Cratz メキシカンサルサ＆チキン

From the people who brought you Pocky Sticks, Glico, a more adult version, made for scarfing down with beer, Cratz works a similar paradigm - crunchy baked dough cylinders with flavor coatings. Cratz, though are little hard biscotto (twice-cooked) pellets with intense seasonings, mostly built around salt - and thus demanding a good swig of beer or shochu to wash it all away. The Cratz flavor pellets always come with a few toasted almonds in every package. Pocky Sticks, on the other hand, are delicate wands with dipped in sweet fondants (mainly chocolate) made to indulge the sweet tooth.

For what it's worth, both Cratz and Pocky products are true winners in the junk food sweepstakes, Pocky Sticks actually having become a cultural signifier of Japanese sweets.

Cratz's flagship products come in a few basic flavor combos - Spice Cheese and Pepper Bacon being the year-round favorites. And then there are changing flavors to keep the consumer interested in the product. Hitting the racks recently was Mexican salsa and chicken (メキシカンサルサ＆チキン). Among the ingredients listed to give you that truly Mexican taste are chicken extract powder (can we say bullion cubes?) dextrin (can we say hydrolyzed starch?) salsa seasonings (?) and bacon extract (now we're talkin' Mexican!).

In endless variations the strange and novel concoctions that come out of food labs throughout the world, this one vaguely hits the mark. Granted, the Japanese really don't get Mexican, but a vague hint of jalepeno (most likely chemically created) with the slightest hint of tomato and plenty of salt, brought back vague recollections of some some sort of Mexican bizzarro world of Doritos, Old El Paso Taco Seasoning and Pace Chunky Salsa. But wait! That's what most estadounidenses think about when think of Mexican food! Maybe the Japanese food scientists hit the mark spot on.

And of course, any product that signs on Matsumoto Hitoshi, the comic genius responsible for the films Dianipponjin and Symbol, is definitely cratzin' the zeitgeist.