Glico Matcha Pocky 2-Layer Uji Green Tea 2 Packs

The premium matcha Pocky, built in two chocolate layers: a cocoa biscuit is coated in a thick matcha chocolate, then wrapped again in an aerated, mousse-textured chocolate. You get a hard snap and then something that gives way and melts. The matcha is genuinely strong, and the coating is noticeably thicker than the single-layer box's. Buy it if you want the good version rather than the everyday one; if you want something you can eat a whole bag of without thinking, the single-layer matcha box is the easier buy.

ポッキー2層仕立て＜濃い渋み抹茶＞: nisou shitate, meaning "made in two layers". Matcha is powdered green tea.

What you're getting

• Two coatings, not two biscuits. Layer one is a dense matcha chocolate straight onto the stick; layer two is whipped with air until it is light. You can see both in cross-section if you snap a stick.
• The biscuit is cocoa, not matcha. That is the real difference from our other matcha box: the bitterness under the coating here is cocoa, and it is what keeps a thickly-coated sweet stick from cloying.
• It is properly rich, and that part holds up. It sits clearly above ordinary matcha Pocky for the people who eat a lot of both. What splits opinion is the astringency the name promises: it tastes milder than billed about as often as it delivers. Rich, yes. Bracing, not reliably.
• Two layers you can see; two flavours you may not taste. The cross-section is unmistakable, but whether the two layers actually taste different from each other in the same bite is genuinely disputed. Worth knowing before you pay for the construction.
• It carries caffeine, as any real green-tea product does, which Glico declares on the pack, and there is more of it than in the single-layer matcha box.
• It is a limited run: Glico sells it until it is gone rather than stocking it year-round.
• 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.

Two things before you order. We sell two matcha Pocky whose Japanese names differ by a single character. This is 濃い渋み: koi shibumi, "astringent", the two-layer one; the other is 濃い深み, koi fukami, "deep", single-layer with matcha in the biscuit, sweeter and easier going. And take the storage seriously on this one in particular: the outer layer is an aerated chocolate, one of the softest coatings of any Pocky we stock, and Glico's instruction is to keep it below 28 °C and out of direct sun.