This tastes like a banana Twinkie, agreed all of my taste testers. I have not eaten Twinkies myself too often and cannot remember what it tastes like, but the Tokyo Banana certainly looks like a banana Twinkie.
Tokyo Banana is basically banana filling on the inside and a very soft sponge cake on the outside. The banana filling is rather plain, but it works fine together. (According to a vegetarian friend, these were vegetarian at some point but no longer are. They currently have gelatin. She was very sad.)
The packaging is rather nice. The inside box is not plain white but has a picture and text to tell us what it is. The cakes themselves are individually packaged with a plastic guard to keep them from getting too mishapen, so you can buy a box, open it, and give out the cakes to friends at different times.
I have only ever seen expiry dates about 1 1/2 months out at maximum on all the trips to Japan where I bothered picking up one of these boxes to check. The point is, buy this near the end of your trip to hopefully get a newer box.
Tokyo Banana can be found at many tourist attractions in Tokyo but they seem to sell out rather quickly. They have been completely sold out— and that means every single variety— every time I have been in the Tokyo Skytree. I have seen Pokémon, Hello Kitty, and Doreamon themed Tokyo Banana, but the cake is not always shaped like a banana in such cases. I have also seen weird patterns to match animals where they “print” the pattern on the original Tokyo Banana shape.
I think these are okay and rarely buy them, but I know a lot of people really, really like these.
