In case you’ve somehow forgotten, it’s nearly Valentine’s Day which means it’s once again time for Japanese food companies to make their best (or, in some cases, their worst) effort to capitalize on the season.  Case in point:  This limited edition chocolate-flavored instant yakisoba.

Now, I’m told that this particular strange food concoction was also in circulation last year but I evidently didn’t notice or at the very least didn’t care so it’s all new to me.

The packaging puts emphasis on it being sweet and chocolatey, which probably isn’t what most people (me included) are looking for in a take on that classic Japanese festival staple of griddle cooked noodles and other stuff but I’ve been surprised before so that’s not going to stop me.

Marketed as something to give someone on Valentine’s Day, there are of course hearts involved.  But when you rip off the plastic wrap, this is what you find.

Then, when you open the thing up, you have some extra goodies inside.

A baggie of extra bits, in this case croutons and weird little non-poppy pop rocks.  I guess these are here to break up the monotony of chocolate and noodles.

As I would later find out the hard way, the “sauce” is just chocolate syrup.  Literally.  Chocolate syrup.

Anyways, one typical “add hot water and wait three minutes and dump” process later and you’re pretty much ready to eat.

So how was it?

(insert dramatic drumroll here)

It was awful.

Noodles and chocolate syrup alone obviously do not mix.  It was unstomachable. Now I’m willing to admit that there maybe some cognitive dissonance involved here as I was raised under the idea that noodles just aren’t meant to be sickly sweet.  The added croutons or whatever sorta sucked up the excess chocolate syrup but a lot of just sorta condensed at the bottom along with whatever noodle water was left leaving me with a situation where the starch of the instant noodles and chocolate syrup left a weird coating on the inside of my mouth.  Not exactly a pleasant eating experience.

Just too sweet and absolutely no flavor or texture changes to break up the monotony of sweet and noodley.  There were also some “aftereffects” that I will leave unsaid here.

If you’re giving this to your loved one, it’s obviously as part of a larger scheme to kill them for their insurance money.

Rating:  One out of five Stephens.

Edible but only if trapped on a desert island.