“What…what is…happening?”
~An American Stoner in Japan
Japan is terrifying. We’ve said this before, but it bears repeating. Japan is terrifying. Japan is like that one friend you have that goes out of his way to say things that will gross everyone out, only that friend is really good at it, and he does a lot of stuff with poop. We’ll admit that Japan admires American culture, in the sense that they see our products like Pepsi and Kit Kats and decide to just get weird with them.
AFFotD has made it a point to keep you, the public, informed of such terrifying food antics by the nation of Japan, which is why we’re here to continue our look inside Japanese junk food with…
Goddamn it, Japan, You’re Doing It Wrong: Japanese Doritos
Doritos were first produced by Frito-Lay in 1964 to be sold at Disneyland, and were the first nationally sold brand of tortilla chips. While the first Doritos were considered too “bland,” the release of taco-flavored Doritos in 1968, and the subsequent release of nacho cheese-flavored Doritos in 1972 helped establish Doritos and a delicious and acceptable product to put in a bowl during a Super Bowl party.
Of course, while Americans look at Doritos and see the ingenuity of a billion dollar company ripping off another country’s cuisine to make an easy profit, Japan sees an opportunity to draw two men in full-body condoms groping each other. While America is content with delicious flavors like “Nacho” and “Cool Ranch” and “Seriously, No One Buys Any Flavor Other Than Nacho And Cool Ranch,” Japan has to go and assault our cheerful dispositions with these corn chip-based monstrosities.
Wasabi Mayo
The reason why we have condiments is so that we never have to flavor things after condiments. You don’t eat things that are ketchup flavored or mustard flavored, because if you want something to taste like that you put ketchup or mustard on it! This is not that difficult of a concept! Of course, since the Japanese language has thirty-three words for “tentacle” and none for “normalcy” they decided to flavor their Doritos like mayo…and add wasabi for the hell of it, probably because they like to watch AFFotD dance around that line of “making fun of Japanese stereotypes” and “written hate crime.” We’re not saying we’re surprised that Japan decided to make a flavor of Doritos that combined the condiment that most looks like semen with the green powder they use to make sushi spicy, we’re just saying that we’re disappointed.
Hey, speaking of dick jokes.
Sausage
Sometimes we can’t really put our finger on Japan. You get the impression they do some of these things with an almost childish naiveté. When they make a “sausage” flavored Dorito, you almost think, “Oh, that’s adorable, they don’t realize how hilarious that is, because as weird as it is to flavor a chip like a sausage, they’re just teeing us up for an easy dick joke.” But then you think about how popular train-groping is there, you realize that they’ve combined rape and octopuses in art since the 19th century, and you stumble across a few of those porn videos where the genitals are fuzzed out like a perp on Cops for some reason before realizing that they probably knew exactly what they were doing when they made a sausage Dorito.
Salty(?)
Japan isn’t even willing to admit when a plain-flavored chip is plain-flavored. Saying that a chip is “Salt” flavored is like telling everyone you hosted a party that had one guest, including yourself. Salty Doritos are the saddest chips we’ve ever heard of—if these chips ever gained were brought to close to a Japanese leaky nuclear reactor and somehow mutated into a living, breathing person, they’d be asthmatic and overweight with a comb-over and really bad people skills. Basically, we’re saying that these chips are the “Internet comment writers who still live in their mother’s basement” of the junk food world.
Cheese and Almond
Okay, so what’s with the beers randomly appearing on Japanese Dorito bags? We saw it with the sausage (heh) but here it is again with the rather-unwholesome-sounding flavor combination of Doritos, unspecified-cheese, and almonds. Listen, Japan, if you’re flavoring your chips like beer, just go ahead and tell us, we will do whatever we can to eat them, but if you’re just putting a stemmed glass of frothy beer there because you think that’s somehow “gourmet.” Speaking of that, what is it with Doritos randomly putting words in English with everything else being in Japanese? Listen, “Doritos Gourmet” is not a brand in America or anywhere outside of Japan, as far as we can tell, is there a reason why you can’t just use the Japanese letters for “Gourmet”? Are you worried that Western customers aren’t going to buy your product if they don’t know it’s one of the illustrious “Gourmet” branded Doritos, responsible for chips that taste like mayonnaise wasabi or unexplained-form-of-sausage?
Anyway, this is supposed to taste like cheese and almonds, and that sounds just horrible.
Sesame Chicken
Listen, we can crack the code for “determining if a Doritos flavor works” for you. It’s not that hard. All you do is ask yourself “would this taste good if I put it on a tortilla chip.” Boom, if the answer is yes, you turn it into a Doritos flavor. Yes, that secret is worth millions to Doritos R&D department, but seriously this shit isn’t rocket science. “Hey, have you ever put taco ingredients on top of nachos? You did? It tasted good? Okay, taco flavor then.” “Does nacho cheese taste good on nachos? It does? Okay, Nacho cheese Doritos.” The only thing that doesn’t really adhere to that criteria is Cool Ranch, but Cool Ranch gets to take advantage of the little known “In America, if you flavor anything like Ranch dressing, it will taste good” loophole.
Okay, seriously, just to drive this point home, we’ll just list off a series of lesser-known Doritos flavors that are sold here in the States, taken straight from the Doritos website. Salsa verde. Spicy sweet chili. Enchilada supreme. All of these are things that would not look out of place on tortilla chips. Hell, we can make up a Doritos flavor right now that isn’t being made, and can guarantee it’d be delicious. Mango salsa. A little spicy, a little sweet, you’re welcome Frito-Lay, we just made you millions. And that took all of five seconds to come up with. Again, this isn’t that difficult.
Except for Japan. Because Japan happens to think that people would want to put sesame chicken on top of a tortilla chip. Because Japan is fucking gross. And they’re doing it wrong. Goddamn it are they doing it wrong.
Butter and Soy Sauce
They added corn to this picture of a butter and soy sauce flavored Doritos as if that’d somehow make it taste better, but really all that they’re reminding us is that Doritos are made of corn, and putting soy sauce and butter on a cob of corn makes about sense as ever combining soy sauce and butter because that sounds legitimately horrible. Why would you do that to your mouth? Why? We honestly want to know!
Tuna Mayo
Okay, we can’t keep doing this. We’re going to be sick if we keep up at this. Tuna mayo Doritos? Really Japan? Goddamn you. Goddamn you so hard.
