Sometimes a boring but previously popular product finds a new niche in a different country/culture and booms. That boom could reach all the way back to the home country, because they innovated elsewhere (while protecting their base cash flow).
Is it less boring because they added few flavors? Not to mention that Kit Kat in Japan is really just another kind of cheap sweets among hundreds of others. Is there anything to learn here? Is the article thoughts provoking? I thought those are key points not to get flagged in the first place.
Same here, often jasmin blended with some Lapsang Souchong ("smoked tea") to give it a bit more punch. I've been doing this for decades and haven't noticed anything other than that it makes you pee quite a lot - a good thing as it serves as a natural screen/keyboard break.
Agree, semi-clickbait articles from mainstream sources like theverge, theguardian , nytimes (this one especially) seem to be thriving recently(?). I suppose that HN got widely recognized as source of high quality traffic and content is artificially pushed to fp now.
When I was in Japan I think I came back with 7 different flavours of KitKat. And they all (but one or so) tasted really good. It's too bad they aren't available elsewhere. Another type of Candy where the Japanese get creative with flavours are Pocky sticks. There's always a flavour you didn't try yet.
I have been pleasantly surprised with Japanese takes on American desserts and pastries. They tone down the sugar and elevate the texture and flavor imho.
FWIW Pocky are called Mikado in the UK (made under license from Glico by Kraft AFAICT, [0]). They're marketed as quirky [and] Japanese, rather like [1]. But, I think they only do one flavour.
Are the flavoured ones the same thin breadstick with different flavoured coatings? Are they all chocolate based?
To me they're vaguely reminiscent of Corinthians[2], which are rather like the inner part of a kit-kat too. Corinthians used to be served in ice-cream in UK restaurants.
This is just my personal observation with no data but AFAICT Kit Kat is *mostly" for tourists here in Japan. If there's an obsession it seems to me it's tourists buying them. I could be wrong but I've never personally seen Japanese people buying them (of course they must, just saying that I haven't noticed).
I just walked over to 3 convenience stores that have a large candy selections. The 7/11 had no Kit Kats out of 80 chocolate based candies on display. There were also non-chocolate based candies as well as other snacks. The 2 Family Marts, one had a single "maple" flavor. The other had a chestnut flavor but similar to the 7/11 those were 1 of 50-90 other chocolate candies.
That said since you're more likely to be a vistor if you're reading this, if you want to go crazy for Kit Kats there's a few of "high end" Kit Kat stands you can bring back more rare $4-$5 per stick Kit Kats (probably mentioned in the article)
Same. Lived in Japan, rarely saw anyone outside of tourists buying them. Combinis and grocery stores hardly ever feature them (unless those stores get tourist traffic).
I saw a very popular seasonal KitKat stand within Seibu department store when I was visiting Japan, and I didn't notice any other tourist-looking people around. Is it possible that it's just not popular in the convenience store market, but is more popular in competition with all of the higher-end sweets people were constantly giving me, talking about, and eating while I was there?
Maybe magic of department store. You put the same thing in Tokyu Store and the same in depaato, make sure to overprice it. People will buy from depaato. Probably for a gift. It just works like that in Japan.
Plenty of KitKats is in my local Tokyu Store - no one is buying them. I never saw anyone in my office eating KitKat even once. They eat plenty of other sweets, often local. Also no one ever brought it as a travel gift (omiyage.)
Can second this. I travel to Tokyo often and have purchased Kit Kat to bring back home. Mostly tourists buy these, none of my local japanese friends do
I bought a Kit Kat Chocolatory gift box large for 45 USD as a gift for our anniversary (my partner & me). The S&H was 25 USD.
It was OK, an interesting experience. Just not worth that amount of money (YMMV and the surprise effect was worth it). It contained about 5 different types of Kit Kat (maple & strawberry, green tea, butter, ..pistachio?) including 4 Sublime Bitter. The latter were, IMO, ace but I already regularly eat pure sprinkles and pure chocolate spread and I am already used to Belgian bonbons and German/Swiss chocolate. I bought it for the Japanese twist...
Strangely, a month or 2 after I received it (it was stored as a present, meanwhile) PayPal send me an e-mail that the payment wasn't claimed and I got my money back from PayPal (???). Peculiar experience.
It's a not so uncommon omiyage to buy. Each region has their own flavors, so you are more likely to get them from co-workers than friends.
There was also the marketing ploy around 15? years ago that they did a play on Kit Kat to be きっとかつ/きっと勝つ/kitto katsu for students that wanted to feel like they would surely win a game or pass a test.
Tourists, yes, but to a large extent internal tourism due to the tradition of bringing back regional snacks for friends, family and coworkers. If you visit the gift shops along the highways in Japan they are stacked high with kitkat boxes of the local specialty flavours.
If you enjoy reading about this kind of phenomenon, TV Tropes has a whole article on things that have developed huge cult followings in export markets but are considered rather pedestrian in the home market. It's titled "Germans Love David Hasselhoff".
For example, Kit Kat Japan won a Cannes Media Grand Prix award in 2009 for creating a candy-box-post-card sold in Japanese post-offices. I believe the idea was to enable a convenient way to send a gift during Japan's gift-giving seasons.
53 comments
[ 1.8 ms ] story [ 87.1 ms ] threadTime for a survey: what is your go-to hacking snack or drink?
Raisins.
Bland but doesn't upset my stomach.
Or if it's after 5 PM or so, beer. But my code quality drops dramatically after a couple of those...
Fun hacking: red wine.
I'm pretty sure by washing them down with diet Mt. Dew they have negative calories.
Moroccan mint tea
Do you blend them 50/50 or have you found a better ratio? (I'd assume you don't need much lapsang)
[1]: http://rbeef.blogspot.com/2005/12/i-could-not-eat-chips-i-wa...
https://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the-scenes/algorithmic-fit...
https://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the-scenes/how-many-lines-...
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. [...] anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Sorry but you aren’t entitled to seeing only the submissions you want to read.
That has not been good for my waistline.
Are the flavoured ones the same thin breadstick with different flavoured coatings? Are they all chocolate based?
To me they're vaguely reminiscent of Corinthians[2], which are rather like the inner part of a kit-kat too. Corinthians used to be served in ice-cream in UK restaurants.
[0] https://www.otakunews.com/Article/1451/is-mikado-pocky-a-tas...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mikado
[2] https://shop.countdown.co.nz/shop/productdetails?stockcode=5...
I just walked over to 3 convenience stores that have a large candy selections. The 7/11 had no Kit Kats out of 80 chocolate based candies on display. There were also non-chocolate based candies as well as other snacks. The 2 Family Marts, one had a single "maple" flavor. The other had a chestnut flavor but similar to the 7/11 those were 1 of 50-90 other chocolate candies.
That said since you're more likely to be a vistor if you're reading this, if you want to go crazy for Kit Kats there's a few of "high end" Kit Kat stands you can bring back more rare $4-$5 per stick Kit Kats (probably mentioned in the article)
https://nestle.jp/brand/kit/inbound/en/chocolatory/store.htm...
You can see examples here
https://nestle.jp/brand/kit/inbound/en/chocolatory/product.h...
or better pictures here
https://nestle.jp/brand/kit/chocolatory/product/
Plenty of KitKats is in my local Tokyu Store - no one is buying them. I never saw anyone in my office eating KitKat even once. They eat plenty of other sweets, often local. Also no one ever brought it as a travel gift (omiyage.)
It was OK, an interesting experience. Just not worth that amount of money (YMMV and the surprise effect was worth it). It contained about 5 different types of Kit Kat (maple & strawberry, green tea, butter, ..pistachio?) including 4 Sublime Bitter. The latter were, IMO, ace but I already regularly eat pure sprinkles and pure chocolate spread and I am already used to Belgian bonbons and German/Swiss chocolate. I bought it for the Japanese twist...
Strangely, a month or 2 after I received it (it was stored as a present, meanwhile) PayPal send me an e-mail that the payment wasn't claimed and I got my money back from PayPal (???). Peculiar experience.
There was also the marketing ploy around 15? years ago that they did a play on Kit Kat to be きっとかつ/きっと勝つ/kitto katsu for students that wanted to feel like they would surely win a game or pass a test.
https://nestle.jp/brand/kit/gotouchi/
https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B0779HX39G
It was a pretty good show, I liked it a lot. Seeing how they grow Wasabi, make 7-spice, etc. was really fascinating.
https://tvtropes.org/Main/GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff