Snackaging
For the love of snacks and good packaging.
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Lumonde
Looks like a substantial candy bar but these folded crepe cookies are as light as air. Tastes like unicorns and rainbows dancing in your mouth. That is if those things were made of dessert crepes and the crispy edges of buttery Belgian waffles. The light candy coating keeps it from crumbling all over you when you bite into them. It’s easy to eat 5 of these and not feel like you’ve done anything shameful. 10 more and still craving another bite. Next thing you know there’s an empty bag and a pile of wrappers. You’re left with just the memory of these lightly sweet crispy cookies. Soon you’ll need to check yourself into crepe cookie rehab. But eff that. No one likes a quitter. You just go and buy another bag.
Design-wise the bag is cluster$*@. This looks like it was designed by committee. Chairman so and so wants the Bourbon logo twice. Chief Marketing Officer wants a red and yellow ribbon, because red and yellow tested well with his 6 year old kids. I can imagine something like that happened that turned this packaging from classy to trashy. But the individually wrapped cookies remained unscathed. They look beautiful.
Taste: 10
Design: 10 for the individually wrapped cookies. The bag is a tragedy.
Overall: 10
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Grape E-ma candy
I’m back. I may have took 9 months off from blogging but not snacking. Believe that. I’ve got a huge backlog of reviews and ready to get at it.
Today we have a grape flavored Vitamin C candy by E-ma. It’s a semi-hard confection that has many layers like a jawbreaker. The flavor alternates from sweet to sour and back again. If you bite into it, the flavor is intense and amazing, it tastes like real grapes. I have dubbed this purple crack. So addictive I can eat the whole bag in a day.
The packaging of the bag is ok if you like a bunch of violators and a shit ton of copy. I wished they picked a nicer typeface for the logo. They used a glow on the type also. Which I guess was necessary since they insisted on putting type over a busy image. This bag could’ve been much more clean and tasteful. On the other hand, the round candy packages are nice and have a neat sliding top. The Kpop group SNSD did a commercial that showcases the cute packaging.
Taste: 10
Design: 8 for the round package, let’s pretend we never saw the bag.
Overall: 9
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Late July Organic
These all-natural multi-grain chips are pretty good. Sea Salt By the Seashore is great for dipping or eaten alone. In edition to being multi-grain, the sea salt version even has chia seeds. Yes, the same seeds used on Chia Pets! For flavored chip fans—the Mild Green Mojo packs green chilies, cheese, and lime in every bite and is great eaten alone. Late July chips are on the thicker side. So if you are a thin chip fan, steer clear. As far as lime flavored chips go, I still like Tostitos Hint of Lime chips better. They’re thin and seasoned just right. Healthy chips be damned. My taste buds knoweth evil and loves the monkeys out of it.
The packaging is really eye-catching. Love the type choices and the decorative border elements.
Taste: 8.5
Design: 10
Overall: 9.25
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Justin’s Nut Butter
I saw these at Fresh & Easy and had to pick it up because I loved the illustrations. I love how the type looks hand lettered also. I noticed one odd inconsistency about these packets though. The first 2 are crimped at the top, the last packet is crimped at the top and bottom. Single crimp is so pimp. Double crimping makes it look like a ketchup packet.
The chocolate hazelnut butter is a healthier version of Nutella. It’s great eaten alone or on fruit. If you ever wished Nutella made a low sugar version this is for you. It’s definitely not as sweet. The maple almond butter is pretty damn good. It’s my favorite of the three. The honey peanut butter was insanely fresh. This is what peanut butter tastes like if you grinded fresh peanuts in a mortar and pestle and blended honey with it. I don’t know, I’m torn. I grew up on Skippy and Nutella so making the switch to a healthier alternative is hard. And besides I hardly ever eat peanut butter anymore. So if were to choose between Skippy creamy, with it’s bad hydrogenated oils, and a healthier alternative I would go for the childhood nostalgia of Skippy. It’s sweeter and bad for you, but it sure does hit the spot!
If you’re committed to healthy alternatives these are for you.
Taste: 8
Design: 10
Overall: 9
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Fresh & Easy Belgian Chocolate Cookies
The Belgian dark chocolate with orange cream center and roasted cocoa beans is phenomenal. I can eat half a box in 5 mins. They’re so good. Is it the crunchy topping of crushed roasted cocoa beans that makes it so amazing or the dark chocolate and orange combination? I don’t know. But it’s as addictive as crack!
The caramel and Belgian milk chocolate is good too. It’s like Twix in way, if Twix went to a formal black tie event and didn’t have artificial ingredients. This is more wholesome way to get your candy/cookie fix. But the Orange Belgian dark is the hands down winner!
The packaging is handsome, Love the photography and the type. Looking good, Trade Gothic Extended Light. It’s nice to see F&E using other fonts on their packaging.
Taste: 10
Design: 10
Overall: 10
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Hold the Cone
Dericious. I love these dipped mini cones from Trader Joes. The vanilla ice cream is buttery sweet and the sugar cone is surprisingly crisp! Not only is the ice cream dipped in chocolate on the outside, the inside of the cone is coated as well. So that last bite of sugar cone is pure chocolate yumminess. Each mini cone is only 70 calories. FTW, if you keep to the serving size! Unlike me, where I eat the whole box (8 cones) which is 560 calories. *face palm*
The design is okay. I like the old time ice cream parlour feel. It reminds me of Fossilman’s in Alhambra. But there’s about a bajillion fonts being used here. And that’s 1000 jillion too many. I think if they stuck to 2 to 3 fonts this would’ve looked much cleaner. In the food photography I don’t really get what that diagonal bacon strip is doing there? Bacon usually makes all things better. Except this case.
Taste: 10
Design: 6
Overall: 8
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Peko-chan Milky Cookies
These delicious soft sugar cookies have a distinct sweetened condensed milk flavor. They taste like Fujiya Milky candy caramels and are equally addictive.
All-in-all, Fujiya’s Peko-chan products are great. I think their candy packaging is considered and well designed, but this cookie packaging falls short. There is no clear hierarchy. Large image of cookie in the upper left, the logo relatively the same size as the cookie, their mascot is buried on the left, there’s some white candy cubes, and then a huge violator above the milky logo. Size and scale-wise everything is shouting, trying to be the most important and so nothing is important. There are so many tangents in the design. The proximity of the cookie, the logo and the violator. Well we all know that violators break design on purpose, but the cookie could be less intimate with the logo. Yeah I read your blog sir cookie. How you like to get touchy with logos. The hierarchy on the inside flap is better, the stripes are a nice touch, but do you really need the Fujiya logo again? Seriously? And the type on the 60th anniversary seal could’ve been more handled. Seems a little jammed together.
Snack size is evil. I end up opening all the individual red packages and eating the whole damn box. It’s a miracle I don’t weight 300 lbs.
Taste: 9
Design: 5
Overall: 7
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Hot Buffalo Wing Chip’ins
What the hell did I just eat. I love Buffalo wings, dipped in blue cheese or ranch dressing, but seriously these are the driest chips I have ever eaten. Not only are these chips dry, they’re apparently sharp. My cubemate said he cut his gums on one. Great, now I gotta explain to HR why I made my coworker bleed from the mouth.
These chips only have 2.5 grams of fat?! There’s the problem right there. If you are going imply, by the flavor name, that these taste like juicy, greasy, fatty delicious, hot buffalo wings, don’t make it 2.5 grams of fat. Try 6 grams of fat. I won’t hate you for it. I’ll thank you for not compromising on flavor. Otherwise stick to flavors such as- sea salt, parched pirate, mojave desert air, or camel’s face.
If this company believed in honesty and transparency, they would call these low fat, Tabasco flavored, dry popcorn chips (that might possibly cut yo mouth). And speaking of clarity, does anyone understand what the name means? What is Chip’ins a contraction of?
The packaging is decent colorwise, but they were having a bad day with typography. “All natural popcorn chips” is not baselined to anything. There’s an awkward chip looking apostrophe that looks more like a prime mark. The leading is crazy uneven on hot buffalo wing and the word hot is much smaller for no reason. On food photography, is that one image of the chip necessary on the top right? It would be so much cleaner without it. Exit stage right- everything on the bag is rolling off to the right. The logo is not centered on the bag. And the final injustice–this was printed off registration. You could see the ghosted type if I took a macro shot. But I’ll save some face for whoever signed off on the print run.
Taste: 3
Design: 4
Overall: 3.5
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Fresh & Easy Honey Wheat Pretzels
Fresh and Easy Honey Wheat Pretzel sticks are made of win. These are so light and crunchy, slightly sweet and salty. Super addictive snacking. Great eaten alone or dipped. You can dip these in strawberry cream cheese and it tastes like strawberry Pocky. That is if strawberry Pocky was made from delicious wholesome ingredients.
The packaging showcases the snack and makes the product the star. No stylized food photography, no design decoration, just colored type on a white label shape. Honest and simple.
Taste: 10
Design: 9
Overall: 9.5
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Meiji Dice Caramels
These yummy little caramels come in the most attractive little packages. Leave it to Meiji to make caramels cute. It’s sold as a row of 5 dice boxes, with 10 caramels total, for $1.59. You can find these in the candy aisle of Mitsuwa markets or perhaps online stores if you don’t live near any Japanese markets. Do these taste gourmet or homemade? No. But they’re good for off-the-shelf caramels. If you want gourmet caramels try the Little Flower Candy Company.
Taste: 7
Design: 10
Overall: 8.5
