Taking a break from its usual role as a multinational food behemoth whose first and only interest is padding its bottom line, Nestlé is lending its mighty marketing (and, of course, manufacturing) machine to the efforts to help the devastated Tohoku region.
It's a Kitkat called Zunda. The idea is that it evokes the taste — or at least the image — of zunda-mochi, a sweet that is a traditional delicacy of Miyagi, one of the three worst-hit prefectures in the Northeast. Basically, it's a dumpling topped with ground-up sweetened eda-mame green soybeans — as suggested by the image on the front of the pack.
The label promises that 10 yen from every unit (not sure if that's per pack or carton) goes to the cause of reconstruction (I haven't read the fine print on exactly where it goes).
And this is what it looks like inside. It's actually white chocolate, given a pale green tint — though that's not obvious from the bleached-out photo here...
Here's a better picture:
And how does it taste? Well, the ingredients listing does really include some eda-mame powder and if you focus carefully as you first put it in your mouth there is a very faint aroma that could be from green soybeans.
In a random and unscientific poll of about 5 people, the general consensus was that it's OK. Alright even. And certainly better than a lot of the other novelty flavoured KitKats produced here over the past few years.
Here's more on zunda-mochi, from Food Librarian who recently posted on how to prepare this colourful sweet (and from whom I got this picture).
And here is KitKat's own website which is actually quite fun.
If you look carefully at all the regional specialty versions, you can see that the zunda variety was actually launched last year, but it's been rebranded for the fund-raising appeal.
More KitKat commentary on the Food File here...
and a whole fistful of KitKats here...
