Noodle Journey Episode 161: Nissin Cup Noodles Campfire S’mores Ramen

It’s not April Fool’s Day, but Nissin has once again gone completely off the rails. The new Nissin Cup Noodles Campfire S’mores Ramen is very real, and somehow even more absurd than it sounds. Coming from the same brand that gave us Pumpkin Spice, Breakfast, and Everything Bagel Cup Noodles, this dessert-themed entry takes the concept of novelty flavors to an entirely new level. As Nissin Japan launches a classy blowfish flavor, here in the US we’re stuck with marshmallow and chocolate noodles. The audacity is impressive, but the concept itself already feels like a dare, or even worse: something to get social media all abuzz.

Read more: Noodle Journey Episode 161: Nissin Cup Noodles Campfire S’mores Ramen

This flavor is a Walmart exclusive, priced at $1.18, and features 800mg of sodium with a hefty 9g of added sugar. Inside are thin noodles buried under powdered graham cracker, chocolate sauce, and dehydrated marshmallow pieces. The ingredient list reads like a candy bar: cocoa, brown sugar, corn syrup, milk fat, honey, and gelatin derived from pork – making it decidedly not vegan. What’s most concerning is the inclusion of onion and garlic powder (which might be built into the noodle base). It’s anyone’s guess why those were included in a dessert product, but that’s where we’re at. Once cooked, the marshmallows melted completely, transforming the sauce into a glossy, syrupy film that looks more like hot chocolate than anything else. The smell is strong and surprisingly convincing – sweet graham and chocolate – but that’s where the positives end.

Noodles:
Standard Cup Noodles fare: thin, soft, and serviceable, but a terrible fit for a dessert. The texture feels completely at odds with the “sauce”.
• 5/10

Spiciness:
None whatsoever.
• 0/10

Overall:
What begins as a novelty quickly devolves into a disaster. The first bite is pure corn syrup with faint hints of chocolate and honey, followed by an unpleasant stale aftertaste that’s almost chemical. The melted marshmallows give the sauce a slick, unnatural gloss that coats the noodles in sticky sugar sludge. The combination of sweet sauce and soft ramen texture is fundamentally wrong, and even the smell becomes nauseating after a few minutes. Whatever onion and garlic flavor might have existed is mercifully overpowered by the sugar, but that’s small comfort. The whole experience feels like eating chocolate pudding out of a noodle cup, and not in a fun way. This isn’t just bad; it’s confusing, wasteful, and almost surreal that someone at Nissin thought this was a good idea.
• 0/10

Notes since filming:

This is probably tied with immi’s Black Garlic “Chicken” as the worst thing I’ve reviewed on this channel. There’s a guy on Reddit who pops up every now and then to say how much he likes these, and I compulsively downvote him each time because he is very, very wrong. There’s absolutely nothing to like about this, and I will die on that hill.