Name: Crunky Ball Chocolate
Origin: Korea
Found at: H-Mart, Irvine
Cost: $3.49
Ingredients:
Sugar, Whole Milk Powder, Cocoa Mass, Cocoa Butter, Corn, Vegetable Fat, Lactose, Whey Permeate Pwder, Emulsifer (Soy bean), Arabic Gum, Salt, Tocopherol (Vitamin E), Artificial Flavor (Vanilla), Starch Syrup, Carnauba Wax.
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Why I Bought It: About fifteen years ago, when Conan O'Brien was still doing Late Night, he did a comedy bit where he made up an all purpose curse word that could be used on television. That word was “crunk”. According to some sources, the word existed way before that. It was a portmanteau of “crazy” and “drunk”, which was also adopted to describe a hybrid of rap and electronica. I don't know when the Lotte company of South Korea decided to make this latest Wacky Snack; but I wish that Conan's show on TBS was already on. I'd like to pitch that Wacky Snacks be a part of it. As for the Chocolate balls part? South Park already had it covered.
Tasting Notes:
These dice-sized milk chocolates have crunchy rice krispie-like bits inside each ball. Imagine nuggets of Nestle Crunch Bars. That's what they approximate (although the ingredients do not list any rice).
Since they're buffed shiny with carnauba wax, they melt in your mouth, not in your hand. Yes, Crunky is also M&M-like. An M&M and Crunch Bar hybrid that you eat out of a flip top lid.
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.