7-Eleven is the next stop on our journey to becoming master Pokémon eaters.
As we all know, Friday was an important day for us Pokémon fans. What is this? Pokemon Scarlet and Violet went out that day? Oh yeah, that’s cool and all. But November 18 was also the release date New Pokémon 7-Eleven Rice Balls.
▼ The onigiri (rice balls) section of Japanese grocery stores is always full of great stuff, but especially today.
7-Eleven Japan released three Poké Ball themed rice balls, representing the standard Poké Ball and its enhanced Great Ball and Ultra Ball forms.
Of course, I had to get all three of them and take them back to SoraNews24’s taste testing lab for further analysis, starting with regular Poké Ball.
Oddly enough, this is the most expensive onigiri of the three, even though the game’s Poké Ball is the cheapest method of catching a pocket monster. That said, for 172 yen ($1.25), it won’t break your budget.
From the packaging, we can see that the Poké Ball is a nice thickness pork sausage pate with a strip of seaweed wrapped around it. It has a nice meaty texture when you bite into it, and a peppery kick that’s reminiscent of Spam musubi, and a generous amount of mayonnaise waiting between the rice and the pork.
Then 162 yen Great ball.
This is the onigiri version omuricJapanese rice omelette. However, instead of being completely encased in an egg, you get a nice fluffy layer of egg on top.
▼ If you played Scarlet and Purplemay remind you of the pompadour hairstyle that the new Water Quaxly starter wears.
However, this is a special rice omelette, because in addition to the standard ingredients of egg, chicken and rice seasoned with ketchup, it also has demi-glace sauce with mushroomsthat have a surprising amount of presence. Between the sweetness of ketchup and the complexity of mushrooms, this is an onigiri that both kids and adults can enjoy, much like the Pokémon games themselves.
And finally we come to 151 yen ultra ball.
This is onigiri made of rice cooked in tonkotsu ramen pork broth, but the taste is not as overpowering as you might expect, and it’s not particularly salty either. Instead, the soy sauce is more impressive, and the rice itself tastes like takekomigohan dishes based on soy broth, such as gomoku onigiri.
In the middle you have the so-called hanjuku tamago hard-boiled egg with a soft center in Japanese. Hanjuku tamago is a popular addition to ramen bowls, and its presence here serves a similar purpose, adding a bit of moist richness with a dash of decadent stickiness.
As longtime overseas fans remember, long ago the English-language version of The Pokémon the anime attempted to portray the series’ onigiri as “jelly donuts”. So it’s cool to see the franchise do something that puts onigiri in the limelight now, especially with 7-Eleven going three-for-three in the delicious department.
Onigiri Poké Balls are now on sale at 7-Eleven branches across Japan and will be available for a limited, indefinite time.
Pictures ©SoraNews24
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