kit kats on the way!

Well, we're leaving for Miami tomorrow and I'm anxiously awaiting the arrival of a shipment of Kit Kats from Japan. A lot of new flavors were released and I'm hoping to receive them before we leave.

Scheduled to arrive are the following flavors: Blueberry Fromage, Blood Orange Bitter, and Pumpkin. I'm also expect the Kit Kat iStick, which I believe is a Kit Kat which is meant to be frozen then eaten broken apart, similar to a Charleston Chew. To finish off the order, I picked up another batch of Cantaloupe as well as a Banana flavored Aero bar. Can't wait!

I just received two new flavors from Australia; Honeycomb and Cookie Dough. They didn't arrive in the best of shape, but at least they resemble the Chunky's...

kit kat conversations... (USA)

I'm probably only going to write one more entry after this one and then there will be about ten days of silence. I'm going to Florida to run the Miami Marathon then relax afterward on a weeklong cruise with my wife. We went back to and once again on an impulse buy, I purchased a bag of Kit Kat Conversations.

Basically, they're regular two finger mini-bars with various messages imprinted on top of the chocolate. The wrappers have pink and red hearts as well as new "friendship exchange" logo on the top left corner. The back of the wrapper has spaces to write your name as well as the recipient's. The Kit Kat itself was extremely fresh and true to top notch Hershey flavor. There's a reason why regular Kit Kats are on top of my list.

While on the cruise, we'll be stopping in Puerto Rico, St. Thomas and Antigua. I'll be sure to bring back some foreign goodies to review.

jones soda co. green apple carbonated candy (USA)

Tonight, my wife and I were in line paying for our merchandise at Target (officially pronounced tar-zhay). As usual, I was scanning the impulse buy shelves, searching for my "treat" of the week. My eyes caught glimse of the shiny green, white & black tin from the Jones Soda Co. Carbonated Candy. For those of you who aren't familiar with Jones Soda Co., they are a carbonated beverage producer whose flavor choices tend to be "different" (see www.jonessoda.com for more info).

I had high expectations for this candy and I'm pleased to say that they were met! It's hard to explain what these lil buggers taste like. I think that the best way to describe them is by calling them "Smarties with a kick". They have a true-to-life green apple flavor that fizzes when bit. I melted one on my tongue and was surprised by the tingling sensation produced by these little green suckers. The back of the candy tin says that this carbonated delight is also available in Fufu Berry and Berry Lemonade flavors. In conclusion, if you see these lying by the cash register, grab one!

kit kat chunky (Canada)

Today I'll be delighting myself by eating a regular Nestle Kit Kat Chunky. These are one of the easiest foreign Kit Kats for me to obtain.

Back in the day (a few years ago!) I was astounded to see my first Hershey Big Kat bar. I loved the reconfiguring of the Kit Kat into one large finger. What a great marketing ploy! Little did I know that the Hershey Big Kat was to be easily outdone in both size and flavor, as well as package design!

The Nestle Kit Kat Chunky is a marvel in itself. It has the appearance of a perfectly shaped, monster-sized chocolate finger with nice sharp edges and a Kit Kat logo emblazed on top. As for the taste - only the regular version of the Nestle Kit Kat and the Hershey's Kit Kat can top it. There are thick layers of chocolate on the top and bottom of the Chunky and a huge stash of crisp wafers sandwiched between. I know that I'm a bit biased, being a true Kit Kat fan, but chocolate doesn't get much better than this.

grape kit kat (Japan)

Oooh... A pretty little purple wrapper. Honestly, this one was a no frills wrapper because I'm sure it came from a larger bag. Anyhow, it actually tasted much better than I thought it would. I opened up the package and a rather intense rush of grape scent came galloping out of that little plastic wrapper. Man, Nestle Japan sure has their flavor technique down pat. I bit into one of the fingers and was actually surprised. Unlike the overwhelming taste of cantaloupe the other night, this one was more like white chocolate with just a hint of grape flavoring. I had to admit, it was odd eating grape flavored chocolate, but I was definitely pleased. I don't think this would be one that I would be buying an entire bag of, but I'd definitely eat it again.

nestle caramel aero bar (Canada)

Hmm... Where to begin? For those of you who don't know me personally, I'm a graphic artist. I have always loved the packaging design of the Nestle Aero bars. It's not really the logo itself, as it is just skewed type with a "chocolate bubble" fill, but the good use of complimentary colors and playful fonts (VAG Rounded?).

If you've never had an Aero bar before, you're missing one of the best tasting commercially mass-produced chocolate bars out there. Its gimic are the hundreds of air bubbles trapped in each bar that turn a normal bar of chocolate into an extremely light one which almost melts in your mouth.

I'm quite anxious to try this flavor as I've only had the regular and mint ones so far. This Aero bar is shaped differently than normal ones as it's longer, skinnier and rounder. Unfortunately my first two bites into it were ones of disappointment. There was a lack of caramel in both bites (the "pocket" was empty!) and the chocolate was not as frothy as I had expected it to be. On the third bite, I finally reached the caramel filling and was met with a solid "Old Rolo" type caramel instead of the gooey goodness I thought would be inside.

Although it sounds like this review is one of dismay and complaint, I still give this a thumbs up for its combined taste of the caramel and faux Aero chocolate. Though not on the top of my list, I would still recommend this one to all chocolate lovers out there.

caramel fudge kit kat tempations (UK)

Hmm... How do I start? I've been very impressed with the Kit Kat Tempations series (though a bit dated now). The wafers live up to the standard level of goodness that Nestle produces in its Kit Kat products. I only wish there was more of it. Besides this, my only qualm about the entire Tempations line is that there a bit too much "filling" for its own good. The fillings, though rich and quite delicious, tend to overpower the rest of the chocolate and wafer. Biting into the bar started off as a nice surprise but ended up with my wincing at the sweetness of the stringy caramel. This might be one to try if you want to be among the few to try all the Kit Kat flavors in the world or if you have a major sweet tooth. If you aren't in one of these two categories, I would recommend you spend your hard earned cash on one of the many other flavors of Kit Kats.

hokkaido yubari melon (Japan)

I think it's really neat how the Japanese Kit Kats usually come in a ornately designed box. This box in turn houses (2) two-finger Kit Kat bars in a more subtle wrapper. Upon opening up this bad boy, the aroma of cantaloupe melons rushed from the wrapper up to my nose. Being a fan of cantaloupe to begin with, this was a good sign of things to come. My first bite into the Kit Kat was one of pure amazement. The chocolate wasn't really chocolate and it didn't even have the "white chocolate" taste either. Instead it tasted like the traditional crisp Nestle wafer enveloped in a sweet creamy Cantaloupe icing. I was very impressed with Nestle's ability to pull this one off without the product coming off too sweet or fruity. Overall, I would recommend this one to other Kit Kat enthusiasts, but the average chocolate and candy lover might find it a bit on the "strange" side.

more kit kat history...

This will be it on the history lessons, I promise. From now on we'll stick to product reviews and such.

The Kit Kat has been manufactured in a number of localised versions for overseas markets such as Canada, Germany, Japan, and Australia. Kit Kat bars available in the United States are manufactured under license by The Hershey Company, a Nestlé competitor, due to a prior licensing agreement with Rowntree.

The Kit Kat is the world's #2 chocolate bar after the Mars bar. In the UK, Kit Kat is the number one brand both as a confectionery item and as a biscuit. In both the US and Canada, the Kit Kat is also extremely popular and is one of the top ten candy bar brands. In recent years, Kit Kats have also become very popular in Japan, a phenomenon attributed to the coincidental similarity between the bar's name and the Japanese phrase kitto katsu, roughly translating as "I hope you succeed!" This has reportedly led to parents and children buying them for school examination days as a sort of good luck charm. [However, transliteration is not always in Nestlé's favour - "kitto katto" (where 'katto' is taken to be a katakana transliteration of the English verb 'cut') is understood to bestow Kit Kat with the less positive significance of "you will definitely miss the cut". As such, gifts of a single kit-kat are a running joke for senior high school students taking the University Entrance Examinations in some areas. Further building on the teen market, Nestlé created a music label in 2005 and bundled Kit Kats with CDs which has propelled the Kit Kat to become the #1 selling chocolate bar in Japan as well.

The year 2003 was a turning point for the Kit Kat bar as well as the confectionery industry in general. The popularity of low carb diets and the push to healthier eating stifled sales growth in many parts of the world. In addition, fierce competition from Cadbury's newly formed Dairy Milk superbrand also contributed to sales of the Kit Kat decreasing considerably in its home market of the UK and threatening to dethrone it from its #1 position. The solution adopted by Nestlé and others was to dramatically increase the number of new and unique variations of their confections and market them as limited or special editions whereby they would usually only be available for a few months at a time so as not to impact the sales of their permanent edition counterparts. The strategy initially reversed the decline of the Kit Kat and has been adopted worldwide by Nestlé, Hershey, Mars and others with similar success. This has resulted in many new flavors and varieties of the Kit Kat and other confections appearing globally since then. While some flavors have been hits, many have flopped and have alienated some consumers causing Nestlé to scale back on new releases.

a short background on the Kit Kat

I figured that my initial readers (friends & family) don't really have much of a clue about the interesting history of the Kit Kat. So... I've taken some of the wiki and printed it here for all to read. Please note that all the following content is published on Wikipedia.org and can be found at this address: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kit_Kat

The traditional four finger version of this chocolate bar was launched in September 1935 in the UK as Rowntree's Chocolate Crisp (price: 2d). The two finger version was launched May 15, 1936. Rowntree's Chocolate Crisp was renamed Kit Kat Chocolate Crisp in 1937, and subsequently just Kit Kat after World War II. The name is believed to have come from the Kit-Cat Club, an 18th Century Whig literary club founded in the reign of James II and located at Christopher Catling ("Kit Cat")'s pie-house in Shire Lane, by Temple Bar. A meeting place of the Kit-Cat Club had such low ceilings that paintings hung inside needed to be especially short. Such paintings were later named after the club as 'Kit Kats', as was a type of mutton pie. The Oxford English Dictionary (1989) writes:

Kit-cat / kit-kat. {f. Kit (= Christopher) Cat or Catling, the keeper of the pie-house in Shire Lane, by Temple Bar, where the club originally met.}

The traditional bar has four fingers which each measure approximately 1cm by 12 cm. Kit Kat Chunky has one large finger approximately 2.5 cm wide and was introduced in 1999. Kit Kat bars contain varying numbers of fingers depending on the market, ranging from the half-finger sized Kit Kat Petit in Japan to the three-fingered variants in Arabia to the twelve-finger Kit Kat Tablet bars in France. Kit Kat bars are sold either individually or in bags, boxes or multipacks. In the UK and Canada, Nestlé also produces a Kit Kat ice cream; and in Malaysia, Kit Kat Drumsticks.

the first post... take three.

Okay, here we go again! This is my third attempt at a blog creation. The first was a blog dedicated to "stuff" in general. I felt that this was too broad a range of subject matter, so I trimmed it down to just "candy". This in turn was still to broad a category and now I've honed in on the one treat that I can't get enough of... Kit Kats (or Kitters as I so fondly call them). I have no doubt that I'll only have a few readers (friends and family) because honestly... who wants to read about the many flavors of Kit Kats and Kit Kat products that I've collected and amassed throughout the years. So let's proceed an hope there isn't a version four of this blog.