The Jungle Stand July 2013 review

Yay! Another Jungle Stand box to try! And, as promised, I got my hubby to weigh in on the tastes this month, too. For $9.92/month, you get 6 "tastes" (smallish samples) of snacks - usually food that you might not normally come across or buy regularly. Following June's "Welcome to Taiwan" theme, July's theme was "Welcome to Japan"!

Opening the box

Info card. Not pictured is the nutritional information sheet.

Our first taste was baked cake, or manju. It was mild, sweet, and soft, with a dark center. This was my favorite taste in the box and one of my hubby's least favorite. It was funny watching him taste it. I had already had mine and was expecting a similar reaction, but he just said "Eh, it's pretty bland".
Next up was nori koiwa, a seaweed dusted rice cracker. I was expecting to not like this, but actually, it was pretty good. Sweeter than I expected, and I really didn't taste much of the seaweed, in spite of the description saying it would be a strong after-taste. Chris also liked these. These were described as "probably the best taste in the bar". We both liked them, but neither of us thought they were the best.
The third taste was age ichiban. Although it was described as sweet, it was a bit more salty to me, but a good flavor. This was probably both of our second favorites.
Next was the hitokuchi kurobo, described as the "sweetest taste in the the bar". They were definitely sweet. Too sweet. Interestingly, it tasted a bit like really soft dried dates to me, although there aren't any dates in it. It was almost dusty in consistency. Neither of us liked this one much. Unfortunate, since we got 3.
The fifth taste was taruyaki goma senbei. Chris took one look at this and said, "Oh, I'm gonna like this!" And he did. This was his favorite. This was very salty - the only really salty taste we got. Everything else had at least some sweetness to it. This was my least favorite. This is just like the kinds of snacks I don't like in those little Japanese snack mixes. Blech. I happily let him have the third senbei.
Finally, the last taste was strawberry caramel corn. This didn't strike me as terribly exotic, nor is it like traditional caramel corn (like popcorn). This was also not a favorite of either of ours, but I think Chris liked it more than I did. He couldn't place the flavor at first, although I thought it was a pretty strong fake strawberry taste. It reminded me of strawberry flavored kids' cereal.

This was a more hit and miss box than last month's, but it was still really fun to try them all. And even more fun with Chris! It's interesting to compare our favorites and least favorites - I thought it was funny that we agreed on the ones we thought were pretty good to not as good, but our favorites were each other's least favorites. I look forward to more tastes with Chris! I think the only thing he'd be less enthusiastic about trying would be mushrooms, but I think I saw a box of those a couple months back, before I subscribed, so I don't think he needs to worry too much.

If you want to sign up, go to The Jungle Stand’s website! If you already get Jungle Stand, what did you think of this month’s tastes?

(And just a disclaimer: I bought this box myself and was not compensated for this review in any way. All opinions are my own (or my husband's).)