I say “goodbye” to Hello Panda
I was excited to try the chocolate Hello Panda…cookies? What do you call these? They’ve got pandas printed on the front doing fun things! They are filled with chocolate! What is not to love about these? Turns out most everything.
As noted before, there is a Five & Dime shop down in Salida, Colorado. That’s where I found the Dr. Pepper Cotton Candy, and it’s also where I found these Japanese…cookies? Biscuits? Yes, Wikipedia calls them “biscuits.”
I initially thought these were hazelnut-filled, but I was still excited when I got them home and realized it was just plain old chocolate. I mean, look at the cute little pandas printed on the biscuits doing fun things like skateboarding and soccer! How can you resist that?
How Does It Taste?
These are absolutely nothing special. The idea is great! Bake a shortbread-ish biscuit and fill it with things! The reality is they are filled with a brown sugary paste Meiji is calling chocolate, and the biscuit shell is simply fine. But what about the pandas?! I have some bad news.
Appearance and Expectations
The print on every biscuit is nearly non-existent or impossible to make out. On some of them, it was like I was looking at hieroglyphics that were printed ages ago and I was an archeologist trying to make sense of the washed away print. In others, there was legible print but you had no idea what to make of it. The biscuits did look and feel like they were going to taste better than they did. They were slightly greasy to the touch, which I know sounds bad but almost makes them seem fresh. Plus, they had baking marks on the bottom so you could picture them being swooped out of the oven before they were pumped full of chocolate. The taste just didn’t match the appearance.
Overall Opinion
I get the sense these are hugely popular in Japan. I do not understand why. Maybe if the printed pandas were better, I could see them as being fun for kids. But even kids would be disappointed by these drawings. And the taste is just meh.
Rating
1/5 Adam Heart Eyes. Even with bad chocolate and a meh biscuit, if I could have seen fun pandas I would have been happy. Alas.