Lander 77 Peanut Butter and Strawberry Biscuits

 I need to pay better attention before I buy

The Attraction:
I saw this little prize when I was in Taiwan quite a few months back. The thing that really caught my attention was the combination of peanut butter and strawberry! What? Holla! Except, again if I looked carefully, I would have seen two sets of cookies, not a singular cookie with both PB and Strawberry. You can imagine my disappointment when I opened the package to see two sets of cookies. Sniff, sniff

I may have eaten a strawberry one before this shot, I said may!

The Review
What's great about many snack items from Asia is how many of them are individually wrapped. This is to help preserve the flavor and the item itself (due to heat and humidity in many parts of Asia) as you eat. This item falls in line with that mindset. I dive into the strawberry biscuit first and as I open the single portion, it's clear that it looks like a sugar wafer essentially coated with a what looks like a white chocolate coating. With the first bite, it's clear that it's more of a yogurt coating than a white chocolate coating. Not bad, but I come to discover that the biscuit itself is just a strawberry-flavored wafer with yogurt coating. No strawberry filling or jam. Boo...

  

Before                                                                 After

OK, onto the peanut version...

At least this cookie has an actual chocolate coating. Despite it being slightly melted, (which confirms why the other held up better because of the yogurt coating and this actually melted because it's real chocolate), it doesn't taste bad, but it's the same deal. Chocolate coating over a peanut butter flavored sugar wafer. I don't think there are even nuts in this sucker.

 

Before                                                                After

The Sweet:
I dig the individually wrapped pieces. I know it's not environmentally friendly, but I can only imagine what the heck the inside of this packaging would have looked like if it melted all over the place and created one giant melted cookie. The wafer itself is crispy and that contrasts always works well with chocolate (at least for the PB part section). If you love sugar wafers, but are bored with the common varieties available, I can see this being a new and exciting twist on on old favorite.

The Bitter:
Here's the thing for me; I'm not a fan of sugar wafers. I don't hate them, but I don't find them particularly exciting. Given the choice, I would pass on the common ones you see at the supermarkets. What may have redeem this item for me and saved it from "Yawn, it's a sugar wafer" land is if it had some strawberry jam /jelly or actual peanut butter. My mind may have been blown if it was as I had hoped and the two flavored were paired together in one happy marriage of a cookie, but like Nick and Mariah, it wasn't meant to be.

Conclusion:
I feel like I say this a lot, but unless you love sugar wafers and are looking to spice it up with some variety, this one is a very "ho-hum" product. I will say that I've had other Lander 77 products and some come closer to hitting the bulls eye, but in the case of these peanut butter and strawberry biscuits, it's very pedestrian and not worth the extra hour at the gym for throwing these down.

Video of the Week
I should have posted this one last week, but in case you didn't catch it, the awesome folks at VICE shot a brilliant video on how to properly eat sushi as told by Chef Naomichi Yasuda out of Sushi Bar Yasuda in Tokyo.

"If you ask for a California Roll, I will bitch slap you"

To think all these years I've been eating it like a barbarian. I wonder why the Chinese and Mexican sushi "chefs" at the Japanese restaurant I go to never corrected me?