When I started this blog, one of the things I thought was that I'd now have a good excuse to sample all the various KitKats in Japan and that'd be just great fun. Now that I've had my way with a fair number of them, it's starting to feel like sampling them is a burden.
It's not that the basic Kitkat isn't enjoyable or that some of the variations weren't tasty, but just that some are so far-fetched that it gets increasingly difficult to work up any enthusiasm for them. The apple KitKat I'm reviewing sat in my basket of "for review" foods for over a month before I finally got to it because the idea of "Apple + chocolate" just wasn't something I expected to "work". I must note that the previous sentence is the most I've ever found myself putting quotation marks around words in one single phrase.
This particular KitKat is produced for charity, incidentally. Profits from sales of the apple KitKat will be donated to the community chest in Miyagi prefecture to help aid in rebuilding due to damage from the Iwate Miyagi Inland Earthquake. Apple was chosen as a flavor, I'm guessing, because Miyagi is well-known as a supplier of apples and Japanese "nashi" pears.
The apple KitKat is mercifully made with milk chocolate rather than white chocolate infused with flavor. The white chocolate ones seem to often be too sweet and the mixed flavor can be overbearing. As with all Japanese KitKats, it's a box of two packages with two fingers each. One package is 109 calories. The inner packaging is kind of cool in design with a bit of a pop art feel due to the posterized apple used as a graphic and the bright yellow and red colors.
The big question is whether or not you can get something for your charitable impulses if you buy one of these. When you tear open the package, you get a strong apple scent, but they otherwise look like regular KitKats. The flavor is actually quite good. To my taste buds, the mellow milk chocolate and the apple went surprisingly well together. The apple taste is very present, but it doesn't seem too "chemical". The bar is also not overly sweet. I rather enjoyed it as the apple flavor really brought to mind a nice, crispy, fresh apple. I would definitely rate it higher than some of the other fruit-flavored KitKats (like the Muscat of Alexandria variety), but not as high as some others (like Yuzu). Honestly, I could see myself buying this again if I was in the right mood.
I've had the Nagano Apple kit kat which was a regional release and I was quite surprised at the flavour in that it went really well with chocolate. It's probably one of the better kit kat flavours, along with yuzu and blueberry.
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