Comment by themodelplumber | Hacker News Reader

Comment by themodelplumber | Hacker News Reader

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themodelplumber

> The company eventually figured out what was going on: According to Teruhiro Kawabe, Morinaga America’s president, missionaries from the Church of Latter-Day Saints were coming home from stints in Japan, where Hi-Chew has been omnipresent for decades, and buying up as much of the candy as they could find.

Damn...Guilty as charged! I was one of those missionaries. I also wrote stationery merchants in the US in the early 2000s to request they carry Hi-Tec C pens, brush pens, paper and binders from Japan, etc. (Hell, my time was split into JPN/BRA and I had spent many days sniffing the air for Brazilian cooking while bicycling around, so I was buying guarana and things too)

I was enthusiastically introduced to the hi-tec my first month in country in 1997. Brightened my day considering I was eating carrot sandwiches at the time.

By the time I was done with my stint, my average handwriting dimensions had shrunken by half at least! And we broke the damn clips on those hi-tecs every week, but some of mine went through two typhoons on a bicycle and never stopped working.

I couldn't bear the taste of American candy for at least a few months after I came back to the states...but yeah nowadays it's great, you can live anywhere and eat other nations' candy if you so please. Devoured some from the UK not so long ago.

Oh. And the food I was most sick of from Japan? Spaghetti, French toast, pancakes...it was some of the cheapest stuff you could make there. A 100 Yen store packet of sauce and box of pasta could be a massive meal for a couple dudes even if they were on a bike all day.

(No longer practicing Mormon but lots of fond memories of volunteering in rojin homes ;-))

The major exception is Nestle candy that is licensed by Hershey in the US, where importation of the corresponding foreign Nestle product might get you sued.

Japanese Kit Kat in particular far exceeds the quality of the Hershey product. This seems to escape their attention due to the fact that you can only find it in Asian marts and the packaging is quite different in appearance. But if you go to the store in Ginza they have a gift box of 100+ regional Japanese kit kats that’s an excellent gift.

There's a Japanese restaurant near me which has been selling those Kit Kats for like a couple decades now. Turns out I am a simp for bigkats though. Mostly I want popsicles with beans in 'em, a huge can of Aquarius, and maybe one of those atttakai....i drink vending machines for the winter.

How are they better?

Hershey’s chocolate contains a chemical also found in sour milk, and it is intentionally induced by the confectioner: https://www.mashed.com/617307/the-tangy-taste-of-hersheys-ch.... It adds a distinct sour note.

Non-Hershey licensed chocolate does not have this.

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Japanese KitKat, specifically, have over 200 flavors, partially because the confection is targeted towards gift giving. Domestic tourism in Japan emphasizes regional specialties and bringing back souvenir gifts of said specialties, so there are regionally limited flavors of KitKat. They're also sometimes targeted as a premium product with premium limited-edition run flavors.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/24/magazine/cand...

I suspect if they are adding it that they have some reason to believe people, at least their customers, prefer it that way

So, Hershey is tight lipped about this, partially because recipes, but also because openly admitting you sour your milk intentionally is bad PR.

The speculation is that during WWII, the milk supply wasn’t particularly good due to war rationing so this was naturally what happened, and then after the war it turned out American consumer preference had gotten used to and expected this from Hershey’s.

However, this isn’t good if, say, you’re a British expat in the US, you expect British Cadbury chocolate and get the Hershey-licensed sour stuff instead.

Pilot's ultra-fine pens are great, though for the money, I think the Juice and Juice Up 0.3mm pens are nicer all-around than the Hi-Tec C. A bit less scratchy, more comfortable to hold. Just in case you needed a rabbit hole to fall down, again. :)

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