Skoshbox April 2014 Review

When I embarked on the long, difficult journey in choosing which subscription boxes to throw my hard earned minimum wage dollars at, I discovered Skoshbox. The premise seemed wonderful; a box of Japanese snacks delivered every month for 12$. I subscribed mid-March but just missed the box that month.

Skoshbox
http://skoshbox.com
$12 a Month – Free Shipping!

This month was clearly Spring themed, or maybe the guys at Skoshbox had some weird hangup about Strawberries and Green Tea, but either way there was quite a few strawberry items included in this box, which was smaller than expected. That’s not a beef with Skoshbox, that’s me thinking that all subscription boxes are going to be so huge that Hercules can’t lift them, only to be slightly deterred when noticing the boxes are small enough to fit in the mailbox. I had the same hang up about birchbox, no biggie.

First thing I thought was, “HELL YEAH KITKAT,” because my particular part of the country tends to be lacking in the foreign snack department. Honestly I’m surprised our local Walmart carries pocky, since it’s foreign and WVians tend to not be into foreign foods or things in general. I even went to Atlanta in search of Kitkats (well I went for my college graduation but kitkats were a huge incentive), and while I found a large variety of Japanese snacks in general, there were no kitkats to be had.

Included in this box were 7 Candies and 3 Savory items:

Aero Green Tea
Aero Strawberry
Elise Wafer Sticks – Strawberry
Cheese Okaki Crackers
Harvest Baked Biscuit – Burnt Caramel
Mentaiko Umaibo Stick – Cod Roe
Obachan’s Pota Pota Yaki
Pocky – Strawberry
Kitkat – Matcha Green Tea
Country Candy – Milk Flavor

 

I actually managed to open this box at work, and as a result we ate everything well before I had any chance to photograph anything. I also turned my co-worker, boss and a random stranger onto pocky, SUCCESS. I told my co-worker about Skoshbox awhile ago and she knows I tend to have a love of all things Japan, so when I brought this box in she hovered over me like a vulture while I pawned off samples. In the future, I’ll take better photos. >_>

AERO Green Tea Flavor / Strawberry Flavor – 2 outta 5 – The taste and texture of these reminded me a little too much of the candies you can find in those “gourmet” “premium” “exclusive” candy boxes by the high end makers. You know the ones, the 10$ a box for about 10 candies kind? You know how some of those have random candy pieces you can’t identify and you take a bite of it and it’s not pleasant? The Strawberry flavored AERO was strikingly similar, it was incredibly artificial and I personally greatly disliked the texture. The chocolate itself was fine. Green Tea flavor was the same. Overall not bad but would not buy again.

Elise Wafer Sticks  Strawberry Flavor – 3 outta 5 – My co-worker liked these much more than I did; I personally disliked the strong strawberry aftertaste. It made a bit of a mess too, because the wafer itself was incredibly crumbly. It wasn’t bad, I’d buy a different flavor though.

Cheese Okaki Crackers – 2 outta 5 – I greatly disliked this in both smell and taste, but mostly smell. I don’t have a penchant for senbei apparently. My co-worker loved it.

Harvest Baked Biscuit Burnt Caramel – 4 outta 5 – Mine arrived broken but that’s not a complaint; there’s apparently three biscuits per package but I had one arrive in tact. We loved these a lot, and my co-worker said they “tasted like caramel air,” because they were literally like a very thin baked cracker that melted on your tongue. We tried to buy them online but they’re part of a larger package, and we can’t find this particular flavor yet. WE WANT EM THO’

Mentaiko Umaibo Stick Cod Roe Flavor – 1 outta 5 – Fish flavored cheeto, that’s all there is to say about this thing.

Obachan’s Pota Pota Yaki – 2 outta 5 – I feel like I’m not even being fair here, I have a great dislike for senbei after those Okaki crackers. I loved how light they were, but I couldn’t get past the smell to try them properly.

Strawberry Pocky – 4 outta 5 – This was the big hit here in the office. I hadn’t had pocky in many years, and I’d certainly never tried strawberry flavored. We were both incredibly surprised and have since ordered a case of 12 boxes from Amazon. The strawberry flavor wasn’t overbearing, and it had a really nice melting type texture (I’m not prolific at descriptions).

Matcha Kitkat – 4 outta 5 – This surprised me, I’m personally not a fan of tea in any form but I didn’t know exactly how subtle green tea was. I loved that the inside of the kitkat was green too, and I’d definitely buy these again.

Milk Country Candy – 3 outta 5 – I’m normally not a fan of milk flavored products because I generally don’t like milk, but these were so creamy that I’d love to have a few dozen more. Then binge on them while watching netflix. The milk flavor wasn’t overbearing and if anything, it tasted more like faint vanilla than milk. Very pleasantly surprised.

 

The only real disappointment was the fish cheeto, which I’m sure is incredibly popular in Japan, but the odor and the ingredients (msg) were incredibly off putting. I don’t mind if a product is natural or not-so-natural, but msg tends to give me a horrific headache. Overall I was highly impressed by this box and I can’t wait for the May one!