Double Chocolate Hello Panda - Target: Cherry Hill, NJ

Double Chocolate Hello Panda - Target: Cherry Hill, NJ

These cookies are made by Meiji, which is a Japanese company, but in the last five years this product has become quite popular in America. You can buy boxes of Hello Panda at gas stations, grocery stores, and even Target. (Which is where I bought mine. Some of you might recognize this from my mini Target haul video.)

Out of all the creme-filled, animal-themed, cookies available, Hello Panda has to be my favorite. That may sound oddly specific, but there are more of these out there than you think. Over the years I have tried a few different flavors, but they always used a vanilla cookie as the base. Will a chocolate cookie really make a significant difference?

As always I'll start off with the packaging, but since I have reviewed Hello Panda in the past, I'll try to keep it breif.

The box's hexagonal shape is quite unique when compared to American snacks, but it is fairly standard in Asia. The shape allows for easier, and more stable, stacking on store shelves which is really useful. The shape may be fairly unique in the American snack market, but the design is straight forward and simple. I can see this appealing to kids, with all those cartoon pandas, but I'm in my late 20's (...typing that was so weird) and it still caught my eye.

Inside the cardboard packaging there is a little plastic bag filled with biscuits. I like that the packaging keeps the cookies fresh, but I kind of wish there was a way to make it more recycling-friendly. (Since I eat and review all these snacks I am becoming more and more aware of all the trash these products create. Although I recycle what I can.)

Once opened, you can smell a fairly generic, but still appealing, chocolate cookie aroma.

First, I wanted to try the chocolate biscuit on it's own to see if it tasted drastically different than the vanilla variety.  At first, the cookie portion was really mild and barely chocolatey at all, but after a few chews you can taste some cocoa power-notes. The cookies on their own aren't very sweet, and the flavoring is similar to a chocolate graham cracker.

When combined with the creme filling, these are really yummy. The filling is sweet and chocolatey, similar to store-bought chocolate icing, and it blends very nicely with the bland cookie. This isn't a mind blowingly delicious snack, but it is very enjoyable. If you've ever had chocolate Dunkaroos (do they still make those?) or double chocolate sandwich cookies, you'd enjoy this.

This double chocolate combination is my favorite flavor of Hello Panda so far! If you see them around I'd say they are definitely worth a try.

© Maria Smith http://poison-and-antidote.net

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