Granted this is only amusing if you a) read katakana, b) know the cultural context, but it kind of ties in with the previous post, so I’ll attempt to explain it.
The name of this snack can be transliterated as either ‘white rollita’, in reference to the shape of the snack (which is a sort of a twisted, white-chocolate covered biscuit), or ‘white Lolita’, in reference to the literary classic by Vladimir Nabokov. This pun is fully appreciable in Japanese and is probably intentional. The expression ‘Lolita Complex’, or ‘Lolicon’ as it’s known in the lingua vulgaris was imported long ago, although the Japanese pronunciation is rendered as “roreetah konpurekusu” (or rohreekon, if you prefer).
Lolicon is the commonly used euphemism for adult males who display a bit too much enthusiasm for young girls. Rather than being frowned upon, as in the West, the ‘Lolicon’ is treated as a huge marketing opportunity, with prepubescent pop-stars like Morning Musume (whose members are periodically replaced to keep the average age of the group somewhere around 12 and whose concerts attract droves of middle-aged men) to glossy ‘gravure’ photo-albums that depict girls from ages 10 and up, posing in bikinis (books that would probably get you pulled aside and flogged if you tried to bring them through customs in most Western countries). I guess I could inject a little self-righteous Western moralizing here, but there’s far too much of that out there already. Suffice it to say I plan to get my daughter out of this country as soon as I finish grad school.
