Invasion of the Giant Pocky

If you have never heard of Pocky, you must have been living under a rock… on Mars. Pocky is a snack you can find in most Asian stores here in Vancouver, Canada. They are delicious biscuit sticks covered with a variety of flavors such as chocolate and strawberry. The most popular flavor has to be chocolate since most stores only stock chocolate flavored Pocky, which is why I chose it for this review. Enough with the introduction, most of us have had Pocky before. And most of us have wondered what monstrosity lies within that GIANT POCKY BOX we see in stores…



One word… GIANT! I would like to say that I received review Pocky samples from Glico but nope they did not reply to my emails. I shelled out money out of my own pocket to satisfy my curiosity. I ended up buying two giant Pocky boxes and two smaller ones. One giant box was for me to review and one was for a friend as a Christmas gift. This review is divided into the following three sections: price, size and taste.




Let’s just say right now that giant Pocky is not cheap. Each box is $11.99cnd compared to $1.09 for the smallest box. I’ve seen them on sale from time to time for $10.99 but I could never bring myself to spend so much money on Pocky. The medium sized boxes you see in the pictures are $3.09 each. If you do some advanced statistical analysis on those numbers, you will notice that the big box is a whole ELEVEN times more expensive than the small box.




This begs the question, is it worth it? The small boxes are 40 grams, medium boxes are 80 grams and the big box is 264 grams. If you’re not familiar with Canadian food laws, it states that food inside the package has to weigh exactly or slightly above the weight indicated on the packaging. In other words, those numbers are how much the Pocky weigh without the packaging. We’ll have to take their word for it and assume they are correct. *Warning* Mathematical Component Ahead:

Giant Pocky - $11.99 / 264 grams = $0.045 per gram
Medium Pocky - $3.09 / 80 grams = $0.039 per gram
Small Pocky - $1.09 / 40 grams = $0.027 per gram

As we can clearly see, bigger box does not mean cheaper. In fact, you are better off buying the small boxes. I can understand why the giant one would be more expensive per gram, since each of the 22 giant Pocky sticks you receive in a box are individually wrapped and packaged, whereas the smaller boxes, you get a bunch of sticks in a single bag inside the box. However, I do not understand why the medium Pocky would be more expensive per gram than the small Pocky since they’re packaged the same way. Yes, the medium box is slightly bigger so it requires a bit more raw material to make but still doesn’t make sense to me.


What makes Pocky so yummy and have us craving for more? It is a number of reasons, but the main reason is because the pairing of chocolate to biscuit is so very good. Just like those Reese’s Peanut Buttercups commercials, you can’t just eat a chunk of chocolate and a chunk of peanut butter and have the same effect. The same principle goes with Pocky. I bring this up because that is exactly what is wrong with the giant Pocky. When you bite into a regular stick of Pocky, it has the perfect chocolate to biscuit ratio. Unfortunately, this ratio is not kept in the making of a giant Pocky. There is only a thin layer of chocolate covering a very thick stick of biscuit, which in turn makes the whole eating experience of a giant stick of Pocky very dry. Instead of the usual craving for another bite, the giant Pocky had me craving for water after one stick. However, if you’re a big biscuit fan and like the dryness of biscuits then definitely this is the Pocky for you.


Basically, this is a novelty item to its truest sense. It is expensive, it does not taste good but it does have a wow factor. Most people have never seen anything like it. Most people I talk to don’t even know a Pocky of this size and proportion exists! I suggest, buy a box for someone, when they open it, steal a stick for yourself. Asides from getting that sparkle from someone’s eyes when they first see a giant box of Pocky, this item is not worth the money.