31 Days of Halloween: It's Black, and White

The overwhelming majority of Japanese sweets and candies come in small packages. I guess that has its good points - with small packages, you can eat everything and not feel too guilty. There's nothing to store and spill and it won't go bad. But that smaller piece in an individual package means you pay more per ounce, or gram, or liter, or however you want to measure it. A chocolate piece twice as voluminous as one you see below wouldn't (or at least shouldn't) cost twice as much, because many of the manufacturing costs wouldn't increase at the same rate - payroll costs to man the machines wouldn't really increase, for example. The machines wouldn't necessarily need to be doubled in size or quantity, depending on how the company churns out its goods. But I guess that digs into their profit margin.

I like bigger candies and snacks because I feel like I get more for my money - and in America, that's how things work. Here, though, there is no "bulk" discount for many things.

Anyway, size complaints aside, here are a couple small packages to sweeten my tooth just that much more.

Here is Sakupan Black. That's one evil looking panda. The package pictures one of the various designs you can find.

And here's the piece itself. It's about 1.5" in diameter, and about 1/4" thick. There's a cookie of sorts inside the chocolate coating, which makes this an inverted oreo cookie of sorts. It could have been white to match the panda, but it's black and semi-sweet. A tasty candy!

Chibi Thunder is half white chocolate, and half white chocolate mixed with a cookie-like crunchy biscuit. It's a cousin of Black Thunder, a similar snack that uses regular chocolate.

The white chocolate gives the bottom a strange color. I like white chocolate, but I'm not sure this works so well.There was another Black Thunder snack in a blue wrapper which was delicious, but I haven't seen it since. The original Black Thunder is very good too!