Tuesday, August
12th
Update - Jay
Navok and Andrew Floyd
The Delicious World
of Sailor Moon
 |
| I
found this on the "internet." And I wasn't surprised by it
at all. |
One
of the things licensing companies do with their license,
apart from creating incredibly horrible videogames,
is make foods with them. Sometimes these foods are excellent, like the Nintendo
Cereal System. (Hey, that was only partial sarcasm. I still subscribe
to Nintendo Power to this day. Because I'm a sucker.) Others are not so
good and their creators should be banished into in the abyss before the
Dark Kingdom finds out about their amazing talents to corrupt the minds
and tastebuds of young children everywhere. (Urkel
O's, anyone?)
Sailor Moon is in this way no different from any other major license, except it
had 'exciting' foodstuffs made in both America and Japan. Some of these
products could easily
get Usagi addicted to their fine taste and force her to enter another Dark
Kingdom workout center. (Remember, "One meatbun for one kilo. Two
meatbuns for five kilos. And three meatbuns makes Usagi a fat pig!")
But there are those rare foods which she'd not even be able to pass as scraps under the table to Luna.
(Cruelty to animals, you know.)
Today we'll be looking at a few of the food products made with the
Sailor Moon license from Japan and America. We're not even close to
having all of them, so if you've got some Sailor Moon food that we
haven't listed which you can scan and comment on for us, we'll put it in
the next edition of "The Delicious World of Sailor Moon."
 |
| Sorry,
we do not have this product to review. Mainly because the rosey-cheeked
demon children in the photo frighten me and I refused. Also I don't
have it, but that was inconsequential. |
We're not really going to put any rating system on the foods- just our
comments on them. Most of these foods are long gone in any case, so its
not like we're reviewing them for you to buy them.
There is the rare case of some Sailor Moon food still in production.
Not in the United States, though, as the series has long lost its food
licensing appeal. (If you're off the air here, its hard to get people to
pay attention to your products. This doesn't stop Disney from putting out
Timone
and Poomba cereal, though. But thats Disney. Let
us never question what Disney does.) In Japan the Sailor Moon
foods still in production are the exact same goods that other anime also
off the air in Japan still have foods being made of. Namely curry and
such. This will probably change with the upcoming lice action series- who
knows, maybe there'll be more delicious SM treats for us in the future.
Its interesting that what Sailor Moon foods you can find (or at least
could find until around 2002 as I haven't seen them this year at Mitsuwa)
in Japan were still using the old character style rather than the new
"Sailor Moon World" character designs that all the recent
calendars and trading cards have been in.
So lets look at some Sailor Moon foods. A big thanks to Andrew Floyd
for the screenshots and comments on the foods.
 |
| Can
you say "fish flavoured rice topping"? |
Sailor Moon
Furikake
Jay says:
Furikake literally means "fish flour" but its also part of the
Japanese word for "to sprinkle." It tastes the way its
defined. Years ago I saw some video which said that the Japanese find it
offensive to put stuff on top of rice, like soysauce, as rice is supposed
to be eaten plain and with respect. Furikake is entirely designed as
"rice seasoning" so whoever wrote that thing up was on crack.
The Japanese put plenty of stuff on their rice, and the more they can
make it taste like seaweed, the better it seems. That is effectively what
furikake is- its seaweed and fish bits completely dried and chopped into
flakes. (Its feels almost like tissue paper but its cut up into tiny
pieces.) There are all sorts of furikake for all sorts of uses; if you
want to make mashed potatoes, spaghetti, or anything else you feel
like not eating taste like seaweed, furikake will do it for you.
"Japanese kids like
putting crap on top of their rice, so why not make a colourful furikake
with their favourite anime characters on the packaging for them?" Thats
what the people who licensed this must have been thinking. I've
seen plenty of other anime furikake so this is not an isolated trend.
Sailor Moon furikake was also one of the few products you could still
find up until a year or two ago. (It might still be on sale in Japan, but
the Mitsuwa near me doesn't carry it.) I even saw packets of it on sale
at Yahoo Auctions at one point.
 |
| Pictures
on the furikake packets themselves |
So what's the "Sailor Moon" in Sailor Moon Furikake? As with
all of the Japanese food products we'll see, its simply the artwork on
the packaging. (Not even that, in one case.) I appreciate the American
licensed foods for their attention to
making the foods themselves look relevant, along with other reasons
(namely that they don't TASTE LIKE SEAWEED), but we'll get to that soon
enough. Each package of furikake, which cost about $3 at Mitsuwa (so
maybe $2 in Japan), came with something like 5 individual packets. You'd
tear open the packet (which is pretty much the exact same packaging that
'moist towelettes' come in) and put it over hot rice. Most of the dry
bits would become somewhat moist from the rice's steam, and they are
pretty colourful, so the rice takes on an interesting texture and colour
scheme. But it smells like fish and seaweed. If fish (and we're not
talking tuna here) and seaweed isn't your thing, then you'll probably
have as bad a reaction to furikake as I did.
Andrew says: One to have on fresh hot cooked rice. Furikake means "sprinkle", and indeed you sprinkle
Sailor Moon furikake on hot
rice. It's generally a favorite among children in Japan, because the sprinkles sometimes end up doing interesting things as they absorb the
heat and moisture from the rice. Generally has a salty taste, and sometimes smells like fish food flakes. However, they all seem to taste
like some sort of fishy flavor, even the Egg variation.
 |
|
"In
the name of the Moon, I'll rip you off!" |
Sailor Moon
"Cute Team"
Peach
Gummy
Jay says: This thing is the biggest crock of...
For some Japanese kid's hard-earned 100 yen (and remember kids only
get 500 yen to spend on snacks for field trips, which is when a lot of
this candy stuff gets bought) they get: a tiny toy and ONE PEACH GUMMY.
Let me put this toy in the picture on the right to scale for you. The
peach gummy inside the packet is about the size of a nickle. The
packaging has maybe a half nickle of space on the right, and left. Take
out two nickles and put them together, and that's how big the toy is.
That's how much they should have charged for this, too.
Peach gummys themselves are pretty good. When I'm at Mitsuwa I usually
buy a bag of them as peach is the flavour other people who I know
(who would eat it) like. Its basically a round, peach-flavoured gummy
fruit snack, but a lot less gummy than "gummy bears" and heavier on the peach-syrup
flavour.
Its less sweet than most American fruit snacks and even slightly sour.
But you can get a bag of these guys for something like $1.50 and I bet its
even cheaper in Japan than it is at Mitsuwa. So rather than getting 30 of
these guys for a buck, with this product you're getting one, and a very poorly detailed
toy. But the packaging is nice... right? Ok, its not. Every other Sailor
Moon food product I've seen has good artwork on it. This thing's
cardboard backing doesn't have a single picture on it- it relies entirely
on the bad toy to advertise the show for it. Since its labeled as an S
season product, this product's existence is clearly the work Tomoe labs.
Andrew writes: Peach Gummy + Toy - The peach gummy is like any other peach gummy candy.
This sort of thing couldn't be sold here due to the extreme small size of the figure.
Jay responds: People constantly say that American kids do
poorly on tests when compared to students from the rest of the world, but
I think the fact that American kids wouldn't be stupid enough to buy a
product like this says a lot.
 |
| I
scream, you scream, we all scream because of horror of the ugly pink
wrapper |
Sailor Moon
Ice Cream Confection
Jay says: This is the first US product we're looking at. Its
not really 'ice cream' but that's the best way to describe it. The flavour,
as can be imagined, is closer to sherbert flavoured ice than it is to
actual ice cream. Lemon, rasperry, etc. The package itself describes the
food as "A rasperry flavoured crescent wand frozen confection with
bubble gum jewel." It also instructs you to join the "Sailor
Moon Fanclub" though so don't believe everything you read on the
packaging is benevolent.
The company that
makes this, Blue
Bunny, seems to be a big part of the frozen novelties market. They've
currently got the Disney license to make similar "novelties"
with Mickey Mouse's mug plastered on them. As I briefly mentioned in the
Furikake review, one thing I appreciate about the American foods (in
addition to the fact that their taste is actually tolerant) is that they
try to make the foods themselves relevant to the license. They're not
selling you a Popsicle with Sailor Moon on the wrapping- the food itself
shares in the likeness. I think its a lot better to be eating a crescent
moon wand (which was an interesting idea to go with, rather than just
trying to make a "Sailor Moon" shaped Popsicle) than it would be to
have just a plain ice tube on a stick deal. The bubble gum jewel gets big
points too. They know kids' tastes, and they gave them a little extra,
rather than relying solely on the license to sell the product.
J.R.
Simplot to bring back their Micromagic series of microwavable french
fries. I still have visions from time to time of those little fry boxes with a slice of
American cheese on them.
Andrew
says: Ice Cream - I was never able to get a hold of one of these, but I'm told
it was quite good. The jewel was bubblegum, and the crescent moon part might have been lemon sherbet. This was a vendor only item from Blue
Bunny - meaning it was not available in stores or ice cream vending machines, only from that ice cream truck and its annoying tune it plays
when it comes down your street. The closest point of distribution that I could have bought a case to take home was over 200 miles away in Toledo,
Ohio. This particular wrapper came from Oklahoma, if I remember right. It was not available everywhere in the U.S. T.T
 |
| There's
a lot going on in this label. |
Sailor Moon
Pasta
Jay says: These "pasta" type treats are a staple of food
product licensing. Typically you see licensed macaroni and cheese boxes like this
done by Kraft. They've got Pokemon, Batman, etc. The pasta usually doesn't look
a thing like the characters, but its the fact that they tried that
matters. In the case of this "pasta" its not macaroni and
cheese but rather canned tomato pasta along the lines of Spaghetti-Os.
Its made by Heinz Canada rather than Franco American, though- the company
that typically makes these canned pastas. I've had a can of Heinz canned spaghetti in my
cupboard for something like 2 years and never tried it. (The label for
that spaghetti is rather unappealing. This label is far better and I'd
be much more apt to eat this stuff than that spaghetti. That's how
advertising works, kids!)
The biggest problem with this product is that it was never sold in America!
This was a Canada-only exclusive, those lucky bastards. How hard could it have
been to remove the french and sell it over here? Shame on you, Heinz, for not
recognizing an excellent profit opportunity.
As with the ice cream,
the food itself is designed to look like Sailor Moon characters- and they did a
good job compared to Kraft's typical macaroni and cheese globs. Even Tuxedo
Mask, Luna, and Beryl are there! I applaud the people at Heinz for doing an
excellent job with the license. Even the Japanese don't usually get
license-based products this good. And the label itself has got an awesome colour
scheme and artwork. Good food which is well designed and even fun to look at. An
A+ product, if it had been released in the US. Bring this back Heinz, bring it
to the US, and provide us with an outer senshi version! Haruka's face would be
mmm mmm good.
Andrew says: Pasta - Heinz Canada hit a home run with this gem of a kid's food
product. I bought 3 or 4 cases to bring home for my oldest niece (who was my only niece at the time). One case I bought for a co-worker's
daughter for a surprise her mother was planning. The pasta pieces are ingeniously shaped and are exactly as you see on the label. The tomato
sauce is typical of stuff for kids pasta being slightly sweet. After a tasting party in the con suite at Anime North in 1999, I had to have my
own supply. ^_^ Sadly, after 2 years of production, it's no longer being made, and Heinz in the U.S. never sought to bring it over. I'd have
bought a case every 2 weeks and lived off the stuff. Heinz means quality for sure! The label is collectible alone! It's amazing the reactions you
get when sending a label to people (such as Ebay sellers when buying an anime collectible - even as far away as Hong Kong! A seller in Japan
sent me a Ranma 1/2 coin in exchange for a label. ^_^).
Jay responds: It says no preservatives on the can label, but I figure
that its still canned so it should last for quite a while. Anyone in Canada who
can still find this and is willing to buy these for me (I'd pay you back) would
get my eternal gratitude. (And some other interesting stuff. No, not what you're
thinking.)
 |
| The
pinnacle of the Sailor Moon food world. |
Sailor Moon
Curry
Jay says: We've reached the cream of the crop here. Sailor Moon
Curry is probably one of the best licensed Sailor Moon products out
there. (Not just foods but products in general.)
Curry is an Indian
dish that was brought to Japan long ago. Unlike real Indian curry, which
is typically vegetarian, the Japanese add meats to their curry. In this
case its beef curry, which is more rare, because beef isn't something
eaten often in Japan (and of course is not allowed to be eaten in India.)
This is an instant
curry, of which there is typically a wide selection in Japanese
supermarkets, often with anime characters on the package to distinguish
them and try to get more sales. They come in large, individually sealed
packets. One per box. You put the heavy-duty packets in boiling water for
a few minutes and then top your staple food with them. (Typically rice
but also spaghetti and other things. The Japanese even eat curry pizza...
the freaks.) For the most part all the ingredients are included in this
curry already, as you can see the Sailor Moon curry has cubes of
potatoes, carrots, and onions in addition to the beef.
These instant curries
are GOOD stuff. When I have them I usually go with either crackers rather
than rice (its not bad- try it) as a side dish, or as a dipping sauce for
a main dish. (Chicken Katsu for example.) They typically range in heat-
this Sailor Moon curry is of the mild variety. (Like they're going to
sell really hot curry to kids.) I gave a box of Sailor Moon curry to my
little cousin for her birthday and she really liked it, so its a taste
easily acquired. (Not like furicrappy.)
The packaging is very
good. Its got your usual Sailor Moon pink going for it, but anything with
Eternal Sailor Moon on it has got my attention. It doesn't use the Sailor Moon
World artwork either, which is a further plus in my book. Some of the earlier
versions, as in the one you see scanned above, included a "Sailor Stars
coaster."
As with the furikake this
was a product you were able to find well after the show ended its run. It must
have been very popular, and was always an eye-catcher when I saw it at Mitsuwa.
It was even in their circular
a few times. The last time I saw it at Mitsuwa was in late 2002; I have yet to
see it in 2003 which means that (after some 6+ years) they might have finally
stopped producing it. I haven't given up yet, though. If I ever see it at
Mitsuwa again I'll probably buy out their entire supply.
Andrew says: Slightly sweet, and with real bits of beef. Very
good to have on fresh hot cooked rice. You do remember the Sailor Moon R episode where they have Beef curry, ne? (and not Chicken as the dub
changed it to!)
Jay responds: And
when Chibiusa asks Rei about making curry, Rei says she can only make instant
curry, like this one. I wonder if she'd buy curry with Usagi's face on it?
That's all for this
installment. If you've got other Sailor Moon foods, please send
them our way!!
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