Pucchin Purin Choco Mix / プッチンプリン チョコミックス

Pucchin Purin Choco Mix / プッチンプリン チョコミックス

Pucchin Purin is one of the famous pudding produced by Glico, a sweet maker in Japan.
This pudding first came out to market back in 1972.
Now they're celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, 2012.

Pucchin is an onomatopoeia of breaking a little tip on the bottom of the case. (I will explain with photos later.)
Purin is a Japanese way to say pudding.
Choco is a short term of chocolate.

1970s, there're a lot of diary products, for example yogurt,  but there's almost no dessert in supermarkets or grocery shops.
At the same time, pudding was really popular and big in sweet stores and confectionery shops, so employees got a hint from the boom and started thinking it would be great if everyone could eat pudding at home as a regular snack.
If you go to Glico homepage, you could see some manga (but only in Japanese) how they had struggled, researched over and over, and finally could bring the pudding into the world.
http://pucchin.jp/top.html
Once you click the link above, a giant pudding would be shown and once the movie is done, on the bottom left, there's a pudding saying おしえて！プッチン with smaller font of English line TELL ME PUCCHIN! which would show the manga of history how they made Pucchin Purin.


What makes this pudding interesting and unique is the plastic cup.
Once you pinch a little tab on the bottom, this pudding would fall out easily with perfect shape.
Their focus was "sweet shop's dessert at home" so that they wanted to make the pudding look like the one served at those special eating places.
They place pudding upside down and decorate with whipped cream and fruits.


So, to celebrate 40th anniversary of Pucchin Purin, they launched a Pucchin Purin Choco Mix.
Regular Pucchin Purin has 2 colors; yellow and brown, which are egg and caramel.
However, this Choco Mix has another layer with the 2 colors, so it's actually a triple colored pudding.

It says "limited edition" and 20th anniversary.
The wavy shape of 40's "0" is same shape of the cup.
In the star-looking shape, there's プ, which is pronounced "pu," is a first letter of プリン /  pudding.

An image of the pudding on the lid is upside down, so when you open the cover, you'll see chocolate layer.

Looks like a jellied hot cocoa.

So, once you open the top, you need to prepare a plate and cover like this.

Ok, now it needs to be turned upside down.  
I'm not crazy, this is how we gotta do.

Please see the direction on the bottom: 

1. Please place the pudding upside down on a plate.

2. Push the tab towards the way an arrow shows.

Once you push the little tip, air goes into from the hole and pudding falls out quickly.

See? Now the pudding is separated from the case!

And the order of colors are same as the package image (except the shape and height).

Many Japanese puddings use gelatin to make the pudding firm and stable and Pucchin Pudding is also one of those, though the pudding is no longer in the case, it keeps the shape and won't collapse. 

Funny aspect appears when you shake the plate sideways. 

This pudding looks like dancing. 

As you can see, the caramel is really smooth and falls down from the top once you dig in.

Nutrition: 1 cup (170g)

234 kcal

3.4g of protein

13.2g of fat

25.3g of carbohydrate

123mg of natrium

Ingredients, there're gelatin and agar (Japanese agar), this is the reason why this pudding has jello-like texture.

As I grew up in Japan, I'm used to this a bit hard pudding but there're a lot of types of pudding, like strawberry sauce, chocolate, really smooth and custard type of pudding, and also this hard type.

Like I mentioned, it sounds weird to have strawberry sauce pudding but many companies or brands create seasonal flavor puddings every year thus we get to try pumpkin pudding during Halloween season. (I haven't written this pudding yet.)

Pucchin Purin can be eaten directly from the cup of course, but I enjoy seeing the pudding falling off from the cup, landing on a plate, shaking and dancing before eating it.