Taste-testing Starbucks’ Snoopy Frappuccino and Snoopy Waffle.

The theme of Starbucks Japan’s new collaboration with the Peanuts franchise is “Happiness Is,” with the statement symbolically trailing off for you to finish with your own personal take on the matter. It’s a deep, complex question to ponder, but thankfully Starbucks itself provides a pretty good candidate with the first-ever Snoopy Frappuccino.

Its full name is the Snoopy Vanilla Cream Frappuccino with Crushed Cookies. That combination of ingredients wasn’t chosen only because it matches the color scheme of the world-famous beagle, but also, according to Starbucks, because cookies and ice cream are two of Snoopy’s favorite foods.

We’ll admit to not being deeply knowledgeable enough about Peanuts lore to say how closely associated Snoopy is with cookies and ice cream, but we’ll also happily confess to being pretty crazy about those sweets ourselves. So when the Snoopy Frappuccino went on sale March 29, we rushed over to our local Starbucks branch, with a smile on our face and the Peanuts piano theme playing in our head.

The base of the 648-yen (US$4.95) dessert drink is vanilla cream, which is accompanied by black cocoa cookies and syrup. We took a sip, and just like Snoopy’s straightforward and immediately charming character, there are no tricks or pretentiousness here, just an immediate, glee-inducing sensation of rich sweetness running along your taste receptors. It feels like you’re drinking a scoop of ice cream, which is something we have no complaints whatsoever about.

You’ve probably noticed that the Snoopy Frappuccino wasn’t the only thing we ordered on our visit. We paired our drink with another new arrival to the Starbucks Japan menu, the 400-yen Snoopy American Waffle with Crushed Cookies. Again, we’re not sure we 100-percent agree with Starbucks Japan’ s perception that this is an especially “American” way of preparing waffles, but we weren’t about to let some shaky nomenclature dissuade us from eating it.

Basically, this is taking the Snoopy Frappuccino and replacing the vanilla cream drink base with a waffle. As an added bonus, if you ask the Starbucks staff they’ll heat it up before serving it to you, making each bite a warm, ever so slightly gooey mix of waffle, cream, and bitter cocoa cookie bits.

The Snoopy Waffle was as excellent as the Snoopy Frappuccino, and we don’t regret indulging in either one in the slightest. If we could do it all over again, though, we probably wouldn’t have them in the same sitting, since together they’re a lot of whipped cream. So our recommendation is to space them out on separate days, spreading out your intakes of cream and happiness alike.

Photos ©SoraNews24
● Want to hear about SoraNews24’s latest articles as soon as they’re published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!
[ Read in Japanese ]