FOOD NEWS
Ranking Pocky Flavors From Worst To Best
BY Koko Paranteau
12. Salted Vanilla
Salt crystals blanket the exterior coating of these sticks, but licking the flakes reveals a lack of flavor. These offer a dull sweetness and no salty zing.
This flavor was quite difficult to track down, and sadly, there was very little correlation between how challenging it was to find and how rewarding it was to enjoy.
11. Cookies & Cream
Despite being one of the few Pocky flavors endowed with a chocolate stick rather than an unflavored biscuit, the stick appears pasty — more gray than sable.
The coating tastes like sweetened milk. It evades the qualities of cookies and cream ice cream, cookies dunked in milk, and Oreos, which are misleadingly illustrated on the pack.
10. Banana
The flavor on this Pocky is overripe, flat, and reminiscent of a banana Airhead. It has an artificial banana scent that will hit you as soon as you unseal the pack.
The use of a chocolate biscuit instead of a plain one really saves this Pocky from the bottom of the pile, but it'll probably only please fans of the divisive banana flavor.
9. Matcha
In color, this Pocky is closer to a subdued Yoda than Kermit the Frog. As for flavor, it veers toward the profile of a matcha latte and away from the unadulterated tea.
The people behind this Pocky avoided overly sweetening the treat and distracting from matcha's grassy notes, but the creaminess of these sticks muddies their overall appeal.
8. Double Rich Matcha
A side-by-side comparison shows that the double rich matcha Pocky has a two-shade leg-up over its kid brother, the matcha Pocky. It also has a matcha glaze.
The double rich matcha Pocky also shines through on the taste. It's earthier, grassier, and more pleasantly bitter, with the soft, matcha stems making the sticks more desirable.