Name: Enfant Banana & Strawberry Flavored Milk
Origin: South Korea
Found at: Freshia, Tustin
Cost: $0.99
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Ingredients:
Strawberry Flavored Milk:
Milk, Water, Skim Milk Powder, Sugar, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Cochineal Extract, Strawberry Flavor (Natural and Artificial)
Banana Flavored Milk:
Milk, Water, Skim Milk Powder, Sugar, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Banana Concentrate, Annatto Color, Banana Flavor (Natural and Artificial)
Why I Bought It:
I could've just bought only one of these drink boxes, but like those “Love Is..” cartoons, it seemed wrong not to get the pair. Banana Boy and Strawberry Girl (not their names, I gather, but that's what I'm calling them) are irresistibly conceived characters on the same level of cuteness as Hello Kitty with Charlie Brown-feet. There were other brands of flavored milk in Tetra Packs at the Freshia store shelf (which, by the way, if you haven't noticed, is where I get a lot of these Wacky Snacks), but these were the only ones with cartoon characters, and thus, the most compelling.
Tasting Notes:
Not much to say here other than it tastes like you'd imagine. The strawberry milk tastes like milk with strawberry flavor, almost ice cream-like. But the banana milk is kind of revelatory just for the reason that banana is one fruit that really goes well with milk. You wonder why American dairies haven't taken up the idea. Maybe they should start. They wouldn't even need a cartoon character for me to buy it.
Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, Edwin Goei went by the alias “elmomonster” on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.