Glico Choco Mint Pocky Mint Chocolate Sticks 2 Packs

Chocolate-mint Pocky: a cocoa biscuit stick under pale blue-green mint chocolate. The biscuit is faintly bitter, and the mint is gentle and cool rather than sharp. Buy it if you like mint chocolate but usually find it too strong; if you are after a proper cooling hit, there is not much of one here.

チョコミントポッキー: choko-minto pok-kii.

What you're getting

• A summer-only run in Japan. It is made for the season and stops when the run stops. What is on the shelf is what there is until next summer.
• The biscuit underneath is cocoa, not plain. Faintly bitter rather than sweet, which is unusual under a mint chocolate. There is a faint saltiness in the stick too.
• The mint is milder than the colour promises. It is a soft, cool mint rather than a sharp one. If you have had a chocolate-mint that made your mouth go cold, this is not that.
• The colour comes from algae. The only colouring in it is spirulina, which is blue, and the sticks come out a pale blue-green rather than a clear mint green. The first Japanese write-ups called this one the blue Pocky.
• It will not enjoy a Sydney summer. Glico's instruction is to keep it below 28 °C, and the chocolate is on the outside where the heat reaches first. In warm weather it softens, and a hot-day delivery can arrive softer than it left.
• Allergens: contains milk, wheat and soy. No ingredient on the list names the soy: it sits inside an ingredient the list does not break down, so this allergen line is the only place it shows. Read the pack's own label before you rely on ours.

You will find Japanese shopping pages marking this one discontinued. That is a seasonal run ending, not the product going away: it has come back nearly every summer for over a decade.