Snack Monster: Lotte Kancho & Hello Panda

Several months ago, Borders sold some Asian snacks as part of a limited promotion. They had two kinds of Pocky: chocolate, which was delicious and sold out quickly, and strawberry cream, which no one wanted. They also had two different brands of milk chocolate-filled biscuits, Hello Panda & Lotte Kancho:

Hello Panda is a Japanese brand produced by Meiji Seika. I bought the kind with choco cream filling; they also make other varieties like peanut butter or vanilla cream. The cookies are the size of quarters & come in round and panda-head shapes. I found them overly sweet, with too much vanilla in the chocolate, but then I’m a dark chocolate eater. If you want to try some for yourself, many online vendors sell boxes, including Amazon.

Lotte Kancho, on the other hand, is Korean & produced by the Lotte Group. I preferred this brand, because the cookie wasn’t sweet & the filling lacked the vanilla aftertaste. Amusingly, “Kancho” is the Japanese word for “enema” and also slang for a Japanese practical joke where the prankster places his index fingers together and then tries to forcefully insert them into the victim’s anus. Not the best name for a chocolate biscuit, methinks.