Tasty Travels: MunchPak World Snack Box Review
I was provided a MunchPak free in order to facilitate this review. All opinions are my own.
Whenever we travel somewhere, my husband and I love to focus on locally owned restaurants and shops. Doing so allows us to have more contact with the flavors and textures that make up whatever region we find ourselves in that day.
I'm a firm believer that local foods are the way to deepen your travel experience, so I'm the one trying whatever fun, strange, and weird I can find (well, as long as the food plays nicely with my shellfish allergy).
Because of this love of new foods, I created the Tasty Travels series, one that's newer to Cosmos Mariners: Destination Unknown, but still one that is near and dear to my heart.
Today, let's focus on snacks, those sweet or savory (or sometimes both!) little treats that provide the perfect pick-me-up on your sightseeing and adventures. Even if you can't travel right now, it's still fun to try candy, chips, or cakes from somewhere far off.
And that's exactly what the MunchPak provides.
A monthly subscription box service for people who love to travel and eat, the MunchPak sends a curated selection of treats from around the world.
When my MunchPak arrived in the mail, it was all I could do to keep my daughter and husband from devouring everything in sight.
That's a happy little package if I've ever seen one.
Like the good blogger I aspire to be, I pried the box from their desperate hands, and set about checking out what we'd gotten.
In the MunchPak original, customers are promised a minimum of 10 snacks, so our package exceeded that by a few, which is always nice.
I also liked that each snack was a full sized version (like you'd purchase in a store) rather than a sample of each. This version of the MunchPak is $19.95 per month.
One thing that I wished had come with my MunchPak was a card explaining where each snack could usually be found in the world.
In several instances, there were either multiple languages on the packet so we couldn't narrow down the country of origin.
A card like that could also give a quick description of what we'd gotten that month, which would eliminate some of the guessing that we had to do for the packages that had zero English on them.
So, what exactly came in my MunchPak? Let's explore!
We'll start with my daughter's favorite, the Blue Razz Juicy Sour Twists. These were delicious and just the right amount of raspberry flavoring, sweet and sour. T
hey were the texture of Twizzlers, but cut smaller (which was great for small preschooler hands).
Besides having a name that my husband and I giggled over endlessly with our seriously juvenile humor, the Japanese Cream Collon snacks tied for our favorites.
With an outer shell that's reminiscent of Pocky sticks and a vanilla creme filling, this was one that we fought over.
The other treat in our two-way tie for favorite were the humorously named Chicken Macho puffs in Choco Macchiato flavor. Hailing from Korea, these reminded me of Cocoa Puffs cereal, only with a much richer chocolate taste.
If you love Pocky sticks, but crave a savory version of the sweet biscuits, the Pretz Pizza sticks are a great find.
As someone who adores all things pizza and savory, this was a great afternoon snack...while they lasted. I was surprised that they had so much tomato, garlic, and basil flavoring, which made for a great snacking experience.
The Soda Candy was one of the things in this box that I'm glad I tried, but I don't think that I'll seek out again.
A hard candy shaped like a throat lozenge, the Soda Candy had the flavor of a Sprite without the carbonation mixed with sour apple.
I'm not a fan of jerky in general, and definitely not when I'm still suffering from morning sickness as I was when I went through this box, so I had my husband and daughter try the Western's Jerky Sticks for me.
Of the two flavors, my daughter preferred the Bacon flavor (not surprising since she LOVES all things bacon) while my hot-sauce-loving husband gravitated towards the pleasantly spicy Jalapeño flavor.
The Bugsy Snacks Grill Flavor was one of the packages that we couldn't read any of the information (as we're not versed in Hebrew) on this Israeli snack.
Diving into the spiral twists taste-blind, we weren't totally sure what we were tasting: it was a little savory, very crunchy, and salty.
It turns out that "Grill Flavor" equates to grilled chicken flavored twists (I had to look it up on MunchPak's site), which just didn't translate for our tastebuds.
The Sabritas Adobadas potato chips were...interesting. They weren't terrible, but again, not one of the flavors I'd seek out again.
There was a salsa-esque flavoring on these Spanish chips: I love salsa and I love potato chips, but I'm just not sure I want to cram handfuls of this combo in my mouth.
Another item that was a taste-and-guess were these grape chewy candies. Although the texture (a much chewier version of a Starburst) took some getting used to, the flavor was incredible.
It tasted as if the candy company had somehow managed to solidify sparkling grape juice into these little squares.
I wish I knew more about their country of origin, but, alas, my language knowledge fails me again.
Hailing from Turkey, the chocolate Paykek was moist and tasty, something I wasn't expecting in a pre-packaged snack cake. It was plenty big enough for all three of us to have on two different occasions, which is saying a lot considering my husband and daughter each have a major sweet tooth.
And then we end with the cherry pastry thing. I wish I had a better description for this, but I couldn't read any of the writing on the packaging, nor could I find anything on the MunchPak website about it.
Basically, it was a cherry cake, but, unlike the Paykek, this cherry pastry was dry, almost flavorless, and absolutely the worst thing we had in our package.
It was the only snack we each took a bite of and then immediately threw out. Oh well, I guess 1 out of 12 isn't bad.
So, the question remains:
Would I order the MunchPak again?
Definitely. I can see this being a great thing to give as a gift to a travel-loving friend or as a way to treat your family each month. I felt that the pricing was fair for what we ended up getting, and I loved the surprise of trying new flavors and textures.
Have you tried any food-based subscription boxes? Which of the snacks in this MunchPak would you be interested in trying?
