By 
Tokyo Banana sponge cakes are a classic sort of omiyage souvenir snack from Japan that often appears in wrapped boxes at Japanese airports ready to take home. They’re also considered a sort of treat staple. So much so that we’ve seen various crossovers. While the Eevee option is a little more rare and a different flavor, I happened to find and grab a box of the Pikachu Pokemon Tokyo Banana cakes and found they genuinely are as tasty as the hype suggests.
Now, outside Japan there can be a mark-up on the Tokyo Banana cakes in general and especially on the Pokemon variants like the Pikachu one. For reference, it cost ¥1,512 (~$9.50) for the eight-piece box when I found it at the duty-free shop in Haneda Airport. So if you are outside the country and are curious, trying to find it for around $10-15 would be ideal. If you see someone selling an eight-piece box for like $40 or more, that’s a massive mark-up.
The exterior Pokemon Tokyo Banana wrapping is impeccable design and I recommend being very careful when ripping that Pikachu label off. The interior items are all just the wrapped banana cakes in plastic. So if you wanted to take photos or even save elements of that exterior paper as a souvenir or scrapbook item, that’s essentially what you get. I found it pretty easy to get off in one piece, though there will likely be tearing at the end when getting box out. The actual box itself is a standard Tokyo Banana box with the standard Grapestone iconography with the yellow banana set against a white background.
Once the box is open, all eight Pikachu Tokyo Banana sponge cakes is individually wrapped in Pokemon packaging that resembles a Poke Ball. Each dessert has a Pikachu essentially printed on it. While the official site seems to suggest five or six possible designs, it’s not guaranteed you’ll get each one in your box! Mine had three Pikachu that were smiling and winking their left eyes, three smiling with their eyes shut, one sleeping, and one with the left eye winking and a pink heart above their head. Basically, know it’s a random grab if you were hoping for one of each pattern for aesthetic purposes. (I mean, they all taste the same though, so it is fine.)
While these are a dessert, the Tokyo Banana cakes aren’t an overly sweet item. I found it’s more of a subtle and pleasant type of flavor. The cake itself is incredibly soft. It can easily be split by hands or utensils. It’s also something of a light, maybe even a bit bland flavor that is slightly sweet. Which is fine, considering the “star” of the show is intended to be the banana custard cream inside.
Said cream is much better and tastier than I expected, frankly. I went into it thinking the Tokyo Banana cake would have an artificial flavor or maybe even an aftertaste. I’d had the Tokyo Banana Kit Kats and standard banana Kit Kats before and hated both for that exact reason. It didn’t taste like proper banana. While the banana scent will hit you when you open the wrapper and cut open the cake, it’s very subtle and not overpowering. And, yes, while sweet, again isn’t saccharine or overwhelming.
This is also probably a weird thing to like about it, but I appreciated the general construction and design of the Pikachu Tokyo Banana Pokemon sponge cakes. Yes, the character accents are great and subtle. It’s recognizable without changing the whole shape of the dessert. But everything as a whole is handled well. The cake itself is incredibly soft and delicate, so there’s a plastic insert inside each one to add a sense of structure coupled with the sturdy box. The banana custard cream inside is really stable and solid, so it isn’t dripping out or runny when you bite, cut, or rip into it. It means you get an even amount of filling in each bite. There’s a good sense of consistency too. While I only photographed one as an example, I’ve had three total and each featured the same amount of cream, same tenderness of the cake, and same clarity with the design.
While there is a lot of marketing around the Pokemon Tokyo Banana Pikachu sponge cakes, I found it to be a genuinely good, tasty, and unique omiyage souvenir. It’s more of a live-in-the-moment treat, given the wrapping and plastic packaging are the only elements that remain when the desserts are gone. They’re a really subtle snack that does taste unique and doesn’t come across as cloyingly sweet or like a standard American snack cake. It feels a bit more like it is a bakery find designed to be more focused on the banana element than being a sweet treat, and I like that.
Pikachu Pokemon Tokyo Banana sponge cakes are available in Japan in three different sizes. The standard variants can be found on Amazon outside Japan, but the price is higher than it is in Japan.
We may earn a commission if you purchase from certain links. Learn more here.
