A Kit Kat for all seasons

From cherry blossoms to samurai to housing, the Japanese sure have a thing for the short lived, and especially for 限定商品 (gentei syouhin) — seasonal, regional or limited edition products. Restaurant menus and convenience store goods often reflect the tastes of the times, and offerings may range from the more mundane, like oysters as a wintertime topping for your okonomiyaki, to the more unexpected, such as the elusive cucumber-flavored Pepsi.

While products may come and go, one ever-changing supermarket staple continues to be the new and often unusual flavors of Kit Kat. Personally I am a big fan of the sakura variety that hits every graduation season, and I’m always sad when the soft pink boxes disappear from conbini shelves come the end of Spring. But just because something is new and different of course doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s particularly good, as was the case when I encountered grape Kit Kat, so I was a bit wary when I found the latest summer offering at my local suupaa:

すいか (watermelon) would not be the first on my list of “flavors matching chocolate and wafer,” but the further enticement of added salt (because, really, what’s watermelon without salt?) convinced me to ignore Better Judgment and drop a bag into my shopping basket.

After ample refrigeration, I finally tore open the packaging and had my first taste of the promised watermelon-salt-chocolate-wafer goodness. The stalwart chocolate and wafer were definitely making their contribution but the watermelon and salt… not so much. It did have some vague “fruit taste” but no distinct watermelon notes. Certainly no competition to the sakura variety, but happily still Kit Kat and still edible.