New Japanese KitKats capture the flavour of a busy port city

https://ift.tt/2LtN7fn Oona McGee

Yokohama now has its very own KitKat based on a famous local sweet souvenir.

It’s never a quiet day at Nestlé Japan, where the creative team is constantly looking for new and exciting ways to add to their already extensive range of best-selling KitKats.

One of the brand’s most popular collections is the “Gotochi” (“Local”) series, which captures the flavours of local specialties and packages them up in the familiar chocolate-covered wafers we’ve grown to love. So far, we’ve seen places like Hiroshima honoured with a maple-leaf-shaped manju cake KitKat, and Yamanashi celebrated with a shingen mochi rice dessert variety, but now it’s time to take a look at the latest addition to the collection.

▼ The Ariake Yokohama Harbour Marron Flavour.

The new chestnut-flavoured KitKats come in packs of nine, and are sold in cute carry boxes that feature a wave design and images of a sailor’s hat and a streamer-lined cruise ship, to capture the spirit of Yokohama.

If the cruise ship looks familiar to you, that’s because it’s the same image used on a well-known local sweet souvenir made by famed sweet company Ariake. Called the Ariake Yokohama Harbor Double Marron, this Japanese chestnut cake is shaped like a ship in honour of the port city, and the image on the package is said to be modelled on the largest ocean liner in the world, the RMS Queen Mary 2.

The small sponge cakes are filled with chopped Japanese chestnuts and Japanese chestnut paste, and are loved by many for its sweet, mellow flavour. Now people from around the world who visit Yokohama and Kanagawa Prefecture, where the city is located, will be able to enjoy the taste of this famous local souvenir in the form of a tasty KitKat.

Given that chestnut-flavoured goods spike in popularity during autumn, now is the perfect time for this new release to set sail. Each box will retail for 800 yen (US$7.50) each, plus tax, and will be available at the Ariake head store and branches directly managed by them from 7 September. The new KitKats will then appear at souvenir stores around Kanagawa Prefecture from 11 September.

Source, images: Nestlé Japan
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