Posts Tagged ‘kitkat’

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Long time no see. Ume Soda KitKat.

August 21, 2009

In the month or so that has gone by since I my last post, I have moved back to the United States, and I have helped my fiance move to her new apartment, which has resulted in almost a month without internet access and the means to update this blog. Hopefully things have changed now.

I filmed plenty of videos and sent a lot of stuff that I haven’t reviewed to my house in the US, so I will still be able to make updates while my backup supply lasts. After that, I should hopefully have people in Japan who can still send me new treats to try out. Don’t worry! Things will continue on, but the info will not be as breaking as it once was. Alas.

Anways, the most recent KitKat flavor I saw before moving was:

Ume Soda KitKat

Ume Soda KitKat

Unfortunately, I forgot two separate packs of these in two separate refrigerators on two separate occasions, so I was never able to try them out. I sent a box or two to my house via surface mail, so I will try these out eventually. We will just have to wait until then. =(

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It’s Mango Mania in Japan.

July 23, 2009

Summer is in full swing, and that means it’s time for all of the tasty tropical flavored things to go on sale. This year, the flavor of the year is mango. Here’s a quick rundown of a few things you can now find:

Peach and Mango drink

Peach and Mango drink

Here’s a drink that’s a combination of peach and mango with an overall yogurt flavor to it. This “World’s Kitchen” brand often releases different kinds of drinks supposedly inspired by various countries, and this time around, they say that they got the idea from Hungary.

Dessert Mango Milk Tea

Dessert Mango Milk Tea

The Kocha Kaden Desserts line also brings out many different kinds of really sweet kinds of milk tea. They’ve done caramel, strawberry, and this time around, they’re doing mango. This really tastes like mango and milk tea separately, but at the same time (if that makes any sense). You can taste the mango, and you can taste milk tea, but for some reason, it doesn’t come off as tasting like “mango milk tea”. The previous varieties got a little too sweet about halfway through the bottle, but I’ve had no problem finishing off many of these.

Mango Pudding Country Ma'am cookies

Mango Pudding Country Ma'am cookies

Country Ma’am is a brand that I’ve, unfortunately, been neglecting since I started reporting on flavors. They always are coming out with new flavors of cookies every season, and have been doing so as far back as I can remember. Well the neglect ends now!

They certainly look the part.

They certainly look the part.

For a cookie, these taste surprisingly accurate. There is a lot of mango flavor in these tiny little cookies. The while chocolate chips get completely overshadowed by the mango flavor of the cookie, but they still had that nice texture that comes with chewing on a chocolate chip cookie.

They normally reccommend that you microwave them for 20 seconds or so to make them hot and moist, and normally, this is a good idea.  I thought that they flavor was more pronounced when eaten “cold”, but what it lacks in flavor, it makes up for in being realy moist and warm (although doing so always makes them kind of oily).

Mango Pudding KitKat

Mango Pudding KitKat

Of course there’s a new KitKat flavor as well. Unfortunately, those ripoff “combo packs” are back in Pog form once again. At least this time around, the chocolate to mango ratio is a lot better than with previous flavors. In this particular bag, you get 7 pairs of milk chocolate and 6 pairs of mango pudding. Still a long way to go, but things are getting better (I gueeessss).

An individual mango pudding KitKat.

An individual mango pudding KitKat.

Unfortunately for the KitKat, there’s a lot of competition in the mango flavor department, and these don’t really stand up to the others, specifically the Country Ma’am cookies. There’s a nice mango smell to them, and there’s a decent initial mango flavor, but it doesn’t really last. As you keep eating them, the flavor kind of fades into more of a generic white chocolate wafer with a hint of mango. If these were the only snacks in town, I might have given them a more favorable review, because they are pretty tasty, but unfortunately, there are others who can do mango better.

Coconut Mango Cocktail

Coconut Mango Cocktail

Even the alcohol gets frutier in the summertime, much to my delight. This “coconut mango” flavor sounded like it would be right up my alley, but by trying to pull off three flavors at once, they end up lacking with each one. They mix all of this with vodka, but these things never really taste like alcohol, so that’s never a problem. The mango doesn’t taste as good when compared to the peach and milk tea drink mentioned earlier, and the little bit of grapefruit that they decided to add in just detracts from the mango and makes it more sour than I felt it should be. That might just be to cover up the alcohol taste. In a time like this, I would expect the sweetness of the coconut flavor to come in and make everything better, but there was barely any coconut flavor to be had, which is what attracted me to this in the first place. If they had axed the grapfruit in favor of making the coconut flavor stronger, I could see myself enjoying this a lot more, but alas.

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Finally, Sports Drink KitKat

July 10, 2009

When I was in Tokyo last week, I literally went into every single convenience store and grocery store that I walked past to try and find these damn things. 7-11? Nope. Lawson? Nope. Family Mart? Nope. Sunkus? Nope. Newdays? Nope. It wasn’t until I was getting ready to head back home that i walked past an AMPM. Sure enough, they had them! I proceeded to buy what little stock they had left.

Sports Drink KitKat

Sports Drink KitKat

When I first heard of these, I figured that they would taste like at least one of two things:

  • Citrus/Grapefruit in order to seem similar to Aquarius.
  • Somewhat salty in order to seem similar to Pocari Sweat.

It turns out I was right on both points, but only under certain conditions, but even with both of those accounted for, I never thought that they tasted like a real sports drink.

Outer and inner packaging.

Outer and inner packaging.

I first tried them out as soon as I bought them, and in the middle of summer, there was nothing I could do to prevent them from melting a little. I tried them again later after having put them in the fridge for a bit, and the flavor seems more “accurate” after being cooled down.

When it was kind of melty, it tasted more like white chocolate and yogurt with a little bit of saltiness as well. I was kind of disappointed, because I don’t recall any sports drinks that taste like yogurt, unless you want to count Protein Water.

After having chilled them, I noticed that they didn’t taste like the yogurt flavor I had remembered. Instead, they tasted more like lemon than anything else, and they still had a salty taste to them as well. I tried some of the recent Lemon Vinegar ones again just to compare, and while not as lemony, the sports drink ones still had enough of a flavor to jog my memory. I wanted to make sure that they didn’t just take the lemon vinegar ones and add salt to the mixture. As an added bonus, there were times when they reminded me of those little wafer cookies that usually come in vanilla/chocolate/strawberry assortments if you can imagine one with a slight lemon taste to it.

Unfortunately, these were anything but refreshing, and they don’t do any sort of electrolyte replenishing, but you would be silly to actually have these kind of expectations from a KitKat. They seem to simply be advertising a soccer program and not being marketed toward actual soccer players.

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“Sports Drink” KitKat

July 1, 2009

According to Nestle’s website, a new flavor of KitKat went on sale June 22nd: Sports Drink.

Sports Drink KitKat

Sports Drink KitKat

Apparently, this is a collaboration between Nestle and the JFA Dream Asia Project that looks to promote soccer within Asia and Japan.  If it’s like most of the sports drinks here, it will probably have a slightly citrus, more than likely grapefruit, flavor. I don’t think that these will be all too refreshing, nor will the replenish your electrolytes, but I doubt that’s the point on these.

I’ve been looking for these for about a week now with no luck. There one more place that I’d like to check out, but if it doesn’t turn up, I’m sure I can find at least one store that has them when I head to Tokyo this weekend.

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Uji Green Tea Video Review

June 25, 2009
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Cayenne Pepper KitKat Video Review

June 21, 2009
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More “drink” snacks: Ramune KitKats

June 17, 2009

It looks like KitKats are also getting in on the “snacks that taste like popular drinks” bandwagon. Their drink of choice? Ramune.

Ramune KitKat

Ramune KitKat

The artwork on the bag suggests that these are the special flavor for Tanabata, but I don’t really see the connection. If memory serves me correctly, the Tanabata flavors for last year and the year before that were both banana, so yeah, I have no idea. I’m guess that it’s just because it’s being released around the same time.

As shown on the bag, the KitKats themselves are light blue. They have kind of a strange smell to them. A friend of mine said that they smelled like “erasers”. Luckily, they don’t taste like erasers, but pretty much like Ramune. Unfortunately, they taste more like Ramune candy than they do the actual drink. The chocolate itself tastes a little bit like Ramune, but it’s not very pronounced. They unfortunately didn’t mimic the carbonation effects from the cola caramel corn snacks.

The real flavor comes from a powder that they mixed in with the cream that’s inside of each stick. They mention that it’s supposed to be “bubbly” and taste carbonated, but it really just tastes like they crushed up the Ramune candies and mix those in with whatever cream they put inside. It doesn’t really mix well with the rest of the KitKat. That’s not to say that it’s bad, but you just end up noticing the two flavors separate from each other. At first, you taste the outer chocolate, and then, after chewing for a while, you taste the candy/powder but it’s as if you just put some of the candy in your mouth and not like a “ramune KitKat”.

If the cola Caramel Corn hadn’t beaten them to the punch, I might have been more impressed with these. I don’t feel that the powder was necessary, because it just tastes like you’re eating two separate things rather than one well put together one.

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Yuzu Pepper KitKat review

June 10, 2009

Remember when I showed you those special Yuzu Pepper KitKats from Kyuushuu? Well I just got around to uploading the video review last night. Here it is:

They tasted like citrus with a hint of pepper flavoring. They weren’t spicy at all, but the pepper tasted surprisingly good when combined with the citrus flavor of a yuzu.

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Marathon eating session: complete.

May 24, 2009

*Whew*

I just got finished filming video reviews for everything I still needed to do, so I have lots of things to keep me busy with this week. In the meantime, here are some short little reviews to keep you satisfied until the videos go up:

Lots of eating going on.

Lots of eating going on.

KitKat:

Yuzu Pepper – Tastes like dark chocolate and citrus with a pleasant pepper aftertaste.

Cayenne Pepper – Very little flavor and almost no spice. Disappointing.

Uji Green Tea – “Green Tea Light”. Less bitter than previous versions.

Apple Vinegar – Read about it here.

Lemon Vinegar – Didn’t taste the vinegar. Not too different from other lemon versions.

Kinako – Tastes like peanut butter.

Cheetos:

BBQ/Chili Sauce Combo – Like the standard BBQ ones with a little extra spice.

Garlic Soy Sauce – Pleasant garlic taste with salt added in.

Yokohama Shuumai – Very odd and hard to describe, but interesting and tasty nonetheless.

Doritos:

Men’s Chili – Not much flavor but very spicy as you keep eating them.

Men’s 7-spices – VERY GOOD! A fantastic blend.

Stick (Taco sauce) – Secretly Fritos. Nice flavor though.

Teriyaki – Good flavor, but it fades almost immediately. There are better teriyaki alternatives.

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Lemon Vinegar KitKats. Finally!

May 24, 2009

It only took a couple weeks to track them down, but I finally found a few bags of the lemon vinegar Kitkats.

Lemon Vinegar KitKat

Lemon Vinegar KitKat

I’d like to get this reviewed, as well as the ten or so flavors of chips that I have yet to get taken care of in the last couple of weeks.

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