Something a little different... SnackSurprise South Korean box review

A few weeks ago, my good lady showed me a video on YouTube of someone reviewing a snack box. Now this was something I had not heard of before so she explained that there are companies who, for a set amount every month, will supply a mystery box of various snacks based on a theme, in this case, snacks from other countries. Curiosity piqued, she duly signed up with Snacksurprise.com and after a short while, the box arrived. This is what we received: Snacks from South Korea. The blanket was from York.

A decent selection... but that drinks can scares me.

Along with the snacks you get a little pamphlet that tells you what "delights" have been included.

With pamphlet.

Since we had ordered the Ordinary box, this page was relevant to us:

The Ordinary box costs £12.99 per month and will contain 8 to 10 items including one drink. The Premium box costs £23.99 per month and you get 16 to 20 plus items, as well as one drink. Postage to UK addresses is free. OK, so it's not particularly cheap but the site states you can cancel at any time so at least you have that flexibility. So, where to start...

The Hot Chicken Flavoured Ramen. A one-person portion, these were easy to prepare and were surprisingly good quality ramen. Certainly better than a lot of the pot-encased stuff you get in the UK. The comment in the pamphlet did note that these were going to be spicy hot, so we prepared ourselves accordingly with suitable beverages. We should have prepared more thoroughly...

It burns, it burns!!!

Lord above, these are hot! I don't just mean warm, I mean a burning heat that, once you adapt to it, is bearable, but not entirely comfortable. Yes, we put the supplied flakes in but I don't think they were needed. Last time I had something this hot was an Elvis Pizza from a local takeaway that really was unpleasant to eat. Aside from the heat, these were rather nice and with something a little less burny, I'd quite happily have these as a quick lunch snack every now and again.

After a couple of glasses of milk to calm things down, we moved onto the Sweet Potato snacks, flavoured with Maple Syrup.

Was the package designer a fan of the film Hannibal???

A funky little shape (think miniature spinal columns...), these were quite sweet, using white sweet potatoes. You certainly get the maple syrup flavour and they are a decent snack. The issue with these was that the taste became a bit too sickly after said one or two and you certainly couldn't eat many in one sitting. Well, we couldn't anyway.

Next up, the Onion Rings, which were very similar to UK-sold snacks but with one major difference - these actually had quite a strong taste of onion. This was a pleasant surprise. So far, these were the best of the box.

Straight forward and to the point

Away from savoury now, and the Custard Soft Cupcake. Simply sponge with a custard cream filling, the notes advised eating this with a cup of coffee ready. Whilst we didn't do that, we can see why they say that. It's delicious. Very tasty, with a hint of sweetness from the sponge and quite firm custard cream, this immediately replaced the onion rings as our favourite.

Looks unassuming...

...tastes delicious.

The next three were chocolate based snacks, starting off with Pepero, a biscuit stick with a chocolate and almond covering. These looked okay but they are extremely dry, so you definitely need something to drink when eating these. That and the nuts left a sour aftertaste that I didn't appreciate. The chocolate tasted a little cheap too. My good lady took one bite and declined the rest - the almonds proving her un-doing.

Not as tasty as they appear...

Kancho next, and these little biscuits appear to be aimed at children, looking to us like a biscuit version of Love Hearts, with little pictures or words on each one. The Kancho themselves are very small and quite dry, with the combination of chocolate and biscuit reminding us both of Choc Dips in both taste and dryness. Not unpleasant, but definitely an acquired taste. Be warned, if they are to your taste, they are very more-ish!

These are tiny.

Last of the chocolate snacks was the Choco Pie, a sandwich of cake and marshmallow. As you can see, it looks quite nice, so it's a shame that there wasn't much flavour to it. In fact, it was quite bland and unappetising.

It looks promising...

... but looks are deceiving.

The My Gummy natural fruit jelly sweets. The smell almost put me off before trying one - an industrial level of grape and gelatin. The big surprise here: not much of an actual grape flavour. There is, however, a lot of gelatin here, which made them unpleasant to chew. When combined with the lack of taste, this meant a no from both of us.

Industrial jelly sweets - no thank you!

The last food item was the Secom-Dalcom. Strawberry flavoured sour fruit chews, and chewy they were, with immediate thoughts of "how to I get to a dentist" as the offending sweet tried (ultimately) unsuccessfully to relieve me of a filling. The actual taste was rather nice and they reminded us of Chewits, even if they were packaged like Hubba-Bubba.

Not bad at all.

Last, but certainly not least, the Milkis Soda.

Fantastic Feel! Milkis! New feeling of soda beverage! My ring piece...

This, apparently, is one of the most popular drinks in South Korea, combining the traditional fizz of soda with the creamy taste of milk and the tang of yogurt. Now, this description puts people into one of two camps: either you want to vomit now or you have memories of Lemonade Floats. Well, let's find out.

I really didn't like this one bit. OK, it tasted like a weak ice cream float but there was a weird aftertaste. Drinking this made me feel like I had just belched up milk, and that's not nice. My good lady, though initially liked the drink, then felt she had just vomited in her mouth. As you can probably tell, gentle reader, this was not nice. If you ever see anything like this on the shelves of your local shop, caveat emptor! Oh, and that's not the best bit about this drink. We poured it into a glass and all I can say is that I now have a very good idea what diluted carbonated jizz would look like...

Mmmmm... Milky...

So, our thoughts on our first Suprisesnack.com box: Interesting, with a couple of items that we'd buy again if we could, some that we'd avoid by choice and one that really, really needs Marty McFly and an '82 DeLorean to go back and change history. I cannot stress enough how bad that drink was. And no, we didn't finish the can. 

Would I recommend this service? Well, yeah, it's a frivolous thing but fun as well. I don't begrudge the price of the Ordinary box, though I think the Premium is a bit too much. If you're interested, then check out the website in the link above. We're now looking forward to see what June's box provides...