Treats Box Subscription Box Review – August 2015

Treats is a new monthly snack subscription full of snacks from around the world. You can expect to receive eclectic and interesting snacks that you’ve never sampled before! The Standard Pack offers 4-5 snacks, while the Premium box offers 8-10. You’ll get your first box within a few days, which I love!

The snacks are carefully packed and neatly wrapped in tissue.

They pack so well because there is so much in here!

The handy card give gives the English (or at least Romanji) translation of the contents’ name and maker.  Take the link to the Treats site to learn more about each item.

This pack featured treats from Japan!

Everything in the box.  There was a bunch in here, and the packs were much larger sizes than you typically get in try boxes.  The Japanese are known for their cute and sometimes zany candies, but savory snacks were well represented in this box, too!

Two crunchy snacks from Calbee, who markets Harvest Snaps in the U.S.:

Calbee Baked Shrimp Chips are crispy and have a nice light texture.  The taste is mildly spicy, and the shrimp is much more of presence in the aroma of the chips than the flavor.

Jagabee Soy Sauce Potato Crisps.  What’s more American than the French Fry?  These look like your generic frozen fry, but they are like nothing in the U.S.   The butter and soy sauce seasoning lends a sweet and salty taste, but the potato flavor is less pronounced than one would expect.  The most unique aspect is the saturation of the fries — they are crispy but super moist throughout, like they are holding their cooking grease in perfect suspension.

Meiji Watapachi Melon Soda:  This is a fun and crazy cotton candy meets PopRocks concoction in a sparkling melon flavor.  Melons can be quite expensive in Japan, so perhaps this is the Champagne of cotton candies.

Kasugai Fruit Gummy Assortment:  Really well-made gummy candies with a soft texture and strong, but natural taste.  I have seen these in lychee, kiwi, and ramune before — this pack features lychee, mango, and strawberry flavors.

The Watapachi is strangely composed — the crystals and cotton candy don’t appear to be wrapped together or mixed in any specific ratio.  The cotton candy is what you would expect, but with a honeydewish flavor, and the powerful crystals really pop!  The gummy assortment had lots of packs inside — I neglected to count before munching a bunch, but I think there were over two dozen.Glico Giant Caplico StrawberryGlico Giant Caplico Strawberry

Glico Giant Caplico Strawberry:  This giant ice cream cone had the standard cone to hold it, but it was filled with bubbled icing candy (like the coating on Pocky, but vascular like an Aero bar.

Glico Pocky Tsubu Tsubu Ichigo:  The classic Japanese export candy, Pocky is pretzel-stick shortbread skewers coated in a sweet frosted icing. This pack was strawberry, but it had tiny red specks in the frosting — I can’t recall if I’ve ever seen that in the export packs we see in the U.S.  It’s worth noting that the Pocky box had two bags of sticks, so it was double the size I typically see!

The Giant Caplico had a chocolate Aero-style center hidden within the strawberry!

Morinaga Milk Caramel:  Light in color and texture, these individually wrapped caramels are have been in production since 1913 and are probably one of the earliest western-style candies still in production.  The inner sleeve of the package has a photo of a building (but no translation, so anyone guess as to the significance).  It looks like some packs have a pop-up version, but we didn’t get that in ours.

Uha Cola Puccho:  Very much like Hi-Chew in a Coke v. Pepsi, Heath v. Skor, or Oreo v. Hydrox kind of way.  The exterior layer is like a like a dry gummy, but also similar to a super-soft Starburst or Now and Later, and the interior is juicy with some flavor bits appearing here and there.

Uegaki Kaki-no-tane:  Another huge bag of snacks!  These little crackers are what always comes to my mind when I think of Japanese savory snacks (aside from wasabi peas and dried fish).  The glossy coating and snappy crispness are complemented by a nice rounded sesame flavor.

Amanoya Himemaru:  Crispy and crunchy, these are a delightful snack.  They hover between sweet and savory, but the seasoning is better suited to painting with beer than it would be with ice cream, so I have to go with savory.  This is my favorite item in the box — a really addictive crunchy snack.

I was really impressed by this box!  There was a good number of items, but the size of each item was astounding — big bags of all the crunchy snacks, multi-packs of the Pocki, caramels and chews, and a big bag of gummies — every item was provided in a sharable portion.  Plus, every item (with the possible exception of the shrimp chips, which are sold in the U.S. in that packaging) was provided in the Japanese domestic packaging, which adds some visual and cultural interest, and a lot of fun.  At just under $25, the premium pack is a decent deal too — I spent that on my last Trader Joe’s trip and didn’t get much more mileage out of it snack-wise.

Visit Treats to subscribe or find out more. You can save 15% on your first month with coupon code HELLO15.