The Jaga Boulde じゃがボルダ potato chips series represents a collaboration between famous Japanese snack food brand Calbee's Calbee Plus, which proposes "delicious" and "fun" products that go one step further, and the Tokyo Banana sponge cake, Tokyo's "No. 1 souvenir"* sweets. As a premium limited-edition chip series, they come packaged in artfully designed boxes and are currently only available at JR's Tokyo Station.

* Based on a survey conducted by Intage, Inc. between Feb. 5-7, 2019 on "your favorite domestic souvenir received by friends or family in the past year."

We bought two of the four currently-available flavors, Shellfish dashi and aosa nori flavor (貝だしとあおさ味 kaidashi to aosa aji) and Bonito and kombu umami-rich dashi flavor (鰹と昆布のうまみだし味 katsuo to kombu no umami-dashi aji).

According to their press release, they've not only received such effusive praise on social media such as "These are the best potato chips I've ever had in my life," but they've also gotten noticed for one other reason, which you'll see when you open the box:

KGT: (K)ona (G)a (T)e ni tsukinikui

These chips have been specially engineered to leave less powder on your fingers, which they've described with the tongue-in-cheek pseudo-scientific acronym KGT, which stands for (K)ona (G)a (T)e ni tsukinikui 粉が手につきにくい, meaning powder doesn't easily stick to your fingers!

Of course, this is the real reason why we bought these Jaga Boulde chips in the first place. We wanted to put their claim to the test, so we decided to conduct our very own unscientific experiment, comparing them to two other Calbee brand chips to see if they lived up to their Jaga Boulde claim!

But first, we wanted to see how they tasted!

Shellfish dashi and aosa nori flavor

Satsifyingly ridged and crunchy, these chips definitely had a noticeable shellfish flavor, not overpowering but mild and flavorful, along with a hint of nori seaweed. It was easy to understand why some people commented on SNS that they were "great for pairing with beer."

Looking closely, we could notice the specks of aosa nori and wondered if they would stay on our fingers...

Bonito and kombu umami-rich dashi flavor

Now for the Bonito and kombu umami-rich dashi flavor chips. We had just recently experienced how great it is to brew our own dashi, so we were looking forward to tasting dashi's main components, bonito and kombu, in this chip.

We weren't disappointed. The umami in the title wasn't added gratuitously. Although mild, the umami-rich bonito and kombu flavors which we recognized from fresh-brewed dashi were unmistakably present. Another great chip! We made short work out of the small bag. Fortunately, there were three more bags in the box!

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KGT or not KGT: Comparison test

For our unscientific comparison test, we compared one of the Jaga Boulde chip with two other Calbee chips, the Consommé Double Punch コンソメWパンチ　(with a double dose of consommé flavor) and their Butter Shrimp flavor chips in their Otona no Pote-rich (sophisticated potato rich taste) series 大人のポテリッチ　海老バター味.

Of the two Jaga Boudle chips we tried, the Shellfish dashi and aosa nori flavor seemed like it would leave more powder on our fingers, so that was the one we used in our comparison.

To compare the KGT level, we held each chip in three different spots, then pressed our index finger against the sticky side of a piece of cellophane tape, which we then stuck on a blank sheet of paper and examined with a microscope for a square measuring about 6 mm x 8 mm.

Here's what the Jaga Boulde chip produced:

You can notice just a few green specks of aonori...

Here's the Butter Shrimp chips:

Things are getting a bit more crowded...

And here's the Consommé Double Punch chip:

It looks like that double punch of consommé needs more powder per chip!

For the record, we're not criticizing the other chips for being more powdery. They're made differently and they're great in their own right.

But at least according to our unscientific test, it would definitely seem that the Jaga Boulde chips live up to their claim of leaving less powder on your fingers when you eat them! Good to know if you like to keep things clean when you eat. The other thing we confirmed was that they definitely go great with beer!

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You can pick up your Jaga Boulde chips at the Calbee + Tokyo Banana shop in the Gransta shopping area in the JR Tokyo Station. See their website for details.