Morinaga Choco Balls
July 2nd, 2008 by Rosa
These Morinaga Choco Balls were amongst the wide assortment of Japanese candies given to me by my friend Michael. It took me a while to find the name of these. The Morinaga logo is fairly clear in the top left corner (they make the pretty ubiquitous Hi-Chew candies), but the Choco Ball 40th Kyorochan seal is harder to notice. I wish I knew what Kyorochan means - maybe Choco Balls are celebrating a 40th anniversary? If so, then I’m not surprised that they’ve been around for so long. One taste of these Choco Balls had me addicted.
The Choco Balls are basically a crunchy chocolate cookie inside a shiny white chocolate coating - think Whoppers, but with different flavors. Usually I don’t enjoy white chocolate, as I find it way too sickeningly sweet, but here, it’s delicious. Like many Asian chocolates, the white chocolate shell has a creamy, fresh milk essence that’s refreshing. Maybe that’s why that toucan-looking thing on the box has a dairy cow print body.
The balls are perfectly-sized for popping, making it easy to get addicted.They’re smaller than Whoppers but bigger than M&Ms, and wonderfully, uniformly spherical. The clever packaging has a built-in spout near the top, and I found myself constantly reopening it to pour more Choco Balls into my hand so I could pop them in my mouth. I wish they came in a bigger box, as mine was all too soon emptied. An OMG for sure.
Stumble it!
This entry was posted onWednesday, July 2nd, 2008 at 8:00 am and is filed under Asian (China, Japan, and Korea), Morinaga, OMG, chocolate, cookie, received as gift, review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
July 2nd, 2008 at 1:54 pm
Could you tell me where I’d be able to get these? They look so good! Thank you very much.
July 3rd, 2008 at 4:36 am
The original “choco ball” is a chocolate-covered fried peanut. There are several variations and Kyorochan’s body is different for each.
“Chan” is a suffix added to names to denote affection (the suffixes are “san”, “kun” and “chan” - “san” is like Mr. or Ms.). It’s a diminutive like adding “y” to a child’s name (e.g., Booby). I think Kyoro is just a name and means nothing.
September 7th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
When I lived in Japan several years ago, this was one of my favorite candies. I saved the proof-of-purchases and sent them in to get a Choco-balls tin filled with plastic toys. I still have the tin.
Natsukashi, ne!