wish was that there had been more of certain snacks. The box included: 1 box Pucca: Chocolate Crisps (crispy pretzel shell with chocolate filling), 1 Chibimaruko Marshmallow (grape jelly mini marshmallows), 1 Pekochan Parasol Choco (strawberry or chocolate parasol pop - I got chocolate), 1 Coffee Beat (creamy chocolate-covered coffee), 1 bag Veggie-Ottotto (puffed crispy veggie chips: consomme seasoning), 2 Soft Oreo: Vanilla (soft Oreo cakes-vanilla cream).

Pucca: Chocolate Crisps:

Little shapes (jellyfish?) made out of a crispy cookie shell filled with chocolate. These were delicious and reminded me strongly of snacks I'd had in Germany years ago. After a bit of Googling, I learned that those were probably something called Koala's March, which actually started off as Japanese snacks. I guess the similarity between the two isn't very surprising, then.

Chibimaruko Marshmallow:

A little package of four marshmallows with a bit of grape jelly in their centers. This reminded me of the Hello Kitty Marshmallows from the November 2015 Skoshbox, except I liked those more. Have I mentioned that I'm not a fan of grape-flavored anything? This was the only snack in this month's Skoshbox that I disliked. I wish the jelly center in these had been any other fruit flavor but grape. Ah well, at least the grape part was relatively small and the marshmallows were good and soft.

Pekochan Parasol Choco:

Cone-shaped chocolate on a little plastic parasol handle - with its wrapper still on, this looked like a little parasol. This was chocolate, so I knew it would at least be decent. It reminded me of the little chocolate suckers I used to get as a kid. According to the little booklet that came with my subscription box, this snack comes in either chocolate or strawberry flavor, so I'm happy I got chocolate.

Coffee Beat:

If someone decided to release a coffee-flavored M&M variety, it might taste something like this. As far as appearance went, they looked like little coffee beans.

I had thought these were going to be chocolate-covered espresso beans, so the reality took a little getting used to, but they were pretty good. I also liked that they came in a resealable cardboard tube, so I could have a little and then save the rest for later.

Veggie-Ottotto:

Puffed savory snacks, very crunchy. These were yummy, but gone too quickly. The packaging made it look like they'd all be shaped like various vehicles, but in reality they tended to look like other things: a rabbit, a carrot, a duck, and even a whale wearing a hat. I have no clue if that's actually what those all were supposed to look like.

Soft Oreo-Vanilla:

Vanilla cream sandwiched between two soft chocolate cakes. These were small (and each package only included one) but they were delicious. Thankfully, if I get a craving for another one of these, it shouldn't be too hard to find something similar among, say, Hostess products. I hope.

January Skoshbox

Of all the Skoshboxes I've gotten so far, this has been the most disappointing, especially compared to the deliciousness that was December's Skoshbox. Half of the snacks were either a bit too weird for me or didn't fit my snack texture preferences.

January's Skoshbox included 1 pouch of Puccho: Hoppe-chan Gummies (Japanese cherry flavor), 1 box of Sakupanda Zed (double chocolate panda face cookies), 1 Gaburi-chu Cola Stick (chewy cola flavored soft candy stick), 1 packet of Ao-Be Soda Gum (two sticks of mouth staining color soda gum, 1 bag of Korokoro Sugar Rusk (crispy sugar rusk cubes), and 2 Umaibo: Yakitori (grilled chicken skewer flavored corn puff).

Puccho: Hoppe-chan Gummies:

These were very, very tiny, but tasty. As the description said, they were cherry-flavored. They were a bit firmer than I expected, but considering their tiny size I guess that wasn't such a surprise. The pouch they came in was cute and resealable.

Sakupanda Zed:

I saved this one for last, because I figured it would be as good as Sakupan-Land from last year's November Skoshbox. Thankfully, it was, although the design seemed a little morbid. Each little cookie-thing was composed of two fused layers. One layer was a panda face made out of chocolate - each one had a different expression. The other layer was a chocolate cookie with a smaller, simpler panda face that I initially mistook for a chocolate-covered pretzel. After eating a few of these, I realized that the cookie part looked like what you might see if you could X-ray the chocolate panda face and see its skeleton.

Gaburi-chu Cola Stick:

I expected this to be my least favorite snack and, lo and behold, it was. I hated the sticky, chewy texture - I'm not a fan of Starburst candies for the same reason. The flavor was a weird mixture of Coke and citrus fruit (maybe orange?), with an edge of bubblegum underneath.

Ao-Be Soda Gum:

One stick was green and the other was blue. I tried them about a week apart, so I can't really say whether they tasted very different from each other, but the colors mattered as far as tongue-staining went. And, yes, these stain your tongue pretty well.

These had a kind of artificial berry flavor, bright and sweet. The texture made me think of Bubble Yum gum. I liked that, as well as the large size of the sticks. However, I'm not really a gum fan, because I think most gum loses its flavor too quickly, and I can't say that this stuff was an exception.

Korokoro Sugar Rusk:

This tasted like sugar-sweet peanut-flavored croutons. A small number of salted peanuts were also included in the bag.

I didn't dislike this the way I disliked the Gaburi-chu Cola Stick, but it was too strange for me. I'm used to things with this texture being salty, not sweet.

Umaibo: Yakitori:

These were a little bizarre, although not my least favorite snack in the box. Texture-wise, these were like giant hollow Cheeto cylinders, only without the powdery coating. The taste paired oddly with the texture, because it really did taste like some kind of seasoned/sauce-covered chicken.

December Skoshbox

It's time to review the next Skoshbox! This month's box was amazing, but gone way too quickly. It included: 1 Blueberry Collon (blueberry cream-filled crispy shell), 1 Pejoy: Cookies & Cream (cookies & cream filled biscuit sticks), 1 Bisco Cafe Au Lait (cafe au lait cream filled biscuits), 1 Pocky Demitasse, and 2 Mini Caplico Cones (these possible flavors: vanilla, strawberry, or chocolate). The box also came with a mini Pocky keychain pen.

Blueberry Collon:

If I had to pick a least-favorite snack in this box, it would be this one, although I enjoyed it too. It was a little baggie of crispy cookie (waffle cone-like?) cylinders filled with blueberry-flavored cream. They were delicious, although several of them had half of their crunchy shell broken off. Also, the little cylinder shapes kind of reminded me of dog treats.

Pejoy: Cookies & Cream:

Hollow chocolate cookie sticks filled with vanilla cream. These were very good. One advantage they had over Pocky sticks was that the cream went all the way through, so every bite included both cookie and cream. Also, since the outside of the sticks weren't covered in anything, I didn't have to worry about getting melted chocolate or cream on my fingers.

Bisco Cafe Au Lait:

Another delicious snack! The little package included five cookie sandwiches – coffee-flavored cream sandwiched between crunchy plain (vanilla-flavored?) cookies.

Pocky Demitasse:

I had actually been given these as a gift before, so I knew what to expect. They were basically shorter-than-normal Pocky sticks. The flavor: chocolate cookie sticks dipped in rich chocolate (maybe semi-sweet chocolate?). These were so good, and gone so quickly.

Mini Caplico Cones:

The two flavors that came with my box were strawberry and chocolate. They didn't look like they'd be that great – they were basically tall waffle cones with what looked like brown or pink (depending on the flavor) Styrofoam at the top. Thankfully, they were tastier than they looked. The Styrofoam-like part was actually some kind of aerated filling. Although it wasn't soft or creamy to the touch, it melted in my mouth and tasted better than I expected. The strawberry flavor started out with strawberry at the top and turned into a little core of chocolate by the time I hit the bottom of the cone. The chocolate-flavored one was chocolate all the way through.

I doubt I'll ever get attached enough to specific Skoshbox snacks to order them through the site, but December's box was certainly a winner. There were no snacks I disliked, and the little keychain pen was cute.

November Skoshbox

For my birthday, my sister signed me up for 6 months of Skoshbox. At the level she chose for me, every month I'll get a package that's about the size of a trade paperback. This month's package included: 1 Sakupan-Land (almond cream filled choco biscuit), 1 Ichigo Milk Candy (strawberry milk candy), 1 Hitorijime Senbei (extra crunchy baked rice cracker), 2 Goma-Dango Chocolates (sesame mochi cake chocolates), 2 Hello Kitty Marshmallows, and 1 Bisuit Saurus (milk flavored biscuit cookies). I know all of this because the package also comes with a card listing what everything is, what it would cost to re-order the snack through the site if you enjoy it, and a list of each snack's ingredients.

Sakupan-Land:

These were delicious! The package included eight little cookie spheres. Each sphere had two halves - one half was a cookie with one of several pandas faces stamped on it, and the other half was almond cream-filled chocolate. The chocolate part was amazing, very rich. If I were to get more of one of the things in this month's box, I'd be getting more of this.

This particular snack also included a four-panel comic on the inside of the box (all in Japanese, so I'm not sure what it said), as well as a tiny pack of sticky notes in the shape of a heart with pandas at the bottom.

Ichigo Milk Candy:

This was probably my least favorite snack in the package. It contained little triangular strawberry-flavored hard candies. They were fragile enough that I could crunch them to pieces sooner than I expected. Maybe they had some kind of filling? The first one I ate made me think so, but I'm pretty sure I was imagining it.

Hitorijime Senbei:

This is not like rice cakes' Styrofoam texture - the crunch reminded me more of pretzel bites. The taste was a blend of rice and a hint of soy sauce and slight fishyness. This little package wasn't bad, although I could see myself growing to dislike the fishy aspect if I were to eat it more.

Goma-Dango Chocolate:

The first square of this that I tried had a mostly black wrapper, and I had seen the bit on the card that said this was chocolate, so I was surprised when I unwrapped it and saw that it was white. I bit it in half to see what was inside. It's basically a layer of clear/white-ish stuff that I think is the mochi part, with crunchy black sesame on top, all covered in white chocolate. If it hadn't been for the extremely chewy mochi layer, I would have said that the texture of this was a lot like a Nestle Crunch bar.

Hello Kitty Marshmallow:

It's been a while since I've had Peeps, but I think the marshmallow in this was firmer and more pillowy. There was a very tiny bit of chocolate in the center. I think I like this a bit better than Peeps, although, if I'm going to have marshmallow candy, I'd still prefer it to be chocolate-covered. The chocolate in the center just wasn't enough.

Biscuit-Saurus:

This tasted extremely familiar, like maybe animal crackers. The little dinosaurs on each of the cookies were adorable.