Chocolate sexism
I discovered these in our local Asian market. They are Pocky Men’s Bitter Chocolate sticks - pretzel sticks dipped in dark chocolate coating. Pocky sticks come in many flavors, milk chocolate, strawberry, vanilla. But I’ve never seen a “men’s” flavor before.
Why are these for men? I think women can handle dark chocolate just fine, thank you very much! In fact, I very much prefer dark chocolate to milk. Must be my butch side. My indignation aside, these Pocky sticks are really very good. The length is just right, but they’re somewhat lacking in girth. 
Saleem responds:
Posted: July 6th, 2008 at 5:10 am →
Hi, I know this probably wasn’t meant to be a serious questions, but I think I might know the answer, so…
Here in Japan, lots of men don’t like sweet chocolate in general. There are exceptions, of course, but in general, Japanese men don’t have much of a sweet tooth. While sweets in general are less, uh, sweet than in America, men seem to be especially sensitive to sugary desserts; for the most part they just don’t like them. I’m always surprised that a lot of my friends here genuinely don’t like American candy. Like dude’s will make a shocked face when they bite in and taste the sugar in a snickers.
So when Pocky markets to men specifically, part of the reason is they are saying, ‘Hey, dudes, I know you think you don’t like Pocky, but this, it’s not too sweet, c’mon just try it.’
I know that doesn’t necessarily make it any less sexist, just saying there’s a little bit of cultural background for it
Again, the above contains some generalizations, and it’s just my personal experience.
(Anyway, odd name aside, the stuff is dang good, right?)
Sophia responds:
Posted: July 6th, 2008 at 8:24 pm →
Mmmmmmm….did someone say, “Chocolate”???
Anna responds:
Posted: July 6th, 2008 at 10:20 pm →
Saleem - thank you so much for the explanation! It makes a lot of sense. I always enjoy learning new things about other cultures, especially when they involve dessert.