Sapporo Ichiban Cup Star is a brand of cup noodles that is a big competitor to Nissin Cup Noodles. Every one of these brands needs a basic cup noodle like the original Cup Noodle. For instant noodles this basic flavour is a shoyu (soy sauce) flavour, much like how cola is a basic flavour for soft drinks. I've have had plenty of the regular Nissin Cup Noodle, but I haven't had the Cup Star noodles too regularly, so I was pretty interested in comparing these two shoyu flavour cup noodles.
I did an older review of various Cup Noodles here before, and will be re-reviewing the regular Cup Noodle from Nissin in a special feature later.
This particular shoyu Cup Star was part of a special promotion with the Nogizaka46 girl idol musical group in Japan. They have been running ads with the various idols, and even setting them up in longer internet commercials where the girls kind of pretend they are your girl friend while enjoying a cup of noodle. You can look the commercials up on Youtube.
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The
cups are quite attractive with lots of pure primary colours and plenty
of white background to show of the text. The toppings of the noodle cup
are prominently displayed on both the front of the cup and the lid.
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Front view of the noodle cup. Cup Star has a nifty logo with the dark blue writing that ends inside the red star. Lots of imagery here showing you the brand is a winner (aka star).
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Lid of the cup. Nice bold red colors with a highlight logo on top. You can see the little tag showing the Nogizaka46 tie in. The noodles and toppings are shown off well on the lid. You can see little bits of scrambled egg, shrimp, and pork cubes.
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Directions. Open the lid halfway, pour in boiling water to the fill line, close the lid, and wait 3 minutes to have instant noodles. Nutritional information is at the bottom. 10.2 grams of fat - not bad.
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Manufacturers information and ingredients.
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Lifting the lid shows that the underside has the signature of one of the idols. I think you can collect a number of the idol signatures in the various noodle cup.
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The noodles look a lot like the noodles in Nissin cup noodles. The are not round but are flattened to allow easier hydration to the middle. There are plenty of toppings. You have little ground pork cubes, pieces of scrambled egg, nice sized shrimp, and green onion.
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The contents of the cup and the toppings even reminds me of the regular Cup Noodle so much that I would have trouble distinguishing the two apart if they were in plain cups. I added the boiling water up to the fill line and waited the three minutes for the noodles and toppings to rehydrate. Everything rehydrated nicely.
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The rehydrated toppings on the noodles and the now ready to eat noodles underneath.
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When I lifted the lid, there was nice soy ramen kind of smell coming from the cup. The toppings and noodles came out perfectly. The noodles had a nice bite to them, just a little chewy, and the soup was a pleasant soy sauce flavour that was also a little salty and tasty. The toppings were all nice, with the decent bite sized shrimp having a good texture, not rubbery, and the meat cubes giving a nice meaty taste. The eggs were decent too. There was nothing to complain about with this this cup noodle and it compares very well with the regular Nissin shoyu cup noodles. I don't think I could pick a favourite between the two as they are both quite good, but this Cup Star was something I would definitely have again.
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Closeup of the noodles, a bit of egg and a meat cube.
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