It’s been a while since I last covered an Interesting Find topic. I’ve found a lot of interesting things during the break, but to get back on track, here is something I found at Anime Weekend Atlanta last year from the Dealer’s Room that I couldn’t find room for: a box of CalorieMate!

The meal of hired mercenaries?

I found a package of CalorieMate from the folks over at Wizzywig Collectibles at AWA after camping out at their booth of awesome Japanese snacks, including a pack of Melon Bread! CalorieMate looks like something you would find in a non-Japanese supermarket with it’s 1950′s appearance, but it’s really a Japanese snack intended as a diet snack. They don’t call it CalorieMate for nothing!

I’m sure many have heard and eaten Pocky, which is almost a fad in the Anime fandom (in the US, anyway), but “CalorieMate” may sound familiar to those who have played a certain video game that was released 5 years ago: Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.

Naked Snake: Spokesperson and Actual User of CalorieMate

A box of the stuff would appear throughout the game in place of a ration when one wasn’t available. According to Naked Snake, “It’s Delicious!” I don’t think so… It comes in many flavors and forms: Can, Block (the one I had, which looks like small, thick bread sticks), and Jelly for the forms, and in flavors of Cheese, Maple, Chocolate, and Potato-which I had the misfortune of tasting, as it was horrible! Yuck!

Thinking back, that was the only flavor the dealer had (unless the popular flavors were already long gone). Either way, it was an honor of eating the same snack of the legendary Naked Snake Big Boss ate during Operation: Snake Eater in 1964. Now that I know that there are other flavors, I’m going to give this another chance… why won’t Snake just stick to a Red Bull knockoff, as seen in Metal Gear Solid 4?