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Barbie Food, Anyone?

Japanese mini-food snacks from best to most kitschy

Guests are coming over unexpectedly. You’re completely out of fresh treats, such as, say, ice cream, croissants, cheesecake, fresh fruits and vegetables and, er, hamburgers. What do you do?

Well, Japanese cracker, cookie and candy makers such as Glico — who brought you the oft imitated, never replicated Pocky — have a solution, of sorts, for the harried hostess: mini-foods. Approximately one inch-long, these snack foods in oh-so kawai, or cute, packaging crib some of the characteristics or simply aim to duplicate the joys of freshly baked goodies or, hell, fantasy taste sensations such as berry-flavored, fudge-dipped mushrooms. You can just imagine some frazzled wannabe hausfrau throwing Bourbon Every Burger cookies, miniature dead ringers for the real greasy deal, onto a plate and calling it done when Wimpy comes calling.

But how do these tiny terrors size up? It was a potentially yummy job and someone had to do it, so Anna Mantzaris — former cookbook editor and current chief editor of San Francisco Bride magazine — and I bellied up to the Formica table earlier this week, put indigestion on the line and checked out some mini-products — all for the sake of you dear, hungry readers. You’ll be glad we did.

BEST SAVORY SNACK
Mame Long crackers (Morinaga, $1.69)

“I’m weary,” Mantzaris said. “I’m wary,” I said. Mantzaris eyed the light green potato stick-like snacks with trepidation while I noted I felt simultaneously drawn to and repelled by the pictures of bright, bursting pea pods on the paper container. But we both ended up adoring these light, supercrispy and flavorful vegetable sticks, which, contrary to the packaging, are made of green beans, sweet potato starch and powdered spinach.

“They’re very pea-like, like wasabi peas, but they’re very easy to eat,” Mantzaris said, taking another. “I was skeptical, but now I like them. I would buy them and dip them in aioli for an uptown snack.”

A substitute for the real green garden veggies? I don’t think so. Mame Long crackers appear to have no nutritional value whatsoever. But they sure taste like they’re good for you, which may be the next best thing.

BEST SWEET SNACK
Karipori Grape & Melon candy (Kabaya, $1.39)

“Mmm, these smell like the best lip gloss you ever had,” raved Mantzaris, holding a purple, grape-flavored candy stick up to her nose before biting in and announcing, “Pure sugar!”

Packed two per wrapper into a little box styled like the hippest electro/new wave album, these finger-sized candy sticks rocked our houses like Pixie Sticks in a literally solid, stick form. The grape and melon flavoring was intense, and chewing mine, I felt like I was toothing on a candy drop. Weird, but good weird.

“It’s like being at a summer party and having a fresh fruit cup with fresh melon. These are so good,” Mantzaris said, before bestowing the ultimate compliment: “Good Jolly Rancher flavor.”

KITSCHY, KOOKY AND KINDA KOOL
Kapu Kapu Caplico cookies (Glico, $4.19)

Shaped like tiny ice cream cones, this snack will kill you with cuteness if it doesn’t win you over with its space-age taste. Each mini-cone is packaged individually with images of cartoon animals performing various sporting feats, like skydiving or lighting an Olympic torch or attending a nationalist rally (?!). The naive disjunction between those images’ gung-ho spirit and these crispy, animal face-imprinted cones with gluey chocolate, vanilla and strawberry pseudo-ice cream innards is fascinating all by itself, but Mantzaris really got into the memories the snacks evoked. “These remind me of freeze-dried ice cream we’d get when I was a kid,” she said. “Like what the astronauts would eat.”

LE PLEASANT SURPRISE
Mini Croissant Choco Pico Vanilla (Fujiya, $1.49)

Hankering for the buttery, fatty taste of a croissant, but you just want one teeny weeny bite? Well, these strangely flaky, tiny croissant-shaped approximations might satisfy, if you can overlook the synthetic-tasting, quasi-vanilla cream filling.

“They did a very good job with the outside, but the inside reminds me of microwave popcorn butter,” said Mantzaris, taking a nibble. “I think they would have been better off without the inside.”

“They are ingenious,” I said, admiring the nicely modeled cookies.

“This is like Barbie food,” Mantzaris declared.

’SHROOM TIME
Akai Frumi Kinoko No Yama cookies (Meiji, $1.99)

These attractively detailed, little, mushroom-shaped cookies sport fudgy, pink caps that taste like berry and white chocolate-flavored erasers, and have stems that are made of crispy vanilla cookie. Made with dried raspberries, strawberries and blueberries, these little cookies are a trip, as long as you don’t expect too much more than a few supersweet moments. “Something to bring out the Alice in Wonderland in your favorite acid casualty,” I said, “or for when you get the munchies.”

BAD ADVERTISING, BAD SNACK
Chigo No Chizu Cake (Fujiya, $2.29)

Boy, hard to get more misguided than these oddball eats. Imagine quasi-cheesecake-flavored cream covered in a thin layer of cocoa and flakes of mysterious origin. Then lower your expectations tenfold — and you kind of capture the inescapable badness of these nasty digits. They look like Almond Roca, but their baldly artificial taste makes you nostalgic for even that old jawbreaker of a candy.

“They look like they have flecks of strawberry on the outside of the box,” Mantzaris said, pointing to the image on the container and then to the “cake” itself. “That doesn’t look anything like that.”

SO WRONG
Bourbon Every Burger cookies (Bourbon, $1.89)

Mantzaris had high hopes for these miniature burger-shaped snacks, because the box brought up memories of Crayolas — and they were so darn adorable, with real sesames on the eensy buns and a layer of chocolate representing the supposed burger. And that is the very problem: real sesame combined with chocolate — a taste we’re not looking forward to again anytime soon.

MSG CAN’T HELP THESE
Baby Star Hoshi Ramen crackers ($2.39)

Ramen sans soup, anyone? I have to say I was seduced by these crackers in the past because they came with a fab, phat charm of a little, bright yellow Chinese cartoon character — which itself is pretty interesting and telling considering Japanese anime characters are almost always fair skinned. (Maybe some people are more Asian than others?) We went into these star-shaped crackers, stuffed in a Cup O’ Noodles-style bowl, expecting a sesame flavor. Instead we got a salty, nondescript taste. To needlessly complicate matters, the snack includes MSG — a lot of good that did.

These cute snacks can be found at Maruwa Foods, 1737 Post St., S.F., as well as other Japanese food stores.