Junk Food Nation, I have a statement and then a question.  The statement: I LOVE SANDALS.  I do.  I have a few pairs of Havaianas and Rainbows and I wear them proudly.  Maybe it’s because I like sun on my feet, or sand between my toes, or I just plain dislike shoes.  But I like me a pair of thong sandals.

The question: why, Why, WHY is it whenever I see an article written by GQ, InStyle, fashion mags, clothing blogs, Do’s and Don’ts, articles written by men, written by women, written by experts, written by bloggers – they all say that men SHOULDN’T wear thong sandals?  WHY?  No, I’m not going link to any articles.  Google it yourself, Lazy.  There are numerous, hundreds, thousands of posts out there regarding this topic.

And I don’t get it. They MAKE these sandals for men, so clearly it’s not like thong sandals are ONLY worn by women.  And plenty of guys wear them!  So what is it? Do they look bad? Tacky? Immature? It makes no sense to me. Some articles say men should NEVER bare their toes.  Some say thong sandals are bad, but flip flops that look like these are OK.  What!?

So help me out, Junk Food Nation.  Why are thong sandals bad? Until I get a definitive answer, I’m rockin’ these toes out there without hesitation. And I have some effing nice toes, JFN.

Today’s just food is another Asian snack given to me by my friend Angela: Meiji’s Strawberry and Chocolate Yan Yan!

Meiji is an Asian snack food company that I’ve discussed before on this blog. It’s like the equivalent of Frito-Lay in Asia.  Errr….I think. Like I indicated before, “Meiji’s website is another confusing mixture of bad English and weird cartoons, just as you’d expect from an Asian junk food website.” Yup.

The obvious question is, WHAT IS YAN YAN? The answer: It is apparently this guy.

This snack’s packaging is colorful and frightening, per usual when it comes to Asian snacks.  At first glance, you can tell that these are cracker sticks you dip in frosting or “cream dip.”  The phrase “cream dip” gives me the heebie jeebies.  I dunno why. Just does.

It concerns me that they are displaying the “cream dip” to be so free flowing that it POOLS off the cracker stick.  This is gonna be one messy snack, if true.

LOOK INSIDE FOR FUN WORDS!  Oh, I will…

So many partially hydrogenated oils.  Yikes…my friend Rodzilla taught me never to be happy seeing this ingredient.  And I’m not.

This snack reminds me of Dunkaroos.  Remember those? I was always annoyed by that commercial.  “Dip with as much frosting as you want…” Yeah, until you run out of frosting after two cookies, dicks.  You’re the reason I buy gigantic cans of Duncan Hines frosting and Ritz Crackers now!

So, the package divides the crackers and frosting…very much like a Dunkaroos package or the old fashioned cheese and crackers HandiSnacks! (callback, woot).  Thankfully, the cream dip isn’t as runny as presented on the package.

I emptied our the strawberry cracker sticks, and this is what I got.  WOW.  So many things to quip about here.  Let’s run 30 seconds off the clock….

Fox: Beware of Lies.  That is the creepiest fortune I’ve ever received.

Zerba: Herbivore. Informative, short, sweet…and entirely random.

Cow: MUUUUUU.  Yep, that’s what a cow says alright.

Panda: Go For More. What does that even mean?

Whale: Biggesy Mammal.  That is my WORD from now on. I want all my snacks to be biggesy.

PS: The chocolate snack sticks had even more crazy shit written on them.  I’ll be tweeting photos of those all day long!  Follow me on Twitter @junkfoodguy.

The premise is simple…dip and eat.  The cracker sticks themselves were VERY dry and only sort of sweet.  They didn’t taste stale, but these were definitely cracker sticks, NOT cookie sticks.  On their own, these cracker sticks were crunchy yet unappealing.  The crumbs dried out my mouth.

Dipped into the strawberry frosting, the cracker stick was a good base – didn’t have any flavor of its own to distract from the sickeningly sweet fake strawberry taste in the frosting.  The feel of the frosting was sort of like peanut butter…and it had a strange oiliness to it.  Flavor: strawberry, but REALLY artificial.

The chocolate version was better – this frosting just tasted like basic chocolate frosting, and was actually sort of rich in cocoa flavor.  It did, however, have that same oily feeling to the frosting.  Better, but not wonderful.

Overall, this was a weird snack.  Fake flavors, and a weird texture to both the stick and the frosting.  I’ve never had a snack be both greasy and dry at the same time.  Would not recommend these.  Sorry, Meiji.

Thoughts? Tell me in the comments below or hit me on Twitter @junkfoodguy or on my Facebook Page.

Sincerely, Junk Food Guy