Hokkaidō, the northmost island of Japan, is famous for its seafood. Of all the seafood, giant scallops fried in butter is a particular favourite. I’m not a fan of raw scallops (eww, slimy!) but giant scallops cooked in butter? That’s something I could get my teeth into! I’ve yet to visit Hokkaidō, so for now, I’ll satisfy myself with Glico Pretz Scallops, essentially a biscuit stick covered in scallop seasoning.
Scallops Pretz has the same sweet/salty smell that you expect from the dried scallops in Chinese cooking. The smell is something you want to hang onto, as it doesn’t came through in the taste of the Pretz much at all. There’s only a faint hint of the sweet/salty umami flavour in the deliciously buttery flavoured seasoning. That said, you’re bound to get a whiff of the smell before every bite, so the scallop Pretz experience is complete.
The packaging featured Kyun Chan, the official mascot for Hokkaidō’s destination campaign. Kyun Chan is a ezo naki usagi, or crying rabbit, that belongs to the pika family and resembles a hamster. The back of the box describes Kyun Chan as being timid and a crybaby with a gentle personality and strong sense of curiosity. In the destination campaign, he wears a hat resembling various animals representative of each region in Hokkaidō, and here he’s wearing the headgear of the sika deer, a spotted deer that’s overly abundant in Hokkaidō (and Japan generally).
The box of Glico Pretz Scallops contained 2 packs each with ~20 pieces. It was a limited edition for Hokkaidō in Summer 2014, manufactured in Japan, and purchased in Ōsaka, Japan in 2014.