Random Weekend Picture 3

Three days ago, I took a walk around the neighborhood and noticed that the Setsubun Aero and KitKat bars which I reviewed in February are being relegated to bargain bins at Okashi no Machioka. One of the reasons not to release such bars is that the date at which they were released is so obvious. The original price was 120 yen ($1.33) and the sale price is less than half that at 59 yen (65 cents). Note that there are more KitKats left than Aeros. I guess the Japanese aren't any fonder of the dirt-like flavor of the Setsubun KitKats than I was.

This sort of steep discounting is actually quite rare.

Aero Setsubun Black Soy Chocolate Bar

The Aero black soy bar is Nestle Japan's second entry in the Setsubun marketing game.The red devil on the soy bean KitKat has been given a color job and been symbolically castrated by having his horns removed. This might be a girl demon. I'm not up on gender identification of devil and demon sorts.

I found this bar side-by-side with the Setsubun KitKat at Family Mart convenience store. Both bars are pretty much the same size, about 14 x 3 x 2 cm (5.5 x 1.2 x .8 in.) and cost 120 yen ($1.32). The bar has a bit of a rough-hewn pattern on the outside. I'm guessing this is supposed to resemble wood, but I can't imagine why. The information on the front says that this bar is .28% black soy. That small a quantity of a key ingredient seems to indicate that the people at Nestle Japan subscribe to the homeopathic notion that no matter how little of something you use, it can be effective.


The bar smells vaguely of soy flour (kinako) and has a gray bubbled interior. I ate my bar at room temperature, so the sometimes crunchy effect you get from eating catacombs of cold aerated chocolate didn't happen. Instead, I just got a soft, rich milk chocolate flavor and texture. It melts so quickly in your mouth that it seems like you've got a mouth full of warm fudge. It's a very sumptuous experience.

As milk chocolate bars go, this is very enjoyable. I've had Aero before, but mainly as smaller bars. I don't know if the tiny bit of black soybean in the bar enhanced the richness or simply that the thickness and room temperature chocolate made it seem more decadent, but I enjoyed this more than I remember regular Aero bars. That being said, I didn't taste the soy component at all.

Aero Hotto (Hot) Milk

The Aero bar is Nestlé Japan's lesser loved child. Of course, daddy's favorite is the oft-manipulated KitKat. The original Aero is a chocolate coated bar of aerated chocolate. This variation is pretty much the same bubble-filled bar with white stuff inside instead of brown stuff.


Nobody has taken notice, but the Aero has seen quite a few flavor variations as well. They have included banana, melon, peach, green tea, strawberry, tropical fruit, and lemon soda. No, I didn't notice these flavors in the shops. I had to look it up on Japanese Wikipedia.


In some world where my anthropomorphized fantasies about candy bars have become a bizarre reality, I'm sure the Aero has intense sibling rivalry with the Japanese KitKat. They probably fight over lollipop girlfriends and compete for their parent company's affection.


At any rate, all of this fanciful writing is a cover for the fact that this is one boring bar so there is little to say about it. It comes in a box with two individually wrapped bars at 113 calories per little bar. It smells like cocoa, is quite sweet, rather milky, soft, and very melty. The big point of the Aero bar is that the bubbles are supposed to melt in your mouth and you can feel them. I can't feel them, but it does seem like the chocolate disappears super fast with all of that air in there.

This is a nice enough, if somewhat sweet and pedestrian bar, but it tastes just like plain Japanese milk chocolate with a bit of an acidic aftertaste. The hotto (hot) milk portion doesn't seem to do anything at all for it. It's utterly unremarkable except for the fact that it is airy. I guess that's why Japanese KitKat variations attract so much more attention than Japanese Aero variations. Sometimes Mom and Dad have a favorite for a good reason.