The Great Pocky Experiment.

Food is an enormous part of any worthwhile travel experience, and being in China for a good part of a half a year means eating a lotta things. Some tastes have been less successful (stinky tofu, anyone?) while others I could (and try to) eat everyday (muslim noodles, please). I believe I had had Pocky before coming to China, but it’s got a cultish following here despite it’s Japanese origin. The kids here HATE Japan. They aren’t shy about it either, please see Hannah’s blogpost for more details. I had stashed a box of the chocolate dipped cookie sticks in my backpack one day which had Blaze dropping to his knees begging me to give him a piece. Considering Blaze’s English skill, it was pretty impressive to hear him say so many words in English to get his point across. It’s pretty good stuff and comes in a rainbow of flavors. Hannah had the stroke of brilliance to buy as many flavors as we could find at the local Suguo and talk to everyone in the group to find a combination worthy to name after themselves. We are talking 15 boxes of Pocky and 23 flavor combinations. As the flavors piled up, the idea of the Great Pocky Experiment got more and more difficult to resist.

Rows and rows and rows of the stuff.

Despite our love for Pocky, there were Nanjing sites to visit, kids to teach, and translation mistakes to be made. Life gets busy here in China. It was surprising difficult to find the time to start the Pocky project. The rows of boxes sat atop a box shelf, tantalizingly taunting us before bed when all you want to do is chow down on new flavors of the stuff.  They sat quietly, like row of books atop a shelf you are dying to read but you can't just blitz through because you want to give the whole process justice. But no; we had to wait. But the payoff was worth it. This morning, we decided dozens of Pocky sticks would make for an excellent breakfast. 

Half way through the matching up process...yum!

Hannah started by laying out all the flavor combinations; White Mousse and Double Chocolate, Strawberry Cream and Banana, Almond Milk Tea and Matcha, etc. Before too long, a couple dozen perfectly angled pairs of Pocky soon lined our desk. Hannah made her predictions, I made known my favorites, and then, only then, did the tasting begin.  Hannah filmed herself tasting the suggestions paired by our fellow teachers and graded each flavor combination on three fields of criteria: aesthetics, flavor blending, and overall taste. There were some surprises; I was not a fan of any of the strawberry flavors which nixed out a few contenders. "Strawberries and Cream”, “Strawberry Cheesecake”, "I Like Smoothies Berry Much"; all of which got low scores on my leaderboard. There were no surprises when my top rated were the chocolate contenders. The thicker mousse Pocky’s were divine and only got better when paired with more chocolate. Shocker: the very best flavor in my opinion was the S’mores combo. Basically, take all the chocolate Pocky’s you can find (Mousse Milk, Double Chocolate, Classic Chocolate, Regular Milk, Mousse Dark Chocolate) and eat them all in one go. It. Was. Delicious. My “Black and White” combo is the poor man’s version and was quite tasty, prejudice aside. 

By the end, I was so sick off Pocky, but there was one last flavor to go; “The Fruit Smoothie”; A mixture of all the fruit flavors, from Mango Mousse to Double Strawberry; It was disgusting and a sad ending to the Pocky Experiment. Luckily, the overall winner as dubbed my averaging mine and Hannah’s scores was the “Banana Split”; a classic combination of banana and chocolate. I pushed aside my sugar sick feeling to let that taste linger in my mouth before heading to class. 

Later that evening, we had all the other teachers over to taste some new flavors of Pocky (and to get rid of the remainder) with a little Pocky Mixer. Tried and true and new combinations were made, and everyone seemed to have rediscovered a love for the sweets. I think I’ll be off the stuff for a while…but I will be bringing home a few boxes. 

The remains of the Great Pocky Experiment.