Stix & Pretz

I'm a fan of Japanese snacks. I was ordering Pocky direct from Japan back in the nineties before I moved to California. In California I discovered I could get them just by going down the road to my local Asian food store. Now that I'm back in Arkansas Pocky is a lot harder to find, but another of the snacks I like just got a whole lot easier to find.

That snack is Pretz. Basically a wheat cracker in the form of a stick with some mild flavoring. The standard Pretz is tomato Pretz with a vaguely pizza-like taste. It's even harder to get here than Pocky, so imagine my surprise when I was going through the snack section at Wal-Mart and saw Pingles Stix (yes, I hate Wal-Mart too, but they're very hard to stay completely away from when you live one county south of their home offices). The picture on the box told me that it was at the very least inspired by Pretz so I bought a box to try.

They aren't just inspired by Pretz, they are Pretz. They're marked as a product of Thailand on the packaging, which makes me suspect that they are even made in the same factory. The flavor selection is different, but the base cracker stick is identical down to the little marks from baking, as is the inner foil packaging.

I don't know if there is an agreement between Glico and Procter & Gamble or not, but I suspect there may be. If so, then maybe we'll soon see some Americanized Pocky as well. I can only hope. It's just too bad that no matter what happens, I'm sure P&G will never market anything in the US with green tea flavor.