Love Mode Ginger Zero

This soft drink has been around for awhile, but I've been too cheap to pay 147 yen for it. When it finally showed up in the local 99 yen shop, I took the plunge. This is one of those absurdly named and oddly designed items which is almost certainly going to be all potatoes and no meat, all style and no substance, and whatever else you want to add which conveys the idea that it looks exciting on the outside and is going to be boring on the inside.

I figure that any drink that is trying so hard to look exciting has to have little going for it. Beyond the bling-like design of the name on the front of the label, there is a sexually suggestive leather zipper on the side of the bottle which runs along the perforation on the plastic sleeve where you tear it and remove it. Also, pink ginger ale? Pink? For those who don't know, pink is generally seen as a color associated with sex in Japan. I think this is intentional design to try and make this drink look, well, sexier.

I didn't take a shot of the drink in a glass because you can see through the bottle. Suntory promotes this as being "sweet and dry". This is actually truth in promotion. It's a little sweeter than Canada Dry ginger ale and has a dry finish. It's made with a cocktail of artificial sweeteners including acesulfame K, Sucralose, and aspartame. Unlike most of the diet drinks I've tried in Japan, you can't detect the sweeteners so obviously. Note that I am accustomed to diet sodas and may not be able to taste them as clearly as someone who doesn't tend to drink them so often.

My response to this is a bit mixed. I think it's a good sugar-free ginger ale blend, but the ginger part is somewhat subdued. I actually liked it better as a stand-alone drink than Diet Canada Dry ginger ale and if they were both the same price and I had a choice and I didn't want to mix it with something (and I sometimes mix with orange juice), I'd go for this. I wish it weren't pink though. I keep thinking it should be tropical punch when I drank it.

Ginger Ale Lemon KitKat

I must admit that I didn't see this flavor coming. Of all of the things that Nestle Japan might have come up with, I didn't think ginger ale would be on the list. It's just not a very "Japanese" flavor, nor is it the sort of thing I expect chocolate to be flavored with. Maybe ginger ale is the next big fad flavor in Japan and this Japanese KitKat is meant to get the ball rolling. My husband recently noticed that a diet version of the venerable Canada Dry brand has been added to the shelves in many stores after years of it being only around in a version with sugar.


My husband found this for 120 yen ($1.32) at New Days convenience store, though I expect it'll show up at other "conbini" as well. That being said, I went to three other convenience stores (Lawson's, Family Mart, and Mini Stop) and none of them were carrying this. My guess is New Days gets a lot of things first because it's unlikely that a KitKat would be available in such a limited fashion.


The interesting thing about this bar is that it does smell like both lemon and ginger ale. It tastes like quite sweet stale or flat ginger ale with a lemon slice in it. Actually, it's more like ginger ale with some juice squeezed in it then the rest of the lemon tossed in. The lemon element is pretty strong, but it doesn't overwhelm the ginger ale flavor.

This is an amazing triumph in terms of making something taste like something you'd think it couldn't taste like. Who would believe that a candy bar could taste so much like ginger ale? That being said, authenticity in taste doesn't necessarily translate into a great candy bar.

This is interesting, for sure, but it's not really "good". I'm glad my husband was around to share it with me because I'm not sure I'd want to spend 100 calories on eating even half of it myself. That being said, I don't think I'd want to throw it out. It's not that bad, but I also don't want to eat the rest of it. I'm thinking of sending it to a friend to try, but I just don't know who would make the best guinea pig.

This was also reviewed on Pocky Watch and Jen's KitKat blog.