Green Tea Sprite - Crazy Asian Version of Sprite!!!

As you will know if you have read any of my other blog entries, it is pretty common for Asian countries to take super established and mostly untouchable products from the West and use them as the base to create all kinds of interesting, wacky and sometimes just plain awful variations for their home markets. Apparently the world famous products of the Coca-Cola Company are no exception.

So here we have it "Green Tea Sprite":

As the name quite clearly suggests it is essentially Green Tea flavoured Sprite, which is not at all a wacky concept in a part of the world were virtually everything comes in a green tea flavour (Oreos, Kit Kats, even whiskey drinks!). And to be honest Sprite x Green Tea seems like not too bad an idea, both are refreshing drinks with a crisp clean finish and Sprite already comes in signature green cans and bottles making the branding pretty straightforward. You can see them playing on the refreshing theme in the advert below: 

So what was it like? Actually it was very good! Crisp, clean with a strong yet not overpowering green tea flavour, neither sweet nor dry, not too "Sprite" and not too green tea (as some ice-cream flavours often are). Overall a very balanced and quite delicious drink and definitely one of the best strange "Asian-ised" version of a beloved Western product. 

The drink comes in all kinds of different shapes and sizes with both Chinese and English variations on branding as you can see below: 

And of course in typical big brand style they roped in a top Asian celebrity to promote this exciting new drink. None other than the equally beloved Jay Chou (周杰倫) a man who has sold no fewer than 30 million records.

Here he is passionately presenting his new found joy in life:

Check out all our reviews of bizarre Asian snacks, foods and drinks here: Crazy from Kong!
And you can check out my blog here: Spencer Douglass Blog

Pepsi Baobab - A Very African Soda!

If you read this blog or watch my food / drink review videos on the Crazy from Kong youtube channel then you will already be well aware that a lot of famous Western brands produce a lot of really wacky products for the Asian market and Pepsico is no exception! 

With a wide range of crazy limited edition products that includes Pepsi Ice Cucumber, Pepsi Blue Hawaii, Pepsi Caribbean Gold and Pepsi Salty Watermelon among many others, it's pretty clear that they are willing to push the boundaries of what are considered traditional soft drink ingredients. However, I have to admit that this one even surprised me somewhat in it's weird and wonderful wackiness! 

So essentially Baobab is a stunted looking African tree with an incredibly bloated looking trunk as it can store up to 100,000 litres of water to get it through the drought season. Usually the only reason why someone outside of Africa would have heard of them is because you learn about them in geography for exactly this reason. You can see a couple of examples of Baobab trees here: 

Quite a random thing to flavour a commercial soft drink with, no? Apparently not! According to wikipedia people in Zimbabwe  use the crushed crumbly pulp "to stir into porridge and drinks" whilst inventorspot.com states that the ground powder of the fruit is commonly mixed with water in Africa to produce a drink that tastes "somewhat like wine gums"! In addition the fruit has purportedly more vitamin C than oranges and more calcium than cow's milk. Lots of reasons to make a weird gimmicky soft drink out of it!
But in fact the real reason why Pepsi suddenly decided to release this unexpected drink flavoured with one of the most recognisable plants that is native to Africa is because the world cup was being held there on that year and in fact that the soda was released just 17 days before the world cup started on March 25th 2010. For further proof here's the evidence right here:

Now all this pointless information about why Pepsi does or doesn't release drinks that at first glance look like some marketers mad fantasy aside, perhaps we should pay some attention to the product itself.
So what did it taste like? Well to be honest, kind of boring... My buddy described it as "a mixture of flat coke and flat sprite" and that pretty much sums it up. The most disappointing thing for me is that I thought it would have some kind of extreme, exciting or at least strikingly unusual flavour that would immediately communicate the wild flavours of the African savannah to tamed and commercialised city-folk like me. Unfortunately almost the opposite was true. Apart from a slight herbal flavour it basically communicated a flat, mildly flavoured beverage which was clearly intended mainly as a marketing tool. Certainly nothing on the fearless flavour pioneers at Kit Kat Japan and not even up to the level of other limited edition Pepsico products like 7-up Clear Dry or Mountain Dew Grape.
To see our full thoughts on the product and reactions to our first taste, check out our review below:

Here are a few of the other crazy flavours that have been released by Pepsi in the last few years:

Check out all our reviews of bizarre Asian snacks, foods and drinks here: Crazy from Kong!
And you can check out my blog here: Spencer Douglass Blog

7-Eleven Chilled Ramen Noodles - A Cool New Snack!

Chilled Ramen noodles in a handy plastic bowl from 7 Eleven, which operates 24 hours in Hong Kong and can be found on almost every street corner, certainly seems like a great idea for a healthy and tasty snack. 

Once we got it back to Arne's place we quickly found out that it was like a fun "do-it-yourself" mini-meal from 7 Eleven, as it came in a whole bunch of separate little packages inside the main container, which you had to blend together yourself and stir with the provided chopsticks. 

Using Arne's Spicy Chilled Ramen Set let's have a look at what was included and what this all entailed:

This was the original container which the noodles and ingredients arrived in, but also serves as the "mixing bowl" where everything is combined 

Inside this little bag are a bunch of the main ingredients including cucumber and sliced up crab sticks (apparently made from fake crab meat)

As is pretty obvious, these are the "chilled ramen" noodles themselves 

Some delicious sweet soy sauce to add lots of flavour

Spicy chili oil to amp up the heat

Throw the noodles into the pot 

Add in the ingredients

Pour in the sauce and spicy chili oil

And voila deliciousness!

All in all, this was a delicious, inexpensive and possibly even healthy snack - I would definitely recommend it! To see our full reactions to the product as well as a demonstration on how to put it all together, check out the video below:

Here are a selection of other tasty varieties of cold noodles available from 7-Eleven Japan and Korea:

Check out all our reviews of bizarre Asian snacks, foods and drinks here: Crazy from Kong!
And you can check out my blog here: Spencer Douglass Blog

Bear's Guarana Soda - The Most Dangerous Drink from Hokkaido, Japan!!

Raaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwrrrrrrr!!!!!!

This is one of those wacky Japanese products that seems to come out of nowhere and makes very little sense, yet is essentially awesome! We found it on the shelves of the supermarket section of a giant Japanese department store in Hong Kong called Sogo and were immediately attracted by the terrifying image of the bear on the cover. 

This wonderful creature is the famous Ezo Brown Bear of Hokkaido an iconic image for the people from this part of Japan. Presumably the promise is that if you drink this Guarana laced drink you will become as ferocious and active as the pictured bear. 

The drink comes in two variations, the brown bear version as shown above and a second clear version with a picture of a white bear on the front, clearly described as being "not polar bear, but Ezo Brown Bear of Winter". This is what it looks like: 

The back of the bottle is also filled with all kinds of interesting descriptions about bears and Hokkaido which essentially make no sense and on top of that the main ingredient for the drink according to the list on the back, seems to be a potato... 

With all this entertainment one almost forgets about the drink itself, but it is actually very decent. Sweet, but not too sweet it is most similar to a mild version of an old school root beer mixed with a touch of bubblegum flavour. The white version, which is sweeter than the brown is more like slight bubblegum flavour mixed with Sprite. 

Check out our video below for the full review: 

Check out all our reviews of bizarre Asian snacks, foods and drinks here: Crazy from Kong!
And you can check out my blog here: Spencer Douglass Blog

Kanikko Crab Snack - Eating Baby Crabs...

Well these were really a weird snack! This snack was bought for us by Emma Moosa and was essentially a bunch of tiny little deep fried crabs inside of some giant crab packaing. You can see what they looked like here: 

As you can see from the picture above, the crabs were presented in their entirety with their tiny legs, claws, shells and even eyes intact (presumably their tiny little brains too...). On top of that, these were not a variation of the ever popular "soft shell crabs" that are served in Japanese and some other Asian restaurants all year round, but rather appear to be regular hard shelled crabs just in small sized and fried to crispy. As a result they were still pretty tough and brittle, as Arne described "it was like eating teeth". The flavour was intensely fishy and they were pretty stinky to boot.

Overall this was very far from being a tasty snack and I think was a pretty gruesome experience for all involved. Check out our video review to see our full reactions and meet our special guest star Emma:  

Check out all our reviews of bizarre Asian snacks, foods and drinks here: Crazy from Kong!
And you can check out my blog here: Spencer Douglass Blog

Raspberry Cheesecake Kit Kat - A Sweet Delicious Treat!

Delicious!!! That's how I'd describe this wonderful Kit Kat creation from those ever inventive folks at Kit Kat Japan.

This is the second raspberry flavoured Kit Kat I've tried from Nestle Japan, the first one being the special Valentine's Kit Kat from 2010 which was a dark chocolate Kit Kat flavoured with both raspberry and passionfruit. However, where the flavour contrast they were going for that time of crisp fresh fruit contrasting with rich bitter dark chocolate was certainly respectable in concept, but in actuality a bit disappointing this one was absolutely excellent. Call me simplistic, but the combination of rich creamy and sweet milk chocolate with fresh and crisp raspberry was excellent and although I could not pick out any "cheese" flavour as such (they state that they use 1.7% real cheese in this product) it did have a certain creaminess to it.

As well as the fantastic flavour you can see from the photos above and below that the packaging is absolutely gorgeous. There's a little insignia on the front showing a crown and stating "Sweets Concept" - this refers to Nestlé's campaign to re-produce the flavours of more sophisticated sweets / cakes / desserts etc. in this case a raspberry cake filled with cream cheese as also shown on the packaging.

If you break the wafers in half and have a look inside, you will see that the raspberry flavoured cream is a rich pink colour and is sandwiched between layers of wafer biscuit. This sort of attention to detail that most people wouldn't even notice is just one more reason why I love Kit Kat Japan.

Well there won't be any surprises when you watch our review as to whether we loved the product or not, but it was still a lot of fun eating it and as this is one of Joes's earliest reviews I hope you'll still check it out: 

Check out all our reviews of bizarre Asian snacks, foods and drinks here: Crazy from Kong!
And you can check out my blog here: Spencer Douglass Blog

Lays Magic Masala Chips - A Spicy New Sensation From India!

Who knew that Lays, one of the most famous brand of crisps from the US, have a totally different line of crisps for the Indian market? Well I was traveling over there a while ago and I came across a whole selection of flavours of Lays created specially for the Indian market. Of the various ones available "Magic Masala" seemed like the most interesting so I picked it up and brought it back to Hong Kong to be the first ever Indian product to be reviewed on Crazy from Kong!

For those of you who don't know Masala means a mix of spices (eg: Garam Masala in India) and you can see the exact mix of spices used for these crisps displayed on the packet: Chilies, Turmeric, Cloves and Ginger. Once we broke open the packet and tasted them, we found out that the crisps were really delicious, full of flavour and with a really prominent spice profile. Many times I've bought crisps in the past with exotic descriptions, but when I tried them I found that they were relatively bland and certainly didn't represent the tastes they claimed, but that was definitely not the case here. These crisps definitely tasted like spicy Masala treats and I could see why they are apparently very popular in India. What a pity they don't seem to sell them anywhere else.

The chips themselves were ridge cut, meaning that they are crunchier than regular chips. I would suggest that a really good way to eat them would be with a cool yoghurt based sauce like the traditional raita (often made with yoghurt, cucumber and mint) below:

It seems that there are a whole bunch of other specialty Lay's crisps and that there are different sets of special chip series created for each different Asian country! We're definitely going to be reviewing some of the special flavours created for China and hopefully will have the chance to review some more of the delicious Indian ones too. 

Check out our video review below and if anyone has any idea what the tagline on the crisp packet "be a little dilogical" means then please let us know! 

Check out all our reviews of bizarre Asian snacks, foods and drinks here: Crazy from Kong!
And you can check out my blog here: Spencer Douglass Blog