Kabaya Rilakkuma Butter Pretzels カバヤリラックマプレッツェルバター味

Here's one for the cool Japanese character fans (like me). Rilakkuma or リラックマ in Japanese is a bear who loves relaxing. Rila comes from "relax", and kuma is the word for bear in Japanese. This character and many other cute characters are the product of a company called San-X (who are also responsible for Tare Panda, Mamegoma, Kogepan, and Afroken amongst others). How do I know this? Well, I have been a fan for many years, and this website is one of my favourites. I can just see the anti-cute lovers rolling their eyes right about now.

Anyway, Rilakkuma has become a favourite with Japan-lovers, Otaku, and of course, children. Kabaya has had much success teaming their products up with the Rilakkuma character and especially around Valentine's day these type of character gifts are very popular. They also have a Rilakkuma Kit Kat, and chocolate biscuits.

The box itself is very cute and has many images of the characters on all sides. On one side is bookmark that you can cut out and use. I suppose if you got creative you could cut out all the images and paste them onto a card or whatever activity you wanted to use them for.


The pretzels themselves are the regular butter flavour. They come in a sealed foil pack with 32 grams of pretzels (approximately 30 sticks). The packaging is also the image of cute!

The pretzel sticks smell like buttery popcorn and taste like a nice fresh breadstick with butter. The butter has some sweetness to it, and it really is quite nice.

These are a good snack to carry around with you because the pack is flat enough to not take up too much room. I can imagine lots of kids and OL's snacking on these on the way to and from home/school/work.

I'm giving these a thumbs up. Cute and light, what more could you want? :)

Hokkaido Butter Shio Candy 北海道バター塩飴

The 100 yen stores in Japan are popular for the variety of goods you can buy there, all at a low price and great quality. Most 100 yen stores also have a corner selling snack foods and limited grocery items. I found these in a Daiso 100 yen store in Obihiro, among a wide variety of Japanese candy bags.

I had never seen these before but because of my love of all things Hokkaido, and Japan's obsession with salty candy/snacks, I decided that I would satisfy my curiosity by buying them.

The candies are made by Meito who appear to make candy, chocolate, teas, and icecreams. It's not a company I have ever come across before, but looking on their website I found quite a few other candy bags that I saw in the same 100 yen store as I bought these. They seem to be a cheaper candy option.

The salt used in this candy is stated to come from the Sea of Okhotsk. They also have table salt, sweeteners, Hokkaido butter, Hokkaido condensed milk, and b carotin, and the bag weighs 90g.

As per usual Japanese candy manufacturers each candy is individually wrapped, this candy is in a clear bag with the name in white. Each candy is small 1cm x 0.5cm, pale yellow and in a rounded rectangular shape. It has a small dent in the top.

It doesn't really smell like anything in particular. The first taste is slightly lemon and sweet. Yes, lemon. I don't know why that is. A little bit of salt emerges, and a buttery flavour also, but the lemon flavour is still present.

As I begin to suck the candy more, the buttery flavour gets stronger, and so does the salt. There is a slight sweetness but overall it is more butter and salt now than lemon or sugar flavours, which is good. The flavours are not big and bold, they are quite mild. This is a candy more for Japanese tastes, and is probably not suited to non-Japanese palates. I feel as if I am missing out when I eat this candy. I really expect it to develop into a full on butterscotch flavour, but it doesn't.

It was good for a look, obviously it didn't break the bank at 100 yen for a whole bag, and I will probably eat the rest of these, but, I wouldn't recommend them if you like bolder tastes.