きのこの山、たけのこの里が大人味になった
The other day, my mom found special boxes of "Kinoko No Yama" and "Takenoko No Sato," which are long-selling chocolate snacks in Japan.
Here's some info about those item.
<Kinoko No Yama>
It's written as きのこの山, and the literal translation is "mountain of mushroom."
This snack has mushroom shape and consists of chocolate for the pileus and cracker for the stipe.
One of the employees used a chocolate, which is also produced by Meiji Seika Kaisha, Limited, and put a stick of biscuit one day and thought it looked like a mushroom.
This is how they started creating the mushroom shaped chocolate snack.
Around the time they finalized the product, Western names were in full flower, but they wanted to express nostalgia, nature, and warmth of human being so that they dared to name it in Japanese 「きのこの山(Kinoko No Yama / mountain of mushroom)」 and launched this in 1975.
<Takenoko No Sato>
It's written as たけのこの里, and it means "land of bamboo shoot."
This has bamboo shoot shape and the base is plain cookie, and outside is chocolate coated.
To compare with Kinoko No Yama, this uses a little bit less chocolate and the content of the package is slightly less.
Interestingly, Takenoko No Sato sells more than the original and sister product, Kinoko No Yama.
This was first launched in 1979.
The new version uses bitter chocolate from Madagascar and Ecuador.
And the product names have "Otona No" in front of the original names.
Otona literally means adult, and I think when the Japanese create some bitter or sophisticated version of long-selling or totally new products, they tend to use "Otona (adult)" for pretty much everything.
Anyways, according to the press release,
These new snacks were sold from September 24, 2013 (and I wonder why I didn't know about these till today...).
The main reason to produce these bitter version was that those who grew up with the original snacks are already grown-ups and these days, adult-oriented snacks are taking big portion of the market, thus, they made adult version of the well-known Kinoko No Yama and Takenoko No Sato.
"Otona No Kinoko No Yama" uses special chocolate made with Dominican and Ecuador cacao, and the stipe is made with pretzel to emphasize the roasted flavor.
For "Otona No Takenoko No Sato," the chocolate is a mix of Dominican and Madagascar cacao and for the cookie base, they used cocoa flavored dough to enhance the richness.
For the package, the main color is dark brown so that the package well blends in with quality adult time.
Regular version's packages are using yellow and green, so that the packages are more outstanding and provide lively images.
*When I translated, I thought using "adult" may not be a suitable word and makes it sounds like porn, but I can't find any other word....
This is "Kinoko No Yama."
All the mushroom shaped pieces are displayed on a wooden table and on a red plate.
Back side of the package.
On the right corner above, there's a short explanation of this chocolate snack.
"Dominican cacao and Ecuador cacao. We've blended high-quality cacao together. Cacao has deep and also roasted flavor. We've created this for relaxing time for adult."
And the pileus uses carefully selected and blended chocolate, and stipe is made of pretzel.
Inner package is gold.
Somehow the color made me think this product is special.
Inner lid has another little note about this product.
華やぐ薫り。
ほのかな酸味。
甘さひかえた、コク深さ。
香ばしさ。
大人のきのこの山。
それは、
くつろぎそのもの。
Gorgeous fragrance.
Delicate acidic flavor.
Lightly sweetened, rich and savory.
Roasted fragrance.
Adult Kinoko No Yama.
That is,
absolutely relaxing.
This is how it looked when I opened.
The surface is a little bit white as they're scratched each other in the box.
The chocolate was sweet but not like the milk chocolate.
The stipe made of pretzel was much crispier and harder than the regular one.
And in the end, I felt the bitter and sour taste gradually.
<Nutrition> 64g per package
Protein: 5.8g
Fat: 20.9g
Carbohydrate: 35.6g
Natrium: 100mg
This is "Takenoko No Sato."
Same as the Kinoko, the package is creating a sophisticated atmosphere.
The wooden table seems the same but the color of the plate is dark brown or black here.
Back side.
On the right top corner, the lines are slightly different from the Kinoko one.
"Dominican cacao and Madagascar cacao. We've blended high-quality cacao together. Cacao has refreshing and mellow. We've created this for relaxing time for adult."
Inside of the package, this plastic pouch is bronze color.
On the inner lid, there's also a similar poem like Kinoko one.
果実のような薫り。
ほのかな酸味。
甘さひかえた、コク深さ。
ココアの深み。
大人のたけのおの里。
それは、く
つろぎそのもの。
Fruity fragrance.
Delicate acidic flavor.
Lightly sweetened, rich and savory.
Rich cocoa flavor.
Adult Kinoko No Yama.
That is,
absolutely relaxing.
In the bronze package, there're the snacks.
They're covered with cookie crumbs.
You can see the layers as same as the actual bamboo shoot.
The chocolate was bitter and the cocoa flavored biscuit was crispy.
As this product uses less chocolate, this was lighter and I could enjoy the cookies.
<Nutrition> 61g per package
Calories: 349kcal
Protein: 5.4g
Fat: 22.4g
Carbohydrate: 31.2g
Natrium: 100mg
Some prefer Kinoko, and others prefer Takenoko.
The way I enjoy this the most is I buy both of them and open the boxes, then eat each piece one after the other.
As far as I know, these are not limited version so you can get them as long as the product goes on.
For those who haven't eaten the original snacks, I highly recommend to try all the 4 items so that you can see the difference. (2 originals and 2 new ones.)
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