Oshiruko KitKat

Oh, Nestlé Japan, will you never stop making variations on the KitKat? You amuse us endlessly with your attempts to lure us in with ever more esoteric flavor combinations. This time, they have given us sweet red bean soup (oshiruko) flavor. The picture on the front of the box shows the soup with a ball of pounded rice (mochi) floating plopped in the middle.


The "mochi" part of this combination is achieved by putting "mochi puffs" in the bar. The chocolate coating is supposed to be oshiruko flavor and the creme in between the wafers is koshian, beans which have been passed through a strainer to remove their skins.

If you look very, very closely, you can see light specs which are the mochi puffs.

The bar smells like a moldy old sock. Seriously. It smells bad. I've never eaten red bean soup so maybe that's what it smells like, too. However, I must say that I'm not keen to try real oshiruko after a whiff of this bar. Of course, smell isn't everything, though it usually is half of the taste of a food. Well, smell isn't always everything, but it turns out that what smells like a moldy old sock tastes like one, too. The first bite of this is like chocolate mustiness in your mouth. It's like a pair of Grandma's underpants that have been stuck at the back of the drawer for 2 decades. Nestlé Japan might want to use that as the tag line for this bar. I won't even ask that they pay me. Knowing that they're embracing truth in advertising would be repayment enough.

To be fair, the subsequent bites aren't as disgusting as the initial one. The moldy flavor starts to become subdued and gives way to a cardboard flavor. It's not good, but it's not nearly as bad as the first bite. By the time you get through half of the second finger (yeah, I felt obliged to eat two fingers to give this a good chance), your tongue is sufficiently saturated with the musty flavor that you start to taste the mochi puffs. They taste a little like year-old rice crispies although not from a sealed box. No, this flavor could only be achieved with an open box, preferably stored in your attic or cellar for an extended period of time.

So, I began by asking if Nestlé Japan will stop making variations on KitKats. This bar offers evidence that they likely will not, but it also supports the idea that they probably should.

Other reviews of this are at Candy Blog.