Review: Shinshu Limited Apple Kit Kat

Review: Shinshu Apple Kit Kat
Purchased: November 2011
Best Before: August 2012
Review: December 2012

Another of the regional varieties of Kit Kat that are now around more-or-less all year, Shinshu Apple Kit Kat comes from the Nagano region (Shinshu is an old name for Nagano), and Nagano is famous for its apples. It all comes together in the form of a delicious Kit Kat, available regionally or at the food importer at Narita Airport. :) I’ve generally enjoyed the fruit Kit Kats like Yubari Melon, and I was expecting to just love the Shinshu Apple. How did they fare? Read on!

Packaging: Funnily enough, I’ve never seen the apple Kit Kats in the larger 12 pack gift set, though there are pictures online. All of the ones I’ve purchased are the smaller ‘gift set’ editions, with 5 mini bars inside and that great space on the back to write messages to friends. I wonder if you can actually post Kit Kats in Japan, by the by? They all have these message spaces… next time I’m in Japan I’ll try and slap some stamps on a box and send it, see what happens. :)

The package is lovely, with a light gingham pattern in the open spaces to add texture, large photos/illustrations of apples, and a picture of the milk chocolate wafer bars you’re going to find within. The bar packaging is nice as well, interestingly enough it has a bunch of ENglish writing that you won’t find anywhere on the exterior! A small seal proclaims “Shinshu Limited” and the bottom of the package features “SHINSHU APPLE” written in smallcaps (ooo!) English. This might be the perfect Kit Kat mini packaging for my money…!

Interestingly enough, I still had a small box of Shinshu Apple Kit Kats left from my last trip to Japan in 2010, and so I thought I’d show you some side-by-side photos of last year’s model and this year’s! On the left you can see the 2010 edition, which has much more of a postcard feeling, tons of writing on the front, and a more staid design over all. The 2011 update is really sharp and pretty, even though it’s using all of the same art.

The improved design continues to the back, in my opinion. The 2010 version is all kinds of ornate (a quill!) which is quaint and charming, but the clean and minimal design of the writing area is a little nicer on the 2011 version. 2011 also features the location of this regional Kit Kat using a map of the entire country of Japan and a pointer, rather than just the arbitrary outline of Nagano prefecture entirely removed from any context. Definite improvement!

The packages are also very different. As I mentioned I applaud the English on the new package, and it is lovely as a design, but the minimalist version of the 2010 design is appealing too.

There, we all learned something new. Namely, Chris doesn’t throw stuff out when he should. :-/

Scent: This was a great Kit Kat, with sweet apple flavour wafting up as soon as I opened the package. It’s a very sweet apple smell, but very close to a real one which is neat. There are small hints of the milk chocolate, but for the most part it’s a really bright apple scent, without being too candied or artificial. Nice!

Taste: I have to admit that I cheated, reading a few reviews of this Kit Kat before I wrote my own. While both of the reviews I read were pretty disappointed with the ‘mild’ apple taste of these bars, I found them to really hit a nice middle ground between some of the cloying, over-the-top white-chocolate based flavours and the ‘boring’ milk chocolate flavours. These have a really nice apple flavour, definitely accentuated by the strong scent, and I feel like it’s a really nice mix of apple and milk chocolate.

Verdict: Again, it’s going to come down to how much you like fruit and chocolate together–my husband just out and out refused to try this one due to fruit/chocolate hatred–but I thought it was really nice and bright. I could see how the taste would be stronger, but I don’t think I’d describe it as subtle. Wasabi is subtle. This is just a tasty Kit Kat and I’d definitely recommend it!

Reference: http://jenkenskitkatblog.blogspot.com/
Reference: http://hitflavor.com/2010/01/07/shinshu-apple-kit-kat/

 

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Review: Wasabi Kit Kat

Review: Wasabi Kit Kat
Purchased: November 2011
Best Before: July 2012
Review: December 2012

Visitors to Japan will, for the foreseeable future, be able to easily and cheaply locate Wasabi Kit Kats for the foreseeable future. Once the unique Japanese Kit Kat flavours became known outside of Japan to foreign travellers, souvenir shops at Narita Airport began stocking Wasabi (alongside Soy Sauce and Green Tea) Kit Kats in earnest. This is a blessing and a curse—it’s great that you can try a unique, Japanese flavour of a Western snack food easily and affordably, but this is now the low-hanging fruit and very rarely do souvenir shops try much harder than this to stock some of the new and different flavours.

But is this the fault of the Wasabi Kit Kat? No, but it does make me a little cranky at it. Wasabi Kit Kats really are the perfect food souvenirs of Japan; they’re something you can’t get anywhere else, something unique and strange and incongruous, and ultimately they’re really tasty if you can force yourself to give them a try.

Packaging: JAPAN! The deep green back-drop really pops the bright red Kit Kat logo, and the adornment with a rice paper pattern dotted with chunky brushwork drawings of wasabi root? Fantastic. Lots of big, prominent Kapanese characters are also quite nice for a souvenir, but flipping to the side of the package and seeing “WASABI Flavour” written out to be absolutely clear about the contents is appreciated. The interior features the Kit Kats laid out in a standard gift-set, with 12 mini 2-finger Kit Kats included.

The interior Kit Kat packaging features a lovely upgrade over the previous editions (this was not my first package of Wasabi Kit Kats): an area to write a message to the recipient. Whether it was an inspirational message or just re-writing out the type of Kit Kat in English (there’s no English lettering on the individual packages). Nice.

The box interior and exterior also feature messages, one presumes about wasabi and/or Kit Kats, written in Japanese. While these are made in Japan primarily for a Japanese audience, you can’t deny the power of these as a souvenir and it’d be cheap, easy, and satisfying to see Nestle include a little paper insert with a translation of this text for international audiences (English, Korean, and Chinese would do it).

Scent: Much like the Soy Sauce Kit Kats, Wasabi smells very, very sweet. It’s made with the standard ‘white chocolate’ Kit Kat candy coating, and that is pretty much all I get out of smelling this particular Kit Kat. It actually smells a bit like play-doh.

Taste: First, I took one of fingers and just popped the whole thing in my mouth. While I’ve had some pretty fresh and pretty stale Kit Kats in the past, this particular finger sitting out at room temperature had a nice, quick, clean hit of wasabi flavour surrounded and eventually entirely coated by the typical white-chocolate taste. I asked my husband to try a bite as well, and he was disappointed with the amount of Wasabi flavour, he wanted much more. I’ll also say that while there was a hit of the taste of wasabi, so far as I could tell, there was none of the heat that usually accompanies it.

Taking a tip from my dissection of the Soy Sauce Kit Kats which yielded spectacularly different flavours, I decided to try and eat these Kit Kats piecemeal. First I bit off all of the white chocolate coating on the sides of the Kit Kat. As I anticipated, there’s no wasabi flavour at all in the chocolate coating, just some green food dye. What remains are the wafers, and a thin spread of cream in between them. Biting into them, you get that hit of wasabi flavor again, with no real heat. In fact the wasabi flavour there isn’t notably stronger than when you bite into the chocolate as a whole, it just lasts a bit longer.

Verdict: It’s a wasabi Kit Kat, and wasabiphiles are honestly going to be a bit disappointed with it. Given all of the amazing chili and chocolate creations that skilled chocolatiers have invented over the past few years, I’m sure there’s an amazing wasabi, chocolate, and wafer creation out there just waiting to be made. This isn’t it.

But for visitors and the timid, folks who find their little tastes of wasabi to be eye-watering and fearful, the folks back home that you can share 12 little chocolate bars with? They’re all likely to find Wasabi Kit Kats to be an absolute treat, just ‘spicy’ enough to satisfy.

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Review: Cheeza 51% Camembert

Review: Cheeza 51% Camembert Crackers
Purchased: November 2011
Best Before: Jul 2012
Review: January 2012
Manufactured by Glico 

I think it’s pretty telling that I have finished the entire bag of Glico’s Cheeza 51% Camambert Flavoured crackers before beginning the review. I’d be embarrassed, but these are just so absolutely amazing, either on their own or as bar snacks—Otsumami—that finishing off the small 38g bag is a given.

It’s important to point out that Cheeza 51% Camembert has a picture on the back featuring a plate of the delicious crackers next to a glass of beer, and so the several beers I have consumed before these snacks, as well as the beer I consumed with them, are more of a ‘serving suggestion’ than any sort of impairment to writing this review… got it? Got it.

Seriously though—these are the number one snack food that I wish was available in North America, bar none, and I regret informing you of how delicious these are knowing that you likely won’t be able to find them yourself. I’m sorry. Also, there are three flavours of which camembert is only one, and they’re all awesome.

Packaging: When in a Japanese convenience store, you are greeted with a huge and exciting variety of products which you have never encountered before, and many of which you might never encounter again. New products are introduced and then disappear with alarming frequency, and unless you’re getting on board with the most popular, longest-lasting snack food, don’t expect your favourite to be there in another store, on your next visit during the same trip, or espescially the next year you go back to Japan.

So what makes one snack stand out from the crowd? Well the big red-and-white NEW doesn’t hurt, nor does the name of the snack written in a great big font in Romaji (English letters). In Japan cheese and cheese flavouring is not traditionally terribly popular as compared to other flavours, and when you do get cheese flavouring it’s been my experience that it is considerably dialed back—and awful. Never have Cheetos, in Japan, for example. Or do, but don’t expect “Cheetos”. A visit to Natural Lawson one rainy evening in 2010 produced our first experience with the Cheeza brand of snacks, and they popped right off the shelves. We were ready for cheese, after 2 weeks more-or-less deprived of our favourite food, and CHEEZA made big promises. Crackers shaped like wedges of cheese, pictures of real cheese on the outside, and that 51%, promising that a certain percentage of the cracker would be made of real cheese. We gave it a go, amongst the hundreds of other offerings. I think that says a lot.

Also? Resealable package. Just a lovely touch of class.

Scent: I’ve just cracked a fresh bag (we brought back a few), and so here are our (my husband’s and I’s) immediate reactions: “Wow.” “Yes.” “It’s more than you would get from a North American cheese-flavoured thing.” “It’s just a little off-centre of a regular cheese smell… Cheesey things smell salty and tangy and moldy and whatever, there are proportions to those things. It’s not entirely divorce from what a cheese cracker would smell like here, there’s overlap, but it emphasizes different things.”

These smell like fresh cheese, even in the slight stinkiness of them. It’s awesome. It is strong too.

Taste: Like manna from heaven, frankly. They’re buttery, that’s the first thing you notice. They’re really rich on your tongue. The cheese flavour is strong too—while camembert isn’t the strongest-tasting cheese, this has all of that flavour and then some as the cheese has been baked into a salty cracker (best accompanied by beer). The saltiness and the cheese flavour aren’t overbearing either, these don’t make you reach for your beer to wash them down, they make you reach for another cracker.

Verdict: I’ll level with you—I’m a huge fan of cheese crackers. Ritz did the trick when I was a kid, but when I discovered Nabsico’s Cheese Nips (seriously, real name, I realize it’s kind of out-of-context-racist) I left Ritz behind. They’re awesome crackers. Then I discovered Cheese Its and… it’s just a whole ‘nother level of salty, cheese, terrible-for-you cheese crackers. Well I’ve hit the next level, I’m ready to leave all of the other pretenders to the throne behind. Cheeza crackers are the best cheese crackers I’ve ever eaten, and I can’t really imagine how anything will be better.

The downside, of course, is that these can (and will) disappear some day. I’m always kind of assuming that I won’t see them on the racks on my next trip back to Japan. Ritz and Cheese Its will be around forever… Cheeza crackers, I don’t think Japan will know what it’s got until their gone.

For more on how awesome these are, visit the Cheeza website at http://www.glico.co.jp/cheeza/.

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Review: Oreo Soft Cookies Ice Flavor Lemon

Review: Oreo Soft Cookies Ice Flavor Lemon
Purchased: November 2011
Best Before: February 14, 2012
Review: December 2012

I was on an insane quest for Pumpkin Cheesecake-flavoured Kit Kats, which were released in early October 2011 in Japan, in celebration of Halloween. Last year I had missed out on the Halloween Caramel Pudding Kit Kats, and I was determined not to let that happen again. The quest had me take a random exit on the west side of Ikebukuro station to see if the convenience stores on the ‘wrong’ side of town would perhaps be less frequented by candy aficionados. To my great fortune, there was a candy store just steps away from the exit I took… but to my misfortune it was almost entirely Kit Kat free (ugh… regular), and I ended up with Oreo Lemon Ice cookies instead.

I’ve never had a ‘soft Oreo’, which is to say Oreo cookies with soft chocolate cookies instead of the firm biscuits and an even creamier cream center, as I consider them sacrelicious. Sure, they’re probably tasty, but Oreos are an experience, not merely a snack, tied as they are to my childhood. Yes I realize this idea runs deeply counter to a blog that exists to explore all of the delightful ways notions of candy and snacks have been transformed (perverted?) by the Japanese, but I am vast, and contain multitudes.

Still, despite my disappointment at a lack of new Kit Kats in my slightly-scuzzy candy store, I didn’t hesitate to pick up Lemon Ice Oreo Cookies because, and I think this bears repeating, OREO SOFT COOKIE ICE FLAVOR LEMON. It sounds amazing! Let’s see if it lives up to the hype.

Packaging: Comprised of a very large bag holding only 8 individually wrapped cookies. My first thought is that this is a new level of wasteful packaging, but when in Rome… The packaging is a subtle twist on traditional Oreo packaging. That deep Oreo Blue gives way to a splash of white and lemon yellow, and while there is a ton of superfluous lettering/advertising on the package (the word NABISCO is written twice, at roughly the same size, 5cm apart, for no discernible reason) it’s all well-placed and the bag doesn’t feel too busy or cluttered, but it could still be paired down quite a bit.

Scent: Whoa! It’s LEMONY. And in like an intense, chemical lemon way rather than merely snorting a bunch of freshly-squeezed lemon juice. It’s definitely a scent that hits you as soon as you crack the package. The cookies do have a pleasing chocolately scent, but it’s mostly drowned out by LEMON.

Taste: The smell of the lemon is maybe so intense because, as soon as you taste the cream filling, you get the ‘ice’ part of the taste equation… It’s not peppermint or anything close, it’s like a menthol cool flavour mixed with a candied sweet lemon, and tasting it I realized that part of the ‘chemical’ smell of the lemon was actually just whatever was ‘icy’ in this cookie affecting my sense of smell. It’s weird.

A bite of the whole cookie is actually a little tough to accomplish, because biting the two halves of the cookie together pushes the cream filling out the sides, giving you a bit of an unbalanced bite, mostly soft cookie. It’s okay—it’s an approximation of an Oreo cookie, but milder in flavour. There’s something a bit… doughy about it, it really has an unappealing texture. When you do get a mouthful with the right cookie to cream proportions, the lemon ice is just totally overwhelming. Even now, while I’ve got little bits of soft cookie stuck in my teeth, the menthol lemon flavour is making my mouth and throat tingle like I just had a whole bunch of those “Icy Drops” breath cleansers.

Verdict: Actually, that is exactly what that taste is—Icy Drops—a taste designed to cleanse your mouth and breath, but as a part of the snack you’re eating. You know what that is? That’s weird. The thing is, somewhere along the way, I feel like someone figured out how weird this would be and dialed everything back quite a bit. It’s kind of strange and off-putting in a couple of different ways—lemon and chocolate is a bit of a difficult balance at the best of times, and those soft-cookies are inferior to standard Oreos in every way. But what could have been an insane burst of flavours in my mouth is instead mild and bland and kind of tingly but not tingly enough. Unfortunately this isn’t even an interesting failure, and while I’m glad I got to try something called OREO SOFT COOKIE ICE FLAVOR LEMON, I really wanted a heck of a lot more.

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Happy New Year! Year of the Dragon JP Kit Kat

Happy New Year! 2012 is the year of The Dragon, according to the Chinese Zodiac, and to celebrate Japan Post teamed up with Nestle to create a special Kit Kat! Containing two regular Kit Kats, this box is adorned with a cute salaryman dragon, and the back features a little money/note envelope for giving out new years money! My friend Jocelyne Allen picked this up for me while we were both in Tokyo, and it was really nice of her to enable my crippling addiction like that. Just kidding! Love you Jocelyne! ;)

I hope you’re all having a very happy new year, and I hope you enjoy this week’s daily snack food reviews–I wanted to start off 2011 on the right foot! :D

Best,

– Chris
P.S.: This package inexplicably came in a plastic bag, which also had a package of tissues in it branded with some sort of random Japanese company. I have no idea what that’s all about, but I figured since it came as a set, I’d photograph it as a set. Enjoy!

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