Japan has a strong dedication to celebrating the change of seasons. They have special festivals, clothes, activities and (of course) foods depending on what time of year it is. In fact, Japan is now infamous for the number unique flavors they’ve been cranking out seasonally on the candy aisle. One of the stars of this whole front? KitKat.

So I’m really digging into my archives here with this flavor. It was originally released in the spring/summer of ‘06 (and no, I didn’t have one waiting around that long for me to taste). Its flavor is based off a Chinese dessert made of cold almond pudding, hinting that warmer weather is coming.

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If you happened to have been sitting at your computer all day last Thursday, constantly refreshing our site (and I’m sure many of you do), you would have noticed something odd. On Breanna’s Japanese KitKat review, the spelling of KitKat kept changing between Kit Kat and KitKat. What you couldn’t see was a feverish effort behind the scenes to research which way was actually correct. Unfortunately, it just isn’t a clear cut matter.

You see, in the United States, Hershey obtained a special licensing agreement in 1969 which allows it to manufacture and distribute Kit Kats. According to the Hershey Kit Kat page, the proper form is, in fact, the split form of Kit Kat.

However, Hershey’s arch competitor Nestle manufactures and distributes KitKat in pretty much the rest of the world. While their website isn’t terribly consistent, for the most part, and especially on their history of KitKat page, the one word form is used.

After much discussion and wrangling, we finally decided to go with whichever form is used in the country in which the bar in question is produced - in the case of Japan, KitKat. It wasn’t easy, but we think we’ve finally come to a suitable compromise. Oh, the stress of a Candy Addict’s life!

• Kit Kat articles on Candy Addict

Buy Japanese KitKats Online:

• at Jbox.com

Buy U.S. Kit Kats Online:

• at Amazon.com
• at Candy Direct
• at Old Time Candy Co

More candy articles about: kit kat, kitkat, chocolate, Nestle, Hershey

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The Japanese Kit Kat saga continues with no signs of slowing down. Those Candy Addicts who are new to the satisfying hobby of international candy eating may not know that Nestle, who makes KitKat in Asia (Hershey makes Kit Kat in the U.S.) seem to never tire of developing new, occasionally strange, varieties of the chocolate confection. I present to you three more additions to the ever-growing list of new members of the KitKat family:

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According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, Nestle’s strategy of diversifying it’s KitKat brand has fallen flat on its face, to the tune of an 18% drop in overall sales. Nestle, who released 12 different KitKat varieties in the UK, has canceled all but 2, Tiramisu and Caramel, which were the 2 best performing of the 12.

The company blames brand dilution and over saturation, and the executive in charge of the varieties has been fired. Nestle also set up a consumer hotline to field calls and hear what consumers thought of the new flavors, where most responded with “It was nice to try them once, but I’m not sure I’ll buy them again.” Which I often find myself saying when trying some obscure limited edition flavor of a long established brand. They said that they will continue to make minor changes in the brand, but nothing drastic as releasing 12 different flavors. They have since launched a Peanut Butter Chunky Kat bar.

Also, in the article is a line where they mention that the Caramel KitKat will be coming out in America sometime this year…so keep you eyes peeled for that - it sounds great!

We have reviewed a number of wacky KitKat varieties here at Candy Addict - here are reviews of Coffee, Extra Creamy, Noir, Wine, Strawberry, Maple Syrup, and Milkshake KitKats.

• WSJ article in the Post-Gazette
• WSJ article in MoneyWeb
• More KitKat coverage at Candy Addict
• KitKats at Wikipedia

More candy articles about: candy, sweets, kitkat, kit kat, limited edition, uk, foreign, nestle, nestle’s, british, great britain, caramel, wine, coffee

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You may remember that we just posted about a Wonka golden ticket contest a few days ago, but now there is news of yet another one. This time the contest is for the UK only, and the prize doesn’t include anything as glorious as designing your own limited edition candy. You do, however, win a spot on the next season of the UK edition of Big Brother.

Concealed within 100 Kit Kat bars is Golden Ticket that is worth a chance at a spot on Big Brother. The actual participant will be choosen from that pool of 100 golden ticket winners. The contest runs from May 18th at 10:30 until June 2nd at 10:20 pm. So all our UK readers should head to one of the 40,000 participating retail locations and stock up on KitKats.

• Reuters story on the contest [via TvSquad]
• Teaser video/promo
• UK KitKat

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In part one of this two part series, I reviewed the Japanese Kit Kat flavors of Noir and Wine. Today I am reviewing some more Japanese Kit Kat flavors: Strawberry and White Maple Syrup. I’m still amazed the candy companies produce different flavors in different countries. Both of these flavors came in boxes of 4 sticks wrapped in 2 packs of 2 each. The size of the Kit Kat sticks are the same size as their U.S. counterpart.

Strawberry
Upon opening the package, all I could think of was Strawberry Quik - it smelled just like Quik! One of the big selling points of this flavor is that it has strawberry bits in and it truly was loaded with strawberry bits. It looks like they took white chocolate and mixed in real strawberries. The filling between the Kit Kat bars was also starwberry (pink). Overall it tasted really good and was very strawberry-y, though it was a touch too sweet for me.

White Maple Syrup
This one is an odd one. I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect from this. It is essentially a Kit Kat with white chocolate and a touch of maple syrup (wait - isn’t that what the label said?). The maple syrup flavor was faint - just enough - and wasn’t overpowering at all. Again, I thought it was just a bit too sweet for me. I think I just don’t care for white chocolate much and that’s probably why I thought it was good, but not great. The Kit Kat White Maple Syrup flavor is a limited edition so it may disappear at any time.

Buy Japanese Kit Kat at Jbox.com
Wikipedia Kit Kat page
breaktown.com (The Japanese Kit Kat site)

More candy articles about: candy, kitkat, kit+kat, kitkats, japan, japanese, food, review, reviews, chocolate, nestle

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