Hirake! Ponkikki is a popular children’s television show in Japan. Tune-in to Fuji TV mid-morning and you’re bound to come face to face with Gachapin, a green bucktoothed dinosaur, and his friend Mukku, a red Yeti. Both characters feature on boxes of Pretz, and here we have Mukku on a box of Honey Roast Pretz by Glico Japan.

Glico Pretz Honey Roast differ from Glico Pretz Roast by replacing the sugar syrup coating with one made from honey and leaving out the sugar crystals on the surface each biscuit stick. The box and each Honey Roast were about two-thirds the size of regular Roast Pretz.

Your sense of smell can sometimes be your first encounter with packaged food and these Honey Roast Pretz release an almost sickening sweetness on opening. But first impressions can be deceiving. Upon tasting, the sweetness of Honey Roast Pretz, which came through from the start, has a depth that’s accented with floral notes from the honey. Past the honey, the buttery biscuit came through to mellow the sweetness, leaving a sweet buttery flavour in the aftertaste. I do miss the extra crisp that the sugar crystals added to Roast Pretz, but the floral notes in the sweetness make up for it.

This Glico Pretz Honey Roast contained ~20 biscuit sticks. It was produced in Japan and purchased in Okayama, Japan in 2015.