First things first, I did not go to the Tokyo Sky Tree. I'm not especially interested in large quasi-phallic structures or radio towers. However, one can get Sky Tree souvenirs in a lot of adjacent locations including Ryogoku, home of sumo and the Japanese National Stadium (kokugikan) and Asakusa, home of a million tacky souvenirs for tourists. I picked this up in neither of those places. There's a particular branch of New Days convenience stores in Shinjuku which carries a lot of regional sweets for some reason and this was perched on a top shelf, towering above all others.
The truth is that I didn't choose to buy this. It was 525 yen ($6.76) and I knew that was going to be a premium price. It's very often the case in Japan that you purchase something in a large box and find that the contents in no way reflect the box size. I'm not talking about "contents may have settled", but simply packaging inside of packaging which is smaller. In the case of this box, one might expect a neat row of a multitude of minis, but it's just three boxes of regular KitKats. Since the average price of a regular KitKat is 100-120 yen, that means I'd pay about 360 yen for the same quantity if it didn't come in a Sky Tree box.
The odd thing about this is that the box says across the top that this is the "#1 flavor" and is very popular. While I can see how orange chocolate would be quite popular, I have to wonder why there are constant iterations of strawberry KitKats if orange is the "#1". You'd think they'd spin out more orange versions. I question your authenticity, Nestle Japan, and the veracity of your claims. And while I'm at it, I may also question your parentage, pedigree, and the stuff you've written on your résumé. I'm also dubious of your claims of virginity, but that's not something I'm prepared to investigate more closely.
This smells like fake orange flavoring, though not in a bad way. It's not like baby aspirin orange, but more like orange Tootsie Roll Orange. The bars are milk chocolate based and the orange flavoring tends to hit second after the chocolate. It comes across at first as a burst of an orange juice flavor, but quickly tapers away into the aforementioned fake orange flavor. Since this is a KitKat, it's got all of the same fresh, crispy wafer goodness you can expect from any reasonably good KitKat.
This was nice enough, but it isn't what I'd call incredibly "more-ish". I wouldn't have purchased three of these for sure, but I also not have regretted having one on hand for sampling. As a novelty, or for someone who really loves orange chocolates even when they're not the most realistic in flavoring, this is pretty good. I enjoyed it enough to eat what I've got (slowly), but I wouldn't buy it again.
Excellent review (as always). I was just wondering if that was some kind of a Fair Trade mark on the strawberry torte Kit Kat box in the picture at the top of the post? If it was that would be icing on the cake.
ReplyDeleteHi, Johntaro and thank you for reading and commenting.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, that's not a fair trade mark. it says, "le patissier takagi" on that mark. This is supposed to indicate that this will taste like that cake. ;-)
Great review and looks like a pretty good souvenir although pretty pricey!
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what an interesting blog! I like kit kat but I also don't buy it since of the price. :)
ReplyDeleteGiven that Kit Kat is not a Japanese brand, they could be piggybacking on the popularity of the flavor elsewhere. As Orange was the first flavor variant in Kit Kat's native UK, and remains a permanent option, I wouldn't be surprised if the statement is true.
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