Kit Kats - The Final Chapter

I’m back guys and by back I mean back in the U.K.

The plan for this blog going ahead will be to do some retrospective posts about things I did in Japan and places I went to that I never got around to covering. Mostly because I was too busy doing stuff to have time to write about the stuff I was doing.

But the first order of business is to deal with what this blog has become famous for.

That’s right. Kit-Kats.

This is the last batch of Kit-Kat’s I will be reviewing for the foreseeable future as being in the U.K. I don’t have access to all that many Kit-Kat flavours.

So without further ado.

Fruit Juice



Released all the way back in May in honour of Children’s Day. Children’s Day is a festival in Japan that celebrates children, in particular young boys. Kids dress up as samurai, parents fly koi carp shaped streamers and some special food is eaten.
Nestle has decided to cash in on memories of being a child with a vaguely nostalgic looking packet. The girl drawn in an older style of advertising art and in historical clothes is the main sop to this idea along with the almost sepia yellow tone used for the background. Then we have some childlike drawings of fruit and that’s it. Frankly I think more could have been done to match the theme but at least the packet isn’t crowded and over designed. It’s very colourful too with lots of differently coloured fruit and a lot of colours used for the banner reading fruit juice. Again these colours evoke childishness and fond memories as well as tying into the idea of mixed fruits.



The individual kat wrapper is more subdued but considering the size available I don’t think using lots of colours would have worked. Instead we have yellows and browns, the colours of old photos and stylised fruit drawings. Simple but effective.
One thing to note about the packaging is the presence of bananas. As has been established on this site I loathe bananas. I loathe them with every fibre of my being. Not only are they disgusting but they have an annoying habit of inserting themselves into things completely unbidden. Many is the time I have gone to drink a smoothie or fruit juice and immediately gagged on the horrible and unmistakeable taste of banana. Banana that hasn’t been advertised on the packet! Grrr, horrible, evil, stealthy things. So whilst I appreciate the fact that nestle has been up front about the presence of banana I am not looking forward to this kit-kat.

The chocolate is coloured, never a good sign but it does smell nice. It’s hard to pick a distinctive not in the aroma but it is fruity. Which is to be expected I guess.

It doesn’t taste very nice though. The main problem is that it tastes really waxy. Upon biting in you aren’t hit by a strong flavour but rather by an absence of it. A sort of waxy coating surrounds your tongue and blocks out all flavour. Then you crunch down and some of the flavour comes through. What does come through isn’t banana-ey (thankfully) but it isn’t particularly fruity either. It’s not too sweet but it is just kind of generically sweet. If it tastes of anything it tastes of peach but even then it’s a really faint peach.

The aftertaste is bitter and tart and sits in your mouth like a bad smell going off. Ugh, not a fan. So waxy, flavourless and tart at the end. A poor effort.

Blueberry and Strawberry

Bought as part of a mixed packet containing regular kit-kat’s, strawberry and blueberry. The main packet has become lost in the move from Japan to the U.K. but from memory I know that it was an uninspired and messy design.



The individual designs aren’t messy but they’re certainly uninspired. In fact I think they may be the laziest effort I have reviewed so far. The strawberry one’s are okay, if a bit dull. Pink in colour (even though strawberries are red, but then so are regular kit-kat’s) with a picture of a strawberry. No thought has gone into their design but it works. However the blueberry wrapper is so boring it makes me a bit sad inside to eat it. The sole effort to distinguish it is to turn it blue and write blueberry at the side in a dull font. It isn’t even written in Japanese! Rather than entice me in or sell a theme it just makes me depressed and put off. This is chocolate for the desperate, chocolate for those with no friends, no taste and no hope.



The strawberry kat is regular chocolate and smells divinely and strongly of strawberries. Even sitting down the table from it I can get a strong whiff of strawberry filling my nostrils. In fact it’s making my mouth water a little bit.
Eating it has the exact same texture and mouthfeel of a regular kit-kat (complete with a little grittiness) but with a slight tang and a hint of strawberry. It’s nice, subtle, not too sweet and with a nice complexity that hits all the parts of your mouth with a burst of flavour. Then the aftertaste comes through like a punch to the tongue. After the chocolate taste dissipates it begins to really, really taste like strawberries. Your whole mouth gets taken over by a spreading wave of strawberry flavour complete with the tart notes and sourness of an actual strawberry.

This may not be the most exciting kit-kat ever but it sets out modest aims and more than fulfils them.

The blueberry also has regular chocolate and also has a nice strong aroma but nowhere near as strong as the strawberries. That’s fair though because blueberries aren’t the strongest smelling fruit to begin with.

Much like the strawberry the mouthfeel is like a classic kit-kat however it does have a certain waxy quality that spoils it. Unlike the strawberry though there is nothing at all subtle about this flavour. The blueberry comes out as the first note, overpowering the chocolate and everything else straight away. Blueberry fills your entire mouth and tries to escape out your eyes. These pack quite a kick for a chocolate bar, in fact they’re really quite sour. Nice though, the wrapper only promises you blueberry and blueberry is indeed what you get.

Bitter Almond



First up, that wrapper is absolutely horrible. There are way too many colours on it and they clash horribly with the kit-kat logo. The repeated diamond pattern clashes horribly with the picture of the bar and with the kit-kat logo and it just looks like a busy mess. There are at least 7 fonts used on the front and none of them compliment each other. My cat walking across a keyboard could produce a more attractive image. Actually my cat shitting on a keyboard could produce a more attractive image.



And yet the wrapper on the individual kat whilst haing many of the same problems works much better. The shiny foil makes the diamond pattern pop more and the colours are more subdued and complimentary. The logo is reduced in size and gives the patterns room to breathe and make an impression. Although still spoiled a bit by the logo it gives an impression of style and classiness. There’s an art deco feel which suggests a bygone era of style, sophistication and carefree pleasure. Considering bitter almond is an altogether more grown up flavour it’s a strong choice. This wrapper says not for kids and that can do a lot to draw my interest.

The smell is almost like coffee but it mostly chocolatey. No almond notes come through at all however it smells like a much richer and darker chocolate than a regular kit-kat. It looks darker too with little flecks of a lighter brown that is probably nut.

The texture is absolutely god awful. On the bottom it tastes and feels positively chalky, a horrible bitty, gritty waxiness. Almost like a piece of paper. Based on mouth feel alone this would be an absolute stinker.

However it tastes absolutely wonderful. Once you get past the first bite the texture settles down into a more standard kit-kat mode and one can start to think about the flavour. And what flavour! It’s definitely nutty, with some sour notes, some sweet notes and some really strong bitter notes. In fact I think there are actual nuts in it. It’s strangely not all that almond like. It tastes more like coffee if anything. But it is a deliciously complex flavour that stimulates your whole mouth. If the texture wasn’t so crap this would be a real winner of a kit-kat.

The aftertaste is a bit unpleasant as it leaves behind all the bitter notes without the sweetness to cut it. However I think this would compliment a coffee or tea very well and that would deal with the problem of after taste.

Coca Cola and Lemonade



Wow, that’s a busy packet! Not only have we got a picture of a big glass of cola, and another of lemonade but we also have hands, the logo, a blurb, another blurb, a diagram on the bottom of the packet and a joke on the top! But it’s done so well that it works! None of the elements crowd any other elements and each stands on its own as well as complimenting the others. The use of angles, spiky writing and geometric shapes imparts it some energy and an almost graffiti like feel to it. This is a kit-kat for kids and it has all the fun and energy it needs to do so. I also like the zippatone dots in the background suggesting fizziness as well as fitting into the youth/graffiti theme. Even the gradient from red to yellow is well done. This kit-kat is, dare I say it, funky!



The individual wrappers are less well done but are still okay. We get nice strong colours to denote which flavour is which and we get more of the same elements that made the main packet work so well, dots, angular shapes, etc but with addition of shiny and eye catching foil.

The lemonade kat has pale yellow chocolate, not a good sign, and even smells soapy. It also smells exactly like lemon vinegar, which was quite a nice flavour, and so this is a good sign. You really have to get a good whiff of it to get the smell though as it’s quite subdued. Interestingly you can even smell how fizzy it will be.
The initial taste is a bit bland, somewhat waxy, quite a bit soapy and even a little creamy. It doesn’t taste a huge amount of anything really, let alone lemon or lemonade. But then the fizz comes in the form of tiny dots of really, really, really sour lemon flavour. But the dots are so few that even though they are incredibly sour they struggle to overcome the blandess. I can guess what nestle was aiming for. The fizzy stuff makes an incredibly powerful lemon flavour and to make it palatable they added creamy chocolate. The idea being that the two should even out and the end result would be a pleasing lemonade taste. Instead you get almost painful punches of sourness and then a whole lot of bland soapy chocolate. So bland in fact that it kind of obliterates the aftertaste. A dismal failure.

Cola has cola coloured chocolate which doesn’t fill me with confidence but fairs much better on smell. Before the packet is even open you get hit a burst of unmistakeable cola smell. Not real cola though, this is the smell of rola cola, of the shit cheap knock off cola bought in pubs to entertain bored children and used to flavour all manner of sweets over the years. Again, like the lemonade, you can kind of smell the fizziness. It makes your eyes water a little bit.

The chocolate is horribly soapy and waxy. It has probably the worst texture of any kit-kat I have ever eaten. It doesn’t even feel like chocolate. It’s so insubstantial and waxy that it feels like eating a communion wafer washed with fairy liquid. And it’s bland, so very, very bland. Like the lemonade tiny fizzy dots of cola struggle to flavour the blandness. However it doesn’t work nearly as well as the lemonade. The cola flavour is pathetic, a tiny fart of flavour in a veritable Jupiter of bland crapness. Bland crapness that leaves an aftertaste like toilet cleaner fumes. Utterly appalling!

Strawberry Cheesecake



This is another kit-kat variety that is limited to one place in Japan, specifically Yokohama. Yokohama is one of the most international cities in Japan as it was one of the first cities to establish permanent trading ports with the outside world. Consequently a lot of food associated with Yokohama is a fusion of Japanese and western or just straight up western in nature. Yokohama is associated in people’s minds with history, the black ships (the American fleet that forced Japan to open its ports to foreigners), foreigners, foreign food and foreign culture. As such a strawberry cheesecake flavour is an entirely appropriate kit-kat to symbolise Yokohama.

The box art does a lot to tie into these historical notions. The background is in a cream and red bricks pattern evoking the unusual and exotic brick buildings that foreign merchants built in Yokohama. Prior to this all buildings in Japan were made of wood and stone. It’s also very distinctive and really stands out on a shelf, as well as being pleasing to the eye. And hey, cream and red are the colours of a strawberry cheesecake and of a Victorian building. That’s just too perfect. There’s a nice eye catching and attractive photo of a cheesecake and a friendly warning that this will have coloured chocolate and thus probably won’t taste very nice. The little gold ship ties into the historical theme but looks a little cluttered and busy. The old fashioned maid in western dress also ties into the theme and isn’t cluttered at all but seems a bit pointless. I guess she’s there to counter balance the necessary busyness on the other side of the box, with the words describing the flavour and the picture of the kit-kat.



The individual wrappers are boring beyond all belief, completely dull, flat and uninspired. They consist of nothing more than a cream colour with the logo and red etching with the flavour described. Why would you need to waste space describing the flavour? It’s on the front of the big box. And couldn’t we have had that nice brick pattern back? That was attractive and clever. Oh well.

The smell is strong and really distinct. This is obviously a strawberry cheesecake and nothing else. This is pretty much perfect actually, not too strong and not too weak. However mine are a bit old now and there is a weird element of sweaty cheese to the odour.

The taste is sweet but not too sweet, a touch gritty but not waxy and with a nice mild creaminess to it. Cheesecake definitely comes to mind but it tastes not one iota of strawberry. The strawberry flavour is completely absent. Weirdly there are some weird sharp cheesy notes, like cheddar or something. Not a feature I associate with cheesecake or with kit-kats.

The after taste is ungodly sweet and really harsh. It’s dehydrating and sits at the back of the throat like a cough. That’s not strictly speaking a bad thing though because these are meant to be eaten with a hot drink.

All in all a bland and inoffensive kit-kat that would go well with a hot drink.

Wasabi



Wasabi for the uninitiated is a kind of horseradish grown only in Japan. It is bright green and much, much hotter than regular horseradish. In fact it’s ironic that Japanese cooking, which is usually subtle and a touch bland, would also use one of the hottest ingredients going, quite liberally, in their cooking.

Wasabi is nice though, especially with sushi. Raw fish has a creamy quality to it that cuts the sharpness of the wasabi and the heat and creaminess contrast and compliment each other very well.

But a kit-kat?! This may very well be the strangest kit-kat I have ever eaten, right up there with corn, miso, soy sauce and watermelon and salt.

In fact whilst wasabi may be nice wasabi flavoured things are usually not. I have eaten wasabi flavoured sweets, they were horrible, and wasabi flavoured ice-cream. The ice-cream at first tasted creamy and mild and very bland. Then I realised that actually no, it wasn’t bland at all but in fact my mouth was on fire. After a small panic at my oral conflagration set about looking for some kind of cold creamy substance to soothe my mouth. Luckily I had some ice-cream, unfortunately it was wasabi ice-cream and me and this dessert got into an unpleasant cycle of burning and cooling that didn’t end well for either of us.

So my expectations are not high, let’s see what I’ve let myself in for.

Once again this kit-kat is exclusive to one area, in this case Tokyo. It specifically advertises one wasabi specialist shop in Tokyo but my Japanese is nowhere near good enough to decode the advertising. It does feature a picture of the shop and a website http://www.tamaruya.co.jp/ so go there if you’re interested.

Weirdly the box art features drawing of wasabi in a distinctly Okinawan style. Art comprised of big blocky jagged colourful lines with white fills is often associated with Okinawa, the semi-tropical island at the base of Japan. Wasabi isn’t associated with Okinawa at all though, in fact I’m not even sure if Okinawan cooking uses wasabi. They have a slightly different culture there to mainland Japan and their food is much more like Chinese. It’s very attractive looking and very distinctive but it doesn’t really make any sort of thematic sense. Other than that there isn’t much to say about the box art, it’s green, wasabi is green, the wasabi kit-kat is green. I think they assumed that the curiosity factor alone would sell it. They were right.



The individual wrappers have the same mystifying Okinawan theme along with a big label telling you stuff you already knew because you read it on the box!

So, how is it?

It’s a kind of pale green, like pea soup, or hospital paint, or baby pooh
.
It smells faintly of wasabi and kind of horrible actually. Although you can smell sugar too the wasabi smell is stronger and it’s not a pleasant smell.

And it tastes…



It’s pretty hard to describe actually.

The first thing to mention about it is that it triggered my gag reflex almost before I put it in my mouth. The smell, idea and colour all combined in a symphony of unappealing that made me hesitant to eat it. That gagging motion doesn’t contribute to a nice tasting biscuit. Once I got over the shock and swallowed a few bites that reflex subsided.

The next thing to mention is that it isn’t hot, not at all. There is a slight, infinitesimal heat to the after taste but it evaporates quickly and isn’t that strong to begin with.

It is sweet, and creamy but not too much of either.

Finally it tastes of wasabi, or at least how wasabi must taste without the heat. Which is not very nice actually. It’s kind of herby, a touch lemony, a touch bitter and a touch of something completely indefinable but somehow unpleasant. It’s a tough one to review because the process of eating a wasabi kit-kat is;

"ugh that looks horrible, hey actually it just tastes sweet and creamy, and of something, something else, hmm, oh wait gone, sweet and creamy again."

It’s disappointing to be honest. If it tasted really strongly of wasabi it would probably be horrible but at least it would be an experience. As it is it’s bland, not as good as a regular kit-kat and not especially reminiscent of wasabi. What a let down.

Kontent! What is this? Ah, Kit-Kats.

Yes, yes "Why you no post?". Well ignore the unusually long gap in updating and prepare for kit-kats!

Kit-Kat Chunky Green Tea



The onslaught of flavoured chunky variants begins. Having seen and reviewed my first one ever back in March; Nestle have begun unleashing more and more of them. Two are up for review this time around starting with a perennial Japanese kit-kat favourite, green tea.

The packaging is crowded but generally fine. The green and white are a bit reduced next to the absolutely massive kit-kat logo and quite hard to see. The macha powder effect is well done however.

And again we're forewarned that this will probably be crap because it shows up front that we're dealing with coloured chocolate here. Never a good sign with kit-kats and usually an indicator that the chocolate tastes soapy and naff.

Oh and 234 calories, yikes.

Being a chunky you get an unusually big slab of chocolate relative to the biscuit so this is less crispy and more flavourful.

Unfortunately that flavour is green tea.

This is one of the stronger green tea kit-kats actually. It tastes quite definitively of macha and is bitter like macha but they've sweetened it to cut the natural bitterness and make it easer to eat. On first bite it's pretty pleasant, bitter, fresh, sweet and crispy.

But the aftertaste. It tastes like licking splenda off a tea spoon that has been sitting on a table for an hour. Faintly of tea mostly of horrible artificial sweeteners and shame.

Banana Kit-Kat Chunky



I despise bananas.

The merest hint of banana absolutely overpowers any other flavour for me so adding banana to anything ensures that I am disgusted by it.

Tropical drinks, smoothies, bannofee. No matter what you team it with bananas make me sick.

This is not hyperbole, they make me wretch.

And now I'm going to eat a banana kit-kat.

I don't want to do this, I have no desire to do this. Doing this will bring me no joy whatsoever.

Frankly you're not going to get an objective review here. At best it won't taste too strongly of bananas and I'll be fine. At worst I'll be sick in my mouth. Either way Idon't think my tastes align with the general banana loving populace.

And it has coloured chocolate, oh god.

And it smells, really strongly of bananas. This is not any other flavour, this is unmistakeable.

Oh god.

It tastes of...nothing.

Ah, no, when you chew the banana comes through very strongly.

Very strongly.

Hold on.

Yes, I have just been sick in my mouth a little bit.

So the aftertaste, um, mouth sick. I think I'll go brush my teeth.

Green Tea Kit-Kat



Yes, another one. This is a fairly common variety in Japan and some form of green tea Kit-Kat is on shelves all year round. This one has new packaging though that is lovely and ties it in to spring.

Pink and Green are the spring colours in Japan thanks to all the sakura and this packet is loading with pink and green. It practically yells spring at you, like a hyperactive child who has just learnt a new English word, or some kind of pogo based psychopath.

But it is well done. Its very striking and the green and pink are well balanced. The sakura leaves are a cute touch and that cup of macha actually looks delicious. In exactly the way that all macha looks delicious and inviting before you drink it and remember that it tastes like when you make a cup of tea and the bag splits.

And how awesome is that individual kat wrapper. I love the fading bars from green to pink through white. It's cute, it's classy, it's springlike and it's remarkably well done. I want to pin it to my lapel it's so flowery. Isn't it just adorable?

I may, possibly, be lacking in perspective when it comes to the aesthetic properties or kit-kat wrappers.

But wook at it, I wants to cuddle it aw wup.

Although both wrappers seek to disguise the filthy coloured chocolate within.

Ah coloured chocolate, my nemesis.

It tastes much sweeter and much less bitter than the chunky and dare I say has a nutty quality.

But it also has the fresh taste associated with green tea, and it isn't soapy. Yet not quite like proper chocolate either. Maybe its a bit...gritty?

The after-taste is still sickly sweet but much less so than the chunky. Overall it's really a bit bland. In fact it sort of cleanses the palette a little. This is nothing food, food that has texture but very little flavour. Which actually makes it kind of ideal as a dipping biscuit to go with something incredibly flavourful (say a cup of real macha. It may be a bad flavour but there sure is a lot of it).

Or maybe I'm just delighted after the banana.

Framboise (raspberry)



This looks promising. French name, pink and brown colouring and retro design aesthetic are all pluses for a kit-kat. In fact almost all the kit-kats with some kind of retro design such as spots or distinctive stripes have been quite good. As have all the pink and brown ones.

Both the main packet and individual wrapper are nicely done but the main wrapper is particularly great. As well as the really stylish pink on pink bubbles there is a delicious looking slice of cake and an adorable little bow. This is a kit-kat that screams present. Much like a small child at Christmas, or a kind of Santa themed psychopath. Not that you should ever give your loved one a kit-kat as a present. Unless your loved one is me and your enabling my destructive behaviour.

The wrapper even has a strange embossed pattern that makes it feel nicer to touch.

The only thing I don't like is the little "sweets concept" badge. Its the sort of meaningless English the Japanese stick on things that communicates nothing. It's visual and linguistic noise that only serves to detract from the stylish design.

The kit-kat itself is great too. Real chocolate for starters which is always a good sign. And from the second one opens it one gets a really strong whiff of raspberries that hit the nose. This is one of the best smelling kit-kats I've tried.

The taste is excellent. The chocolate is milk but quite bitter and not too sweet. It is the first taste that you get but as you chew the raspberry begins to fill your mouth. It is really quite amazing. Like a proper chocolate, from a box or selection. the raspberry filling is sweet, fruity, rich, complex, slightly sour and slightly bitter. Every part of your mouth gets hit with flavour at once. It's sublime.

The after-taste is just a touch sour but the delicious fruity notes linger for a long time making this one of the better kit-kats to eat without accompaniment.

All in all a solid effort. Great package, great smell, great taste, great after taste. A+

Shinshu Ringo (Apples)



My long sufferring girlfriend Fran's parents visited us recently and we went travelling. In the course of those travels I found many strange kit-kat variants which I brought back with me. Most of these are packaged to be used as "omiyage" a Japanese gift giving tradition. When you go travelling it is customary to bring a present back from where you went to share with others in your office and as an apology for being absent and giving them more work.

Being Japan everywhere has its own regional speciality so most omiyage is geared towards that regional speciality.

On our journey in the Shinshu region the specialities included crickets, bee larvae, apples, miso, chilli and a host of others.

Hence, apple kit-kats.

I can't really say much for the packet. Although larger than usual they don't really have any more elements than a standard (overcrowded) kit-kat wrapper. The apples look suitably delicious, the labelling is clear, the gold and red colours are appropriate for apples and suitably inviting and it all looks striking enough. The picture of mountain topography is a bit naff, if only because I've been there and it looks much more dramatic than that painting attempts to capture. I do like the picnic blanket pattern to the red. It suggests the outdoors, wholesomeness and nature. Good things for an apple flavour to aim for.



Real chocolate (hooray) and a really powerful apple odour from the second the packet is opened. Actually a really, really nice apple odour. So apple-ey that goes right past apple and settles somewhere near apple flavoured chewing gum i.e. concentrated apple smell. More apple-ey than an apple.

The taste is much less strong than the smell but still pretty strong. The apple kills all the chocolate notes stone dead. The only thing you can taste here is apple. Although the chocolate does come through in the aftertaste.

And all in all its pretty good. Not too sweet, nice and rich, plenty complex and definitely apple-ey. Solid.

Yawatayaisogoro Ichimi (Japanese Chilli Pepper)



I'm actually not dreading this. Chilli and chocolate are an amazing coupling. Chocolate makes chilli richer and chilli gives chocolate a kick to it that offsets the sweet and brings forward the flavour. All in all I'm looking forward to this.

That packet is an absolute disgrace though. The faded red/orange pattern hasn't worked. The pepper drawing looks absolutely naff too although the picture in the middle looks fine. It's a bit lifeless but fine for illustrative purposes. The Kanji looks really bad too, really tacked on. It's way too small and the pepper drawing is way too big. The elements are all out of whack. Bad wrapper.



The individual wrappers look a little better. The shiny foil makes the red/yellow fade pop more and look better. It suggests fieryness in a way the main box doesn't. Oh and the inside of the main box is black, as if to sell the danger and hotness of the peppers. Ooooooh.

The chocolate is really, really black. It's almost not brown at all. That's a good sign to me, although there is a noticeable lack of smell.

At first all it tastes of is black chocolate.

Then later all it tastes of is black chocolate.

Then finally it tastes of black chocolate.

then the after-taste is a bit spicy.

Alright that's a bit unfair. The after-taste is a lot spicy. Much spicier than I guessed. But that's still rubbish. You can't taste the spice and it doesn't improve the chocolate one bit. In fact if anything they've sweetened it a bit to try and counteract the spice that isn't there. All it does is make you want to drink a glass of water.

Miso



Miso is another of those packets with space on the back to turn it into a postcard. It is also a regional speciality recipe only available around Tatteyama area.

For those unfamiliar with miso it is a kind of paste made by fermenting soybeans. Japanese people mostly use it to make a soup which has a strong umami (savoury) flavour. It is also used to flavour vegetables and fish and in a variety of dishes.

Miso consists of mostly fermented soybeans but it also mixed and flavoured with leaves, herbs and shoyu (soy sauce) in its preparation. Another thing used in its preparation is tiny fish often used in Japan to make stocks and give an umami flavour.

So yes, this is in part a fish flavoured kit-kat. I'm amazed it took this long.

I really like that packet. Instead of going with the most literal representatin they've gone for a theme. Sure there is a tub of miso at the top but most of the packet illustrations are of a miso shop in an ancient Japanese street. It connotes tradition, the past, elements of nostalgia and wholesomeness. the traditional Japanese pattern background helps enforce this too as does the orange and beige colour scheme evoking both miso and sepia photos. It's a great bit of design communicating a lot of ideas with only a few simply elements.

The individual kat is a bit poorer but maintains most of the same ideas, orange and beige, ropes and traditional Japanese patterns, etc.

It doesn't really smell of miso which has a very distinctive odour. Instead it smells of toffee. That's good, because I like toffee. although there's also a sort of burnt aroma too.

It doesn't really taste of miso and whilst it mostly tastes of tofee it doesn't quite taste of that either. It's salty for a start but at the same time really sweet and again at the same time quite umami. I kind of think it tastes of brown apples, but, strangely in a nice way.

Although the taste is hard to describe it's really very pleasant. It sets off all the parts of your mouth and is properly rich and complex. It is sweet but not very sweet and it's fairly mild but at the same time has a weird salty kick.

And there is almost no aftertaste. What little there is is actually very good. Again like a toffee, a sort of rich mellow sweetness.

I'm utterly mystified reader. I like this kit-kat a lot but I lack the words to explain what it tastes like. Not miso, not even slightly like miso really. But it is very nice whatever it is.

Nestle are trying to kill me.

Nestle have evidently cottoned onto the fact that there is somebody out there trying to eat and review every kind of Kit-Kat they make and have decided to try and kill me because just recently they have swamped the aisles with a huge variety of different flavours. To that end in today’s post I’m going to attempt to eat and review no less than 9 different Kit-Kats!!

Umeshu Soda



First up is actually a variety I forgot to review during the last Kit-Kat update; umeshu and soda. It has been sitting in my cupboard since late summer and apparently goes off this month so it may not be a fair trial.

Umeshu is a kind of very sweet and sticky liqueur made from Japanese apricots. The apricots themselves are very bitter but when mixed with alcohol and sugar they make a very strong and very sweet drink. When mixed again with soda you get a delightfully refreshing summer cocktail.

The packaging is pretty good. You get a nice and inviting looking umeshu soda glass, some dots which tie in with the floating ume design and suggest fizziness and a colour scheme which both matches the colours of the drink and looks suitably fresh and refreshing.



The packaging on the individual Kat is less impressive but is fine. Again the colours match the desired flavour well and the bubble design suggests fizziness.

However the problems begin when we get to the Kat itself. Bright green chocolate and a smell that is more strongly reminiscent of a McDonald’s milkshake than any other previous Kit-Kat. Both of these factors bode poorly for this Kat’s taste.

Disappointingly the first taste doesn’t. It is completely and totally bland. I may as well be eating thin air. The texture is grim and soapy with none of the fizz promised by the packaging and the first notes that hit aren’t of anything.

The only real presence of flavour is some generic tanginess that hits your mouth after you’ve chewed it for awhile. These aren’t especially reminiscent of ume but they are at least lively and a bit different from Kit-Kat’s standard fair.

The aftertaste though is really soapy. In fact it tastes more like soap than it does anything it is advertised to taste like.

All in all it’s like eating a bar of crunchy, tangy soap. A total failure.

Ginger Ale



Another drink flavoured Kit-Kat marketed with a picture of a fizzy and refreshingly inviting looking drink. The packaging on this one is superb. The colour choice is excellent for a ginger ale and evokes the label of a Canada dry bottle. The dark green looks classy and refined whilst the white looks fresh and inviting. Finally the actual packet has a photo print of ginger ale as the dominant colour. This is a new technique for Kit-Kat but it works very well. It looks much more stylish, classy and sophisticated than their packaging usually does. The only downside is that with the white on top and the photo print ginger ale it does look a little bit like a glass of beer.



The wrapping on the Kat isn’t a let down either. Cream and dark green are nice contrasting colours and again connote class and sophistication. They’re the colours of golf bars, of airport lounges, of cruise decks.

Sadly we’ve got colours chocolate again which always bodes poorly but we’ve also got a massive hit of ginger smell rather than the usual milkshakey odour. There’s also a faint sour or lemony element to the bouquet.

The chocolate is impressively gingery right from the first bite and what’s more has really strong tangy notes to it. I’m not really a fan of ginger ale and can’t comment on how well it emulates it but it does make for a nice biscuit. There are two strongly contrasting flavours happening in your mouth at once. Partly it feels like eating a ginger biscuit and is rich and mellow like a proper ginger nut is, but at the same time there are really strong tangy flavours like sucking a lemon. They contrast well and this is probably one of the more sophisticated and complex tasting Kit-Kat’s I’ve tried. A definite biscuit for grown ups; from the packaging, to the taste, to the smell and on.

The aftertaste is a little too tart but that just means it goes well with a cup of tea which cuts the aftertaste whilst the sweet and mellow Kit-Kat cuts the bitterness of the tea.

A hit from nestle here.

Milk Coffee



Another drink and a flavour that I’ve tried variations of before. This time the milk content is advertised quite prominently so I’m expecting it to be distinctly lactose-y.

Again, and annoyingly, I can’t really fault the packaging. The coffee looks fine (although not that milky) and the choice of colours is sound. Cream and pink contrast well together and are attractive to look at. The field of flowers is a nice touch and adds some interest to the design. The handwritten note giving the flavour is perhaps a touch to twee but it has a purpose which is revealed on the back of the packet.

Yes, this Kit-Kat isn’t intended to be bought and eaten, it is intended to be bought and given as a present. As such nestle have included a little space on the back to write a message.




Why would you give a Kit-Kat as a present? Well it is coming up to exam/graduation season in Japan now and people often give kit-Kats to students that are taking their exams. This is because Kit-Kat sounds like kitto katsu a Japanese expression meaning “you will surely win.”

In fact you can buy a special variety of Kit-Kat at the post office which can be addressed, stamped and mailed directly without an envelope to whomever you wish to give luck to.

The presence of pink and the use of sakura flowers are also symbols of good luck in Japan and the handwritten note is obviously tying in to the handwritten message on the back.



The individual Kat is more of the same but wisely tones down the flower pattern a little.

Sadly we have more coloured chocolate and our old friend the milkshake smell returns the minute you open up the wrapper. Also the chocolate is practically white with only the faintest whiff of brown to it. If someone served you a coffee this colour you would be forgiven for thinking it was simply some old cream in a bad light.

There is something of a smell that could be described, charitably, as coffee but it is more reminiscent of a room in which coffee was once stored many years ago or a chestnut. I’m not sure.

It’s also got really hard and firm chocolate for some reason.

Well in its defence it does taste of coffee right from the off. Coffee made with seven sugars though and a pint of milk. It doesn’t taste soapy and it doesn’t taste of anything but coffee but it is really, horribly, massively sweet. Any bitterness or complexity the coffee may have imparted is totally drowned out by the sweet. In fact it doesn’t taste of sugar at all but artificial sweetener. It leaves the same horrible chemical aftertaste in your mouth and has the same problem of overwhelming every taste bud you own at once.

This is a really sweet biscuit.

In fact too sweet because I couldn’t even finish it. In stead its staring at me, unloved, unwanted and uneaten.

Meanwhile my mouth tastes like I mainlined splenda.

Blegh!

I need a drink.





Sparkling Strawberry



I’ve passed up strawberry Kit-Kat’s on this site before because a) you can get them in the U.K. and b) they aren’t a limited edition flavour here. Briefly they’re like sweeter crappy ordinary Kit-Kat’s.

Sparkling Strawberry though is a limited edition and like the milk coffee ties into the good luck aspect of Kit-Kat. The chocolate is pink, strawberries are pink and associated with this time of year and pink is lucky. So this must be a super lucky Kit-Kat.

The packaging is very obvious but mostly fine. There are strawberries, they sparkle, the packaging is pink and sparkly; everything fits the overall theme and the name. It looks like an eyesore and the strawberries look plastic but they wanted to make a pink Kit-Kat and by god did they succeed. Also the sparkles look fizzy and if this is a fizzy Kit-Kat it might be nice because I really enjoyed the last fizzy Kit-Kat they released.

However the packaging is also being brutally honest with us. It shows us a picture of the Kit-Kat and lets us know up front that we’re dealing with coloured chocolate so it will be soapy, milkshakey and crap. I applaud their honesty but it doesn’t make me want to eat it.



The packaging on the inner Kit-Kat is a big step up. The pink is a much nicer colour, the gold is a striking combo with it and there are no sparkles or plastic strawberries. Instead we get the nice subdued bubble design from the umeshu. This looks grown up and swanky and cool. Much better then the glitter mess on the packet.

Smell wise it is in every way shape and form a strawberry milkshake. Although you can kind of smell the sherbet too which takes the edge off. And again the chocolate is unusually hard.

Surprisingly I liked this. The strawberry flavour is nice and strong. It isn’t soapy and it tastes of strawberries both on the first bite and in the aftertaste. It’s appropriately tangy for a strawberry flavour and whilst it is sweet it isn’t too sweet.

The sherbet is very subdued and not very noticeable, especially compared to the ramune flavour but it is present and is quite nice. It is mostly noticeable in the aftertaste and largely serves to spoil it and make it taste a bit more of chemicals.

So the strawberry side is better than I expected but the sparkling aspect is poorly implemented and a bit disappointing.

Raspberry and Passion Fruit



This is another package with a space on the back for a message. Only this time instead of exams this Kit-Kat is for Valentine’s Day. I’m not sure if most people I know would appreciate a Kit-Kat for Valentine’s Day but it might go over well with me.

Accordingly we get loads of hearts plastered everywhere in addition to the obvious implications of “passion fruit.”

Although the hearts are a bit gaudy I quite like the packaging here. The colour schemes are classy, brown and pink/purple are good contrasting colours and, dare I say it, a little sexy. It’s certainly more sophisticated than the usual colours. The abstract passion fruits are a nice touch too and give it a sort of funky cosmopolitan feel.



The interior packaging is even stronger with predominant brown and a few hearts that make the hearts “pop” much better visually.

And there are even small hearts on the inside of the packet itself.



Hallelujah and praise the god of Kit-Kat’s this one has normal coloured chocolate. In fact it’s much darker than regular Kit-Kat chocolate. The smell is amazing too; although not too strongly reminiscent of either fruit it does smell pleasant, like a high quality chocolate selection.

Again the chocolate seems much harder than usual. I think maybe they changed formulation recently.

Oh, now that is nice.

Well for starters the chocolate is brilliant. A massive step up from Kit-Kat’s usual offering. It has a much more complex taste, is bitterer, chocolatier and just better in every way. It tastes and even feels like a proper chocolate bar. It is just the right amount of sweetness (i.e. slightly bitter) and even has the slight grittiness you get with proper dark chocolate. This is seriously good chocolate.

But the filling just puts it one step above. It doesn’t hit you at first but once you start to chew the raspberry and passion fruit notes are really strong and clear. They’re fruity, sweet, slightly tangy and delicious. They contrast with the bitter chocolate remarkably well. You whole mouth is stimulated. The combo is neither too sweet nor too bitter but just perfect.

And it leaves a wonderfully fruity aftertaste, almost like a liqueur.

Eating this isn’t like eating a Kit-Kat at all. It’s like eating a proper chocolate from a tray or selection of chocolates only with a slight crunchy texture to it too. This is seriously good stuff. In fact it is probably my new favourite Kit-Kat flavour and is easily ranked amongst the best they have ever produced.

Alright I take it back; this would be a good Valentine’s present.

Maple


A tie in to the Vancouver Winter Olympics gives us new maple flavour. I love maple flavoured things and usually the toffee/caramel/sweet potato group of kit-Kat’s are among the better ones so my hopes are high for this one.

The packaging is a bit of a disaster all told. I realise that it is mainly white to create a link to snow and that the medal and coloured edges are also tie-ins to the Olympics but the effect they create is to make it look like a supermarket’s own brand product. White isn’t the colour of maple, oranges, browns and reds are and whilst we get some orange it is drowned in white that just looks cheap. The maple jug is squeezed off to one side too much and looks small and ineffectual. Plus we get some brutal truth that yes; this is a coloured chocolate occasion. I’m not impressed.



The packet on the individual Kat is better but still bad. We’ve toned down the multicoloured edges but it’s still too white, too dull and too cheap looking.

It does smell of maple, and quite nice too, so maybe it’ll be okay.

Once again the chocolate is really hard for some reason.

This is actually pretty good. The initial taste is mostly sweet and a bit bland but once you start to chew the maple taste comes through very strongly. It is a nice clear maple with all the complex toffee, flower and bitter notes that would suggest but not too sweet. The aftertaste is, if anything, even better than the actual biscuit and is identical to eating any kind of maple cookie.

Unusually for Kit-Kat in Japan I can see this working really well with a cup of tea. Not amazing but a definite hit.

Roasted Soybean Kit Kat Bar



Yes, Kit-Kat chunky does exist in Japan but they call it Kit-Kat Bar. This is the first time I have seen a flavoured version of the Kit-Kat bar so it’s the first time it has shown up on this site.

Setsubun, however, has shown up before on this site. It is a Japanese festival where children throw roasted soybeans at their father, dressed as an Oni (ogre) and chase him out of the house to chase out bad luck. Then, everyone eats 1 roasted soybean per year they’ve been alive plus another for good luck. I’ve done this tradition a few times and can inform you that roasted soybeans are horrible. They are small, flavourless things with a hard horrible texture. Why anyone would willingly eat them escapes me.

So Nestle produced a Kit-Kat with a filling made of them. Hurray!

The packet is naff. It looks like an ordinary bar only with a cheap rubbish white patch and a picture of an Oni. The Oni is fine and I guess they need the white patch to make his face stand out against the background but it is still a boring uninspired design.

The chocolate is the standard Kit-Kat stuff (i.e. crap) but the smell is unique and frankly awful. I know it’s soybeans but there is a second, more horrible note underpinning the beans. Something akin to wet fart. It really is disgusting.

The bar itself tastes disgusting. It’s utterly revolting. The chocolate is innocuous but the bean filling tastes like soggy grass. It’s just horrible. It’s actually probably closest to eating raw dried pasta mixed in with some muesli. I don’t really have the vocabulary to describe it because it doesn’t taste like food so much as it does animal feed.

I’d describe the aftertaste but I had to wash my mouth out immediately in order to focus on writing that paragraph so I have no idea what the aftertaste is. And I refuse to eat any more of it.

Cantaloupe Melon




The last two Kit-Kat’s I’m going to feature are special flavours only available in Hokkaido. Fran and I just came back from a trip there and I’ll be telling you all about it in the next blog post.

Hokkaido is famous for farming and the wide variety of delicious fresh foods available there. In particular because it has a more temperate climate it produces a lot of food not grown elsewhere in Japan.

One of these famous foods is cantaloupe, but when melons aren’t in season Nestle has you covered for souvenirs with melon flavoured Kit-Kat.



The packaging is quite well done with 2 slices of really delicious looking melon and a picture of the fields of Hokkaido. Oh and this is one of those Kit-Kat packages that can be posted. In effect it is a postcard and souvenir in one.



The package on the Kat is completely naff. It’s green, has a picture of a melon and a picture of Hokkaido. There’s nothing explicitly wrong with it but it is dull and uninspired. Could do better.

Hooray, proper chocolate colours and the smell is promising too. It is distinctly identifiable as melon, an even as cantaloupe.

Oh and the chocolate is the usual texture.

This is a great Kit-Kat. The melon flavour is distinct and immediate and complements the chocolate very well. The chocolate is rich and the melon is sweet and a little bit tart. The sweetness is just right. It’s surprisingly fruity and surprisingly accurate for a fruit flavoured Kit-Kat which usually tend to be a bit sweet and soapy. This is probably the freshest tasting Kit-Kat I’ve enjoyed, for want of a better word.

The aftertaste isn’t really. It kind of fades from your taste buds almost immediately which makes it surprisingly moreish.

A well balanced and very good Kit-Kat.

Corn



Yes, corn.

Hokkaido, amongst many foods, is also famous for corn.

So, obviously Nestle decided to make a corn Kit-Kat. I eagerly await the potato, crab, lamb, beer and butter flavoured Kit-Kats.

Actually I would quite like the beer one.

So corn. Well, I guess it is sweet. And I did eat a carrot Kit-Kat once. But carrots are used in cakes and corn, in so far as I know, is not.



The package is in the same format as the cantaloupe, picture of Hokkaido farms, picture of corn and space to post it on the back. However they swapped the delicious looking photo print of a melon for a kind of children’s book illustration style drawing of some ears of corn. I suspect that some real corn would look off putting whereas the picture seems more abstract and possibly sweeter? Frankly it doesn’t really make me want to eat it except out of immense curiosity.

Accursed curiosity, if only I could shake it and my crippling OCD I could stop wasting hours of my life describing Kit-Kat’s.

Oh well, write what you know. And I know all about OCD and incurable curiosity.

The packet of the individual Kat has all the same problems as the cantaloupe, it’s dull and unimaginative. I’ll grant them that it’s a nice colour though.

The colour of the kit-Kat is yellow. Bright, bright yellow. Corn yellow in fact. I haven’t seen a Kit-Kat emulate the colour of its flavour so effectively since, well, chocolate really.

And the smell is strongly, clearly, unmistakeably corn. It is the corniest smelling thing since corn. Cornflakes don’t smell this strongly of corn. Cheap sweet corn doesn’t smell this strongly of corn.

I wasn’t sure before I opened it but after 8 Kit-Kats that corn smell is actually starting to make me feel a bit sick. For the first time doing this I held it up to my mouth and snatched it away. I really don’t want to eat this.

But you bastards want me to don’t you.

Fine.

It’s kind of horrible.

I mean, its sweet and actually not too sweet, I much prefer it to the milk coffee for example. And it has some nice complex caramel notes which are usually really good in a Kit-Kat. Having eaten corn you’d expect both of those things. At least half my mouth was really happy.

But then, the rest of it just tastes really strongly of corn. And even butter a little bit. It’s not bad at all but it seems to clash horribly with every other flavour going on. A disconnect happens in your brain between the parts that taste nice and the parts that really, really don’t.

And it gets worse the more you eat of it. At first it’s sweet and delicious but as you chew it gets cornier and cornier and cornier. And the aftertaste is disgusting, like soap and chemicals and corn.

I mean, I like corn just fine but for some reason I really can’t get into this. It’s foul!

No, nice try nestle and I like your vision but corn and chocolate are two things that should never go together.

Now get to work on that Sapporo beer flavour.

Potatoes, Chocolate and Lies!!!!

After that epic (seriously that last post was more than 8 pages long in word, my essays at University were shorter than that) we’re back to what Mummyboon does best.

And that’s reviewing kit-kats.

I can feel the excitement being transmitted down the net tubes.

First up is an autumnal offering that is no longer available but that I’ve been saving for when I finally finished that Kyushu write up.

Sweet Potato Kit-Kat



Sweet potatoes are huge in Japan. They come in tons of different varieties such as ; purple inside, purple outside but yellow inside, long and thing, flat and wide, round like a potato and lots more.

What’s more, being potatoes, they are really versatile and are used in a wide selection of dishes. They can be a savoury accompaniment to a meal, they can be salted and eaten as chips, they can be made into ice-cream (which is my favourite ice-cream in the whole world) they can be covered in syrup and eaten as pudding and they can be added to Japanese curry.

They are most commonly eaten though just baked and maybe with a little bit of butter. Whilst this might sound a bit boring it is anything but. Baked sweet potatoes are so good they could talk a suicidal man from the ledge. They are evidence of a benevolent and wonderful universe. More realistically they are lovely and fluffy, buttery and with a wonderfully complex sweetness. Not the sweetness of sugar that is simple and gone straight away but that of caramel which you can roll around the tongue. A rich sweetness. A sweetness for grown ups.

There are in fact little wagons that traditionally roam the streets of Japanese cities in autumn baking sweet potatoes and making little puffs of sweet smelling steam as they trundle along. Yaki-imo (baked sweet potato) the vendors cry as their little carts trundle along causing flocks of sweets crazed Japanese ladies to flock behind.

And one of these wagons is depicted on the packaging along with some puffs of inviting steam. In fact that steam has been co-opted into the design of the packet. I love that! In the same way that the real steam seems to say “look yummy sweet potatoes,” so too does the packet say “yaki-imo.” That’s brilliant theme-ing in the design there. And they added a picture of a yaki-imo looking fluffy and moist and oh so delicious. Plus it’s a sort of golden yellow, which is officially the best colour a biscuit can be (see custard creams and gold bars for reference).

The design of the individual kit-kat is nothing special, although I note that they’re including the calorie content on the smaller packets now. Apparently the sweet potato ones are 2 kcal’s more per serving than a standard chocolate one.



Considering what they taste like though that is totally worth it.

The taste, oh how can I describe the taste?! Well it tastes like sweet potato to start with but it is so much more than that. It tastes of dreams. It tastes of ambrosia. It tastes of honey and caramel and nectar and Elysium. It tastes of victory. It tastes of loves first bloom. This, my friends, may very well be the perfect kit-kat. This is the platonic biscuit from which all others are mere imperfect reflections. This is a biscuit fit for a deity.

Actually it tastes a bit like caramac only nicer. Does anyone remember caramac? I think you can still get them at newsagents.

Sadly nestle have stopped making them which may be the worst biscuit related news I have ever heard. In fact it is the worst biscuit related news I have ever heard and it’s worse than quite a few bits of non-biscuit related news I have heard. I would go so far as to say that it is much sadder than hearing that someone else’s hamster has died but maybe not as sad as your own dying.


Wow that got morbid. Ahem, excuse me whilst I mourn the loss of the perfect biscuit.

Better now, next one.

Extra Cocoa



Like a normal kit-kat but with nicer chocolate. Considering that kit-kats have crap chocolate these can only be an improvement.

And a whole 4 kcals more per serving, ooh la la, extravagant. Ambassador, with these nice kit-kats you are really spoiling us.

The box is pretty dull, although it does have a sort of festive snow thing going on. What’s more interesting for me is that it is in a box at all. Kit-Kat have fairly standard packaging formats on the whole. There are the 4 bars in a box, small multipacks, chunky, premiums, minis and one or two odd outliers but a square box with 5 double wafers is a new one.

And yes, I just realised that I said I was “interested” in a new box. I think that makes me the world’s only kit-kat nerd.



The packaging on the bar itself is much better. For starters it’s brown, which is the colour of chocolate. It’s as if it is saying “come, see how chocolately I am. I am the chocolateiest kit-kat, I scoff at the red ones, and I fart in its general direction.”

Snooty kit-kat then. And it maintains the winter wonderland theme but it works much better because we aren’t distracted from the snow pattern by a massive picture of some chocolate.

How does it taste?

It tastes like a kit-kat with nicer chocolate.

I don’t really know what to say. We all know how chocolate tastes, well like that. I mean, it isn’t amazing chocolate but it is good for a biscuit and amazing for a kit-kat.

It isn’t as sweet as a normal one and the after taste is actually pleasant rather than that horrible soapy taste you’d get with a regular one. I rate them highly but ultimately it’s nothing more exciting than a chocolate biscuit.

Royal Milk Tea



I despise Royal Milk Tea.

Tea, as every properly civilised person knows, should be black leaves, made in a pot with some, but not too much milk. I will leave the sugar debate open except to say that I drink my tea with sugar. My excuse is that I was abandoned on a building site as an infant and raised by a pack of wild builders who taught me everything I know about drinking tea, turning up late and wolf whistling at ladies.

Alright, that isn’t true, but what is true is that I was raised in Yorkshire, where the general rule of thumb is that tea should be stewed so long and have so much sugar in it that a spoon will stand upright if left in it.

In contrast the barbarians in Japan seem to think that tea should use green leaves, should be mildly infused and should have no milk. What’s worse is that they assert that this is the correct way to do it. They even have some kind of bizarre ceremony to demonstrate the “correct” way to drink it. Whilst there is neither excuse nor explanation for this abhorrent behaviour I have had to learn to live with it and I take solace that proper can still often be purchased.

Proper tea is known as kocha and sometimes as milk tea. Being English I will often ask for a cup of kocha or milk tea if seated in a Japanese café. Usually this will result in me getting a nice pot of tea. Sometimes it will result in me getting Royal Milk Tea.

Royal Milk Tea is not tea. It is some kind of disgusting powder consisting of powdered milk and something brown. When hot water is added it creates a deceptive and evil drink which looks like tea, smells sort of like tea and appears for the entire world to be tea until you drink it and realise that it is in fact the juice from Satan’s nipples.

It is, to be blunt, horrible. It is worse than vending machine tea.

And the worst thing about it, the way it pretends to be English. From the use of the word “royal” down to the packaging it tries to sidle up to England and borrow some of the country’s association with tea in order to pass itself off as something authentically British.

It makes me sick.

So I am not predisposed to be a fan of Royal Milk Tea Kit-Kat.

To start with the packaging is literally enraging. Not only are we calling it Royal Milk Tea but the package is bloody tartan! Tartan!! You don’t get more cosily British than tartan and Royal Milk Tea is the very antithesis of British values. Shortbread comes in tartan packets and Kit-Kats are no shortbread!

And then to make it worse the edge has little caricatures of the palace guard. The palace guard! Complete with bearskins! Does the Queen know about this? Can she sue? This is blatant false advertising, there is nothing royal about Royal Milk Tea but it not only has it in its name but has started adding palace guards!

Frankly this package makes me sick. I am revolted.

I will give it this though, the inside of the bag smells more like a cup of tea than any cop of Royal Milk Tea has ever done.



How does it taste?

It tastes of betrayal and lies.

No, actually it doesn’t really taste of anything. The first few bites are astonishingly bland. They’re a bit creamy and sweet, but pleasingly not too sweet but they taste nothing like a cup of tea or Royal Milk Tea.

In the after taste some tannins start come through (those are the sour notes in tea) that are surprisingly bitter for a kit-kat. But frankly I don’t know if I’m tasting them or smelling my mouth. The smell of these things is really strong but the flavour is aggressively bland. It’s almost as if the flavour was hiding from me in case it made me angry.

I cannot stress how tasteless this biscuit is and that puzzled me for a while until a thought struck me. I often ponder what the purpose of these tea flavoured kit-kats is when surely a kit-kat is designed to be dunked into tea. Perhaps what we have here is a biscuit that is designed to be dunked and absorb the flavour of the tea it is dunked into.

So I made a cup of tea and tried it out.

The difference is astonishing. It went straight from bland to one of the strongest tasting kit-kats I have ever eaten. The tea flavours and tannins come hard and fast and almost knock you out. And it’s nice too. Not too sweet with a lovely rich tea taste. Unfortunately it does have the weird soapy aftertaste that a lot of kit-kat’s have.

So I summary without tea it is boring and crap. With tea it makes a great companion but has a nasty aftertaste. Either way it didn’t make in vomit in rage and revulsion so it is a massive step up from the product it is named after.