New Pocky from Glico!

Pocky new products from Glico!

Image from Glico.

It seems that, for summer, Glico has finally come around to my way of thinking. Part of their marketing for the "rare cheesecake" Pocky includes the idea that it tastes great chilled. As attentive readers with good memories may recall, the only way I really like Pocky is cold.

"Rare cheesecake" in Japan means the type with is creamy and closer to cream cheese than "cake". It's a version of New York cheesecake without the intense heft. At any of the dainty little cake shops in Japan, you can choose between "rare" and baked. One is usually white or off-white and the other is closer to yellow or tan. I'm guessing that these will have a pretty nice flavor which is slightly tangy and not the usual "cheese" flavor in Japan. That is, it won't taste like cheddar or Gouda or some other pungent cheese mixed with sugar.

Besides this summer offering, and this is being advertised as a limited edition summer flavor, Glico is positioning the coconut Pocky and a "tropical" flavor which is mango and pineapple. The coconut flavor has been around for ages, but I guess pairing it with the tropical flavor helps conjure up images of beaches and cool blue oceans. I'm not bothering to include an image, but the coconut box has an image of a blue ocean to counterbalance the hot-looking sunset on the mango and pineapple box.

If I run across it, I may indeed pop for the cheesecake version because I'm a sucker for "rare cheesecake" flavors, but I'll probably pass on the tropical flavors. If my readers try these out, let me know how they are and if they took you out of your daily grind and filled your head with images of relaxing beaches while on summer vacation or just made you think about chocolate-coated pretzel sticks.