Sunday, January 4, 2009

Tirol Christmas Flavors

Christmas Tirol

Another thing my friend brought when she visited for New Year's Eve was a cup of Tirol chocolates, including two Christmas flavors. Although I've never reviewed the basic Tirol flavors, I'm just going to review the new ones here. Limited edition flavors are always more fun, right? I'll start with Christmas Island Salt (the orange one).

Christmas Island Salt

First, look at the cute little crab on the wrapper! I didn't notice it until I looked at this picture after I took it. Anyhow, Christmas Island is Australian territory apparently famous for guano mining, and possibly salt.

The chocolate has a strong caramel scent and taste, and it's definitely oversweet. Thankfully, it's so small that the burn doesn't set in (as it might with a giant KitKat). The salt is definitely strong as well, and I found that as I ate it, the saltiness and sweetness came in alternating waves, which was kind of neat. There's a cracker inside, but it doesn't really seem to add much. It was hard to tell if the saltiness came from the chocolate, the cracker, or both. It was fun and interesting to taste, but not delicious. B

Tirol Christmas Soda

Next was Christmas Soda. I've bought some kids' fizzy beverages from Japanese markets in late December before, so maybe this is based on that concept. Nothing too cute on the package for this one, though.

The smell reminded me of lemon Pez. The chocolate was almost buttery and melted away quickly, not giving too much flavor. What's left is a sticky, chewy gummy center that's rather sour. The texture combination was fun, but the flavors didn't go together well at all. But, it's a limited edition flavor, meaning it doesn't matter how it tastes because it will be gone soon. B-

Tirol Chocolate website (Japanese)

3 comments:

Orchid64 said...

I rather envy that you got these since they sound cool (Christmas flavors always do), but they didn't sound very good. I think caramel is something which is often too sweet in Japan in my experience and I'm always reluctant to try "soda" flavors since I'm not a fan of ramune.

Anonymous said...

Christmas Island salt sounds interesting, though i didn't know it was famous for salt. Most aussies know it because the detention centre is there for illegal boat people!!

Nice post. :)

ebidebby said...

Orchid - My friend in Kyoto hard a hard time finding some, so she gave me her own cup. I'm just glad the caramel one was so small, it made it more palatable.

Kelly - It was interesting! I wasn't expecting it to be so salty. But that's interesting about Christmas Island. It's always nice to learn from candy. :)