We love visiting Japan but it’s safe to say we’ll probably never visit during the summer months. The only thing more miserable than the hot and humid summer of Japan is choosing to take a holiday to such a climate during the dry and cool winter in Australia. Lucky for me though, N and T have no such reservations, which is how I’m lucky enough to try this Glico Pocky Shiawase no Hareringo.

Shiawase no Hareringo translates to ‘Happiness of Sunny Apples’ and was a limited release in April 2017.

The box featured Snoopy and is part of a campaign featuring a smartphone game where you catch thirty-three characters from the Peanuts franchise that have escaped from the boxes of various flavours of Pocky. When GPS is turned on and the game is launched, for example, in a park, aiming the camera of the smartphone at the packaging will cause the ‘escaped’ character to jump in and complete the blacked out silhouette of the package design. People who collect all the characters will receive a gift.

With that said, the character on this box is Faron, a minor cat character who’s an antagonist for Snoopy.

Each box comes with two individually sealed packages of Pocky.

Each Pocky has a pale green coloured biscuit stick that’s been enrobed in a similarly coloured, green apple flavoured cream. The biscuit stick is heart-shaped to create not only an interesting cross-section but also to carry more apple cream in the notch.

The crisp sweetness of green apples came through on opening the packaging. Upon tasting, the crunch of the biscuit stick was evident first, before the sweetness of the apple cream developed in the body to deliciously rich, yet bright and lightly tart, notes of green apple, and leaving a mellow apple sweetness on the palate. The apple flavour recalled the sweetness and tartness of the juice from fresh green apples without artificiality.

This Glico Pocky Shiawase no Hareringo contained 2 packs of 28.8 g. It was produced in Japan and gifted by friends visiting Japan in 2017.