Phagomania: The Wild World of Japanese Doritos

A stocking filler that stamps on your groin? Welcome to the kaleidoscopic world of Japanese Doritos

Feature by Lewis MacDonald | 08 Dec 2016

At Christmas time Phagomania likes to cozy down into its comfy place and take a moment to reflect on the year that has gone by. And after a year like this, the only route is pure escapism.

If we could receive one foodie gift this Christmas (hint hint) it would definitely be sourced from Japan. Looking back over this column across 2016, Japan has smashed the competition on a few occasions, from our look at fast food fails featuring the iconic black Kuro Burger and McChoco Potatoes, to our tour of the world of ice cream including octopus and horse meat flavours.

Let’s not forget that Japan is the nation that celebrates Christmas with a good old tabletop of KFC. Millions queue on the big day as the Colonel dons a Santa Claus outfit that reveals a resemblance that an entire coy marketing plan has been based upon. We’ll just conclude that things are a little different over in Japan.

So with fond memories we look at the bizarre world of Japanese Doritos flavours. While we all know the standard flavours of tortilla chips (even if we wonder just how an adjective like 'cool' can get its own flavour), and might expect a more eclectic range of flavours from the land of the rising sun, we weren’t quite prepared for what we were to discover.

From the outset, there are many, many more flavours than you might be used to. Packets adorned with familiar branding greet us but with a perplexing array of imagery that you'd struggle to associate with even the wildest flavour of crisps. And that's coming from the UK, which is home to some of Europe's more experimental crisp flavours. In mainland Europe they only seem to have one flavour – paprika (potato-loving travellers know what we mean…).

Appealingly, there are frequent appearances of tall, frothy beer glasses on the packaging, accompanying flavours such as German sausage, anchovy & garlic and sesame chicken. Festive-wise, there are plentiful Christmas special editions to enjoy. A joyful snowman greets us with bell-shaped chips only to present us with the puzzling prospect of crispy salmon flavour. Meanwhile, the slightly more appropriate theme of winter cheese comes in the delightful form of Christmas tree-shaped chips. We can only imagine how one makes cheese taste ‘wintery’, but hey-ho.

There are many candidates for the trophy of weirdest flavour. There's an entire range dedicated to the variations of seafood pizza toppings (shrimp mayonnaise pizza anybody?) – corn soup looks particularly unappealing, while caramel is perplexing enough to draw curiosity. And the list goes on until until you discover… the black Dorito.

Blackened with bamboo charcoal, they're simply salt and black pepper flavour, but it is not the flavour but the outrageous packaging that makes these champions of the surreal. Characters in tight orange and yellow jumpsuits kicking one another in the balls, or poised in a wolf costume during some kind of dining experience. To unravel this mystery, a bit of research reveals that these characters are an underground institution in Japan known as Taitsukun (‘Mr. Bodysuit’), a form of adult comic of a perverse and satirical slant. For example, the caption that accompanies our groin-kicking friends reads: ‘Don't we have any other way to motivate our workers?’

Crisp manufacturers take note! We think Britain could seriously do with an equivalent range of David Shrigley-clad packets of snacks to provoke some nonsensical reaction. Stick that in your stocking.

http://theskinny.co.uk/food/phagomania